"Perhaps the strongest evidence that women have as broad and deep a capacity for physical aggression as men is anecdotal. And as with men, this capacity has expressed itself in acts from the brave to the brutal, the selfless to the senseless"
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Dunn comes in sideways: not with a manifesto, but with a deliberately unglamorous claim about evidence. “Perhaps the strongest evidence…is anecdotal” is a provocation dressed as modesty. In a culture that treats women’s violence as aberration, pathology, or punchline, she insists that the proof is already everywhere - in stories people tell, cases that get flattened into “exceptions,” memories that never make it into official categories. The word “perhaps” doesn’t soften the point so much as dare you to dispute it: if you want clean data, you first have to admit what you’ve been trained not to see.
The subtext is an attack on the sentimental bargain often offered to women: moral credit in exchange for presumed gentleness. Dunn refuses that protection. Equality, in her framing, includes the full, uncomfortable range of human impulses, including physical aggression. That’s why the sentence pivots to symmetry: “And as with men…” She’s not arguing women are uniquely violent; she’s arguing that violence is not a male monopoly, and that pretending otherwise is its own kind of distortion.
The paired contrasts - “brave”/“brutal,” “selfless”/“senseless” - do double duty. They acknowledge the ways aggression can be socially sanctioned (defense, resistance, survival) while also refusing to alibi it as empowerment. Contextually, this sits neatly with Dunn’s novelistic eye: a refusal to let “woman” function as a moral genre. She’s after a more adult form of gender realism, where agency includes the capacity to harm, not just the capacity to endure.
The subtext is an attack on the sentimental bargain often offered to women: moral credit in exchange for presumed gentleness. Dunn refuses that protection. Equality, in her framing, includes the full, uncomfortable range of human impulses, including physical aggression. That’s why the sentence pivots to symmetry: “And as with men…” She’s not arguing women are uniquely violent; she’s arguing that violence is not a male monopoly, and that pretending otherwise is its own kind of distortion.
The paired contrasts - “brave”/“brutal,” “selfless”/“senseless” - do double duty. They acknowledge the ways aggression can be socially sanctioned (defense, resistance, survival) while also refusing to alibi it as empowerment. Contextually, this sits neatly with Dunn’s novelistic eye: a refusal to let “woman” function as a moral genre. She’s after a more adult form of gender realism, where agency includes the capacity to harm, not just the capacity to endure.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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