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alexblackreads 's review for:
Women Who Love Men Who Kill
by Sheila Isenberg
This book basically boils down to 'these women are damaged.' Saved you about two hundred pages.
One thing I really struggled with was the fake objectivity. It grinds my nerves whenever journalists take the stance of objectivity in their work when it's (a) clearly not objective and (b) true objectivity isn't possible anyway. I much prefer it when authors actually address their own biases and how that has affected their research and writing. Isenberg spent a lot of time focused on neutrality when describing things that obviously weren't neutral (ex. describing obvious rape and calling it sex) and removing herself from the story to the extent that I couldn't tell if she actually interviewed some of these women.
There were a lot of inserted thoughts from various psychologists who seemed shallow at best, peddling terms like "soul murder" and coming across more focused on selling their books than the psychology itself. They all liked diagnosing the various women in this book, but offered no evidence of actually having met with any of the women. Their thoughts all sounded like they were based off hearsay, which is a super gross vibe. And if they did actually know the women, it's information Isenberg should have included in the book.
She also loved to contradict what the women said. The women would make some statement about believing their husband is innocent and Isenberg would say 'oh but they don't actually believe in their husband's innocence, they actually believe x y z thing.' It was incredibly frustrating to read and very condescending to all the women. She also offered no evidence of that except her own psych theories. So essentially it wound up being a circle of evidence- proving her psychological theory by contradicting the women's statements, which is then proved by her psychological theory.
Mostly it was just really bland and shallow and repetitive. This book offers nothing that you probably don't already assume. I don't even necessarily disagree with much of what she wrote, but it offered basically nothing.
One thing I really struggled with was the fake objectivity. It grinds my nerves whenever journalists take the stance of objectivity in their work when it's (a) clearly not objective and (b) true objectivity isn't possible anyway. I much prefer it when authors actually address their own biases and how that has affected their research and writing. Isenberg spent a lot of time focused on neutrality when describing things that obviously weren't neutral (ex. describing obvious rape and calling it sex) and removing herself from the story to the extent that I couldn't tell if she actually interviewed some of these women.
There were a lot of inserted thoughts from various psychologists who seemed shallow at best, peddling terms like "soul murder" and coming across more focused on selling their books than the psychology itself. They all liked diagnosing the various women in this book, but offered no evidence of actually having met with any of the women. Their thoughts all sounded like they were based off hearsay, which is a super gross vibe. And if they did actually know the women, it's information Isenberg should have included in the book.
She also loved to contradict what the women said. The women would make some statement about believing their husband is innocent and Isenberg would say 'oh but they don't actually believe in their husband's innocence, they actually believe x y z thing.' It was incredibly frustrating to read and very condescending to all the women. She also offered no evidence of that except her own psych theories. So essentially it wound up being a circle of evidence- proving her psychological theory by contradicting the women's statements, which is then proved by her psychological theory.
Mostly it was just really bland and shallow and repetitive. This book offers nothing that you probably don't already assume. I don't even necessarily disagree with much of what she wrote, but it offered basically nothing.