In patriarchy, there is no sure escape from violent relationships. The courts and police may not help. Friends and family may turn their backs. And even when a woman’s life is in danger, she does not have the same right to self-defense as a man.

Journalist Justine van der Leun began researching this phenomenon when she learned about Nikki Addimando, a woman who killed her abusive partner in self-defense. Thanks to a grassroots campaign and some great lawyers, Nikki has now been freed, but just a few years ago, Nikki was sentenced to 19 years to life.

Justine wondered how many other Nikkis were out there. Experts told her that jails and prisons are full of women just like Nikki. Her new book, Unreasonable Women, is about what we do to women who kill in self-defense, as well as the patriarchal norms that reinforce men’s right to violence—and women’s right only to die from men’s violence.

In this conversation, we confront the reality of criminalized survival, and patriarchy’s unquenchable desire to punish abuse victims. Some of the topics we cover include:

Criminalized survival, and why our legal system ignores women’s right to self-defense.
Why being in an abusive relationship is a risk factor for ending up in prison.
The crime of surviving as an abuse victim.
The common theme that government will spend few or no resources to help impoverished kids, abused kids, or battered women, but will quickly and competently put those same people in prison, expending massive resources to do so.
The expectation that women being attacked by men will apply a perfect legal standard of self-defense, exert more self-control than we expect from trained police officers, and behave like perfect victims at all times.
The concept of violence against women as regulated rather than illegal.
Stories of three women who killed in self-defense, and how all three ended up incarcerated.

Unreasonable Women is out now. I hope you’ll buy it, since doing so supports feminist scholarship and shows publishers that we want more feminist work. You can find Justine’s book, as well as all books I mention on the podcast, along with several reading lists, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop.

About Justine van der Leun

Justine van der Leun is a journalist, author, and creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Believe Her. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, New York Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The Guardian. She has received fellowships from New America, the Emerson Collective, and PEN America, and more. Justine brings both deep investigative reporting and a thoughtful, engaging interview presence to conversations about violence, justice, and survival.