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Thinking about Women, Violence, and Agency

To woefully use a cliché: ‘We’ve come a long way baby.’ Twelve years ago what literature existed on women’s involvement in political and criminal violences denied or seriously limited agency, (relational) autonomy, and very often, any semblance of intelligence (Cooper 1979; Morgan 1989; Neuberger and Valentini 1996). Proscribed violences are tantalizing betrayals of norms and laws. The intrigue is only compounded when women are involved, either as genocidaires, self-martyrs, drug couriers or torturers. Even if those who study gender, whether it is femininities or masculinities, recognize, argue and hold that gender is a fluid and dynamic process, women’s involvement in proscribed violence, for one reason or another, is seen as a transgression of both criminal norms as well as gender norms. Thus, women’s proscribed violence creates resistance as it alternatively or in tandem seduces. The denial that women can participate in political violence, organized international crime or genocide used to lead to the reaction, ‘A woman did that?’ And to be frank, some of the greatest resistance came from the feminist community; it was feminists who declared, ‘A woman did not do that!’ Because we received these comments so consistently and constantly in our research and presentations for Mothers, Monsters, Whores (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007), we made it the title of the introductory chapter. Yet, this blunt questioning is no longer part of the routine. Women’s involvement in proscribed violence is becoming more ‘accepted’ – as in, ‘we’ can handle the questions and investigations of it without too much resistance and hand-wringing. Which means it is time for new, deeper, further-reaching queries and contestations. Continuing to push the boundaries of agency, feminism and how women and proscribed violence are encountered is precisely what this collection of ground-breaking articles does. Having no particular desire to rehash previously made arguments against the limited thinking that existed previously on women and proscribed violences, what I really want to emphasize is that the idea of agency is not simple. The work that I have done alone or with other authors has garnered