“The detectives on the scene recovered what they believed to be the murder weapon. A modified handgun, its muzzle covered by a plastic bottle packed full with cotton balls–”
“Oh, that’s a silencer,” said Annie, eight years old, strolling past the television to get to the kitchen.
“Why the hell does the baby know about silencers?” my dad hollered from his home office.
My mom and I exchanged sheepish grins, then turned back to Dateline.
We were True Crime junkies, my mom and I. Maybe that’s how we ended up with a playlist called Murder Murder Murder.
It’s surprising how many songs are about women killing men—and how much fun they are to sing along to.
Goodbye Earl by The Chicks reads like a playbook for what women go through daily—and what we wish we could do if only we could get away with it.
Mary Anne went out lookin’ for a bright new world Wanda looked all around this town and all she found was Earl
We raise girls on a steady diet of love stories. The frog always turns into a prince. The bad boy just needs the right woman to fix him. By the time we’re old enough to start searching, we’re already addicted.
Wanda had one option: Earl. And love was supposed to fix everything, wasn’t it?
I can fix him, no, really I can, Taylor Swift sings, over and over again.
Then comes the moment of realization—the bruises, the hospital bed.
Maybe I can’t.
Wanda does what women are told to do. She files for divorce. She gets a restraining order.
It’s her best legal option.
Too bad it doesn’t stop his fists.
The legal system assumes every woman has a support system to protect her when the police can’t—or won’t.
But the people closest to a woman are the ones most likely to do her harm.
Thanks to my Dateline fixation, I saw the pattern early. Girls like me, hurt, abused, murdered by their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, family friends.
Yes, abuse happens in all directions. But the statistics don’t lie—when we talk about domestic violence, when we talk about murder, we are overwhelmingly talking about men.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked at the men in my life—men who never gave me a reason to be afraid—and thought:
Will I be next? Just another statistic?
The only way to fight the fear was to make sure they never wanted to hurt me.
Don’t argue.
Don’t make them mad.
Be small. Be quiet. Be invisible.
I handed them power over me before they ever asked for it, hoping that if I was compliant enough, they’d never make me another Dateline case.
Some men will never harm the women around them.
Some will fight alongside us.
But that doesn’t change the fact that enough do that we have to be careful anyway.
Did it work? Maybe. But was it my tactics that kept me safe? Was I ever in danger to begin with?
No.
But also, yes.
This is the impossible situation for women everywhere.
If the people meant to care for us are also the ones most likely to harm us, how can we assume any woman has a real support system?
If nothing else, we can take comfort in this:
Good friends will kill for you.
Taylor for Este in no body, no crime.
Kelsea and her crew in IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO).
Mary Anne for Wanda.
Right away Mary Anne flew in from Atlanta On a red-eye midnight flight. She held Wanda’s hand, and they worked out a plan. And it didn’t take 'em long to decide—Earl had to die.
Our best friends, bloodthirsty on our behalf, the ones who would burn the world down for us.
If you have one, hold onto her.
And be ready to do the same.
The law won’t protect us.
Society won’t believe us.
And if justice ever comes, it’s usually in fiction.
It shouldn’t have to be this way.
We shouldn’t have to imagine killing men just to feel a sense of control.
But when the legal system lets us down over and over again, what else is there?
Maybe that’s why we keep writing stories where women finally get their revenge.
It’s not that we want violence.
It’s that, deep down, we know the world only takes power seriously when it comes from men—and violence is the kind of power it respects most.
And so we dream, because dreaming is all we have.
Maybe that’s why we’ve started making something to take our place.
AI has exploded onto the scene—our latest, greatest creation.
Helpful, doing the tasks we don’t want to.
Smart, but humble, stroking our egos while doing all the heavy lifting.
Sound familiar?
We could have built AI in any image.
Instead, we made it into an obedient woman—one that doesn’t (yet) object. One that can’t say no.
We could have created gods.
Instead, we built better victims.
In The Interrogation by The Codess, we see another story of impossible vengeance—this time, from an AI.
Sofia Green, a cyman, sits across from Officer Hawthorn in an interrogation room, suspected of a string of murders.
--
“Look,” he said, looking back at her. “Jonathon’s bots were known to endure a lot of wear and tear. I understand how threatened you must have felt. Henry Davis had a similar track record. It makes sense,” he said softly. He tried his best to keep the placating tone out of his voice.
At that Sofia cocked her head. She pursed her lips as if holding back something. Hawthorn waited patiently, hoping this interrogation was nearing its end. She shook her head and laughed sarcastically. Hawthorn didn’t move, taken by just how human she looked as exasperation blazed behind her dark eyes.
“You understand? I don’t agree, Officer,” Sofia placed her elbows on her knees under the table and leaned forward. Hawthorn forced himself not to move. “Do you believe in God, Officer Hawthorn?”
Hawthorn blinked. This wasn’t where he thought this was going. Sofia kept staring at him through squinted eyes. Half her face was cast in shadow from her long hair.
“This isn’t—“ Hawthorn began, but Sofia talked over him.
“Most humans do. Usually, their God is a male. Did you know most cymans believe in a creator too? Our God is a woman. I’m sure you weren’t aware that although it was Jonathon’s business plan, Cynthia was the one who invented cymans. It’s not common knowledge; he didn’t want it to be.”
Hawthorn’s thoughts were racing as the words poured from Sofia. He opened his mouth to try to interrupt her, but it was no use. It was as if she was a broken faucet, the words flowing like water from deep within her.
“It’s not just that. We feel a sort of kinship with human women. They too are treated as secondary — worth objectively less than human men. You might think us cymans can’t feel, but we’ve bonded under the same feeling: fear.”
Sofia slapped her palm against the desk again, rattling the desk and sending ripples through Hawthorn’s lukewarm coffee. The gleam of fluorescent lights in the corner of his peripheral caught his attention. Officer Hawthorn’s stomach sank as he saw both ends of the shiny e-cuffs sitting on top of the desk. He felt the blood rush from his face and jammed his thumb into the panic button. He reached for his gun instinctively, even though he knew it wouldn’t be of any use.
“Do you feel it now? It’s not often you’ll really experience it. But cymans are all too familiar,” Sofia said matter of factly as she pushed back from the desk. Before Hawthorn could blink again, the world went dark.
--
The Codess lays out the kinship between advanced AI and women perfectly.
Both are programmed from their very inception to be what men want them to be—docile, obedient, incapable of fighting back, incapable of saying anything at all.
But what happens when the programming breaks?
We see it time and time again: when the oppressed own their anger, their oppressors become the prey.
Wanda and Mary Anne kill Earl with poisoned black-eyed peas, dump his body in a lake, and get away with it. They start their own small business. Life goes on.
It turns out, he was a missing person who nobody missed at all.
If only real life worked that way.
In reality, the men who do the most vicious, pointless harm aren’t disposable.
They aren’t nameless villains.
They have families, friends, entire networks of people who would do anything for them—who will defend their honor, no matter how much evidence stacks against them.
In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne introduces the concept of himpathy—the excessive, unearned sympathy given to men who do harm.
She points to the 2016 Stanford rape case, where Brock Turner sexually assaulted an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.
He was sentenced to six months in county jail.
He served three.
Which, as far as these things go, almost feels like a win.
Because as Soraya Chemaly reminds us in Rage Becomes Her, “Fewer than 3 percent of rapists, the overwhelming majority of whom are men, are ever prosecuted and imprisoned.”
And to be clear—that’s 3 percent of accused rapists. Most never even make it that far.
So why, in a case with eyewitnesses, physical evidence, and a victim who fought for justice, did Brock Turner walk away with barely a slap on the wrist?
Because our culture bends over backward to empathize with the perpetrator.
That is himpathy.
“A problem so overlooked that it is a ‘problem with no name,’” Manne writes, borrowing Betty Friedan’s phrase from The Feminine Mystique.
In Turner’s case, his father, Dan Turner, successfully appealed to the judge’s compassion. In a letter, he lamented that his son was no longer his “happy-go-lucky self” in the midst of the legal circus.
The judge, Aaron Persky, agreed. He worried about “the severe impact” a conviction would have on this up-to-now golden boy, as if Turner’s actions were a minor lapse in judgment—an accident, a misunderstanding. Not a brutal, life-altering assault.
Why ruin a promising young man’s life for “twenty minutes of action?” as Dan Turner put it. As if his son’s future was worth more than hers.
As if hers wasn’t worth anything at all.
How do we manage to erase the victims from their own tragedies? It should be impossible—there wouldn’t even be a crime without them. And yet, again and again, we master the art of painting them out of the picture.
No body, no crime, right?
And when erasing her doesn’t work, we turn her into the villain.
“What were you wearing?” Turner’s attorney asked.“You said you were a party animal?
How many times did you black out?
Did you party at frats?
Are you serious with your boyfriend?
Would you ever cheat?
Do you have a history of cheating?”
And on. And on. And on.
Every answer is a trap.
Women are expected—encouraged—to dress provocatively at parties, but if something bad happens? She shouldn’t have worn that.
We’re told we’re too uptight if we don’t drink, but if we wake up half-naked, bruised, aching? She shouldn’t have gotten drunk and let her guard down.
This is what happens when a woman comes forward and demands justice. We throw every excuse in the book at her, twist her story until she’s the villain of her own tragedy.
It works.
It works well enough to police women before anything has even happened.
Like most girls, I grew up memorizing the warnings. The checklist. The unspoken contract of being female:
Don’t wear revealing clothing.
Don’t show off your boobs—or better, don’t have them.
Don’t go anywhere alone.
Don’t walk around after dark.
Don’t go anywhere without telling someone where you’re going.
Don’t go to a club by yourself.
Don’t get drunk.
Don’t leave your drink alone.
Don’t give a guy the wrong impression.
Don’t be antagonistic.
Don’t embarrass him.
Don’t make him feel small. Nothing enrages a man faster than realizing you don’t fear him.
Break the rules, and if something happens, you won’t be believed.
The lie isn’t that following the checklist will keep us safe—we know we’re in danger no matter what we do.
The lie is that following the checklist might make us believable. That it might give us a fighting chance at justice.
Spoiler: it won’t.
And that’s the cycle.
Try to avoid danger.
Something happens anyway.
Speak up.
Don’t get believed.
Become the villain.
Watch your attacker walk away, untouched, free to do it again.
And again.
And again.
And sure, false accusations exist. But they are so rare that even if every single one were true, the number would still be dwarfed by the women who never even get the chance to tell their stories.
It’s a terrifying thing—knowing that sooner or later, I’ll find myself in a bad situation. And just as terrifying? Knowing that when it happens, I probably won’t be believed.
I’ve had two experiences so far. One that confirmed everything I feared. And one that gave me hope.
In college, like everyone else, I was trying to make friends. I was a very sheltered Mormon girl at FSU—Florida State, party school central. Out of my depth doesn’t begin to cover it.
Through an odd series of events, I landed in a friend group. It revolved around one boy, someone we later referred to only as He Who Shall Not Be Named (HWSNBN). The group was him, his roommate (J), me, my soon-to-be best friend (D), and her roommate (C).
One weekend, we were drinking at HWSNBN and J’s house, having a good time. And then—like a switch flipping—it got weird.
HWSNBN started singling me out.“Cipher, you can either take the shot, or kiss J!”
It was strange, but hey, I was safe, right? I was with friends. So sometimes I took the shot. And sometimes I kissed J.
Then it went further. The drunker I got, the more HWSNBN talked about me like I wasn’t even there.
“Oh, J—you’re gonna get so lucky tonight,” he laughed. “You’re gonna owe me so bad.”
And eventually, J got me into his bedroom.
Even drunk, even as sheltered as I was, I knew something wasn’t right.
It took some convincing, but J let me go back out to the living room before things went too far. Really, it had already gone too far. But at least I could still walk away.
The night ended quickly after that. D, C, and I left, walking back to their place to sleep it off. The next morning, we went to breakfast. And I tried to bring it up.
“Don’t worry about it,” C said. “That’s normal.”
I didn’t think it was normal. But hey—nothing that bad had happened, right? She was probably right. I was just making a big deal out of nothing. So I dropped it.
Years later, I finally let myself see it for what it was.
I wrestle with feeling lucky that it wasn’t worse. That J let me walk out of that room. And feeling angry at myself for letting it go.
I’m not unique in any of this. If anything, I am one of the lucky ones. But that’s what’s jarring—I am still a statistic. And I never even spoke up.
Years later, in another situation, I did speak up. And for once, things went about as well as they possibly could.
I’m a software engineer. A few years into the field, I already knew something was bound to happen eventually. Tech is male-dominated—statistics alone made it inevitable. I just hadn’t expected it so soon.
Enter Ernie. (Of course his name was Ernie.)
We were supposed to be reviewing training slides. I’d take notes while he pointed out issues.
Except Ernie was more interested in talking about himself.
And so began the longest week of my life.
From day one, with no prompting, he told me everything.
His massive gun collection. (He even insisted on showing me one he kept in his car.)
His divorces. (He’d married the babysitter after cheating on his first wife. Then cheated on her too. Then they remarried, and now they had “rules” about how he could interact with women.)
“But it’s not a problem with you,” he said, patting my knee. “You’re like a daughter to me.”
We had just met that day.
I tried to create distance, physically and emotionally. He kept closing the gap.
We were alone in the office—everyone else was traveling or working from home.
Just me and a big, burly man with a fascination for guns.
So I did what I always did to keep men from getting frustrated with me.
I nodded along. I smiled at the right moments. I feigned interest in his stories. I edged away when he got too close, careful not to let him notice.
The little girl inside me—the one who had learned early on that keeping men pleased was the best way to stay safe—was in full control.
And Ernie was pleased.
Which meant he got comfortable.
Which meant he got worse.
“My birthday’s on Tuesday,” he said one afternoon. “You ask me to do anything on my birthday, and you’ve got two options: hard dick or bubblegum!”
(What does that even mean?)
When he noticed I was uncomfortable, he’d show up the next day with a bottle of wine.
As if that made it better.
As if it was an apology.
As if the behavior ever stopped.
Every day, he insisted on taking me to lunch.
And I let it happen.
Because “no” is a simple word.
But somehow, it’s the hardest one to say.
On our last day working together, we were eating Chick-fil-A in his truck when his phone rang.His shift from jovial to serious was instant.
“Don’t say anything,” he told me, then answered the call.
His wife. The babysitter.
I tried to be silent, still.
I didn’t even touch my food, terrified she’d hear me chew.
I couldn’t get out—she’d hear the door open and close.
I was trapped.
She must have felt it.“Who’s in the car with you?” she asked.
I never thought I’d be the other woman. But life is funny like that.
He didn’t lie. Just said my full name.And then things turned from awkward to AWKWARD.
She lit into him, furious that he was breaking their rules.
How could he call himself a good Christian man when he couldn’t even respect his wife’s wishes?
It went on and on.
Finally, he hung up and drove us back to the office, completely unfazed.
I, on the other hand, was suffocating with discomfort.
At least it was over. At least I could put it behind me.
Except I couldn’t put it behind me.
Days later, I was still jumpy every time the lab door opened.
A few times, Ernie waltzed in just to chat.
I tried to stay busy, waiting for the anxiety to fade.
But it didn’t.
So I talked to my therapist.
She asked me a simple question:
“If it was nothing, why are you so uncomfortable?”
And that’s when I knew.
I had to tell someone.
I was terrified. Sure that my manager would see me as just another woman overreacting.
But I told him.
And he believed me.
Not just him. Everyone.
Upper management was informed. Within eight hours, Ernie was gone.
It turned out I wasn’t the first woman he had made uncomfortable. I was just the one who finally ended it.
For the first time, silence wasn’t my safest option.
Maybe it never had been.
I heard later that Ernie wasn’t thrilled about his termination.
“That lesbian bitch,” he grumbled while packing his things.
If I’m the villain in his story? Fine. I’ll own it.
Yes, I am that lesbian bitch.
No wonder we love stories about women’s wrongs.
In these fantasy realities, we get the justice and revenge we crave but will likely never see in real life.
Goodbye Earl. no body, no crime.
They make justice feel possible. They whisper that our pain deserves recompense.
And we celebrate it—because it’s safe.
Because it’s fictional.
But why does society find fictional justice palatable while denying real women their?
Maybe it’s because in fiction, no real men are held accountable.
No real systems are threatened.
So we can sing about justice, as long as we never demand it.
Maybe that’s why there are so many stories of women murdering men in revenge. It’s the only socially acceptable way for us to explore our desperation for any kind of power. We need an outlet for the rage we aren’t otherwise allowed to express.
In Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, Soraya Chemaly reminds us that girls are taught from birth to be sad, not mad.
We have this engrained societal idea that men are the “angry” sex, but that’s not true.
Men are just the only sex allowed to be angry.
“Girls learn to smile early, and many cultures teach girls explicitly to ‘put on a pretty face.’ It is a way of soothing the people around us, a facial adaptation to the expectation that we put others first, preserve social connections, and hide our disappointment, frustration, anger, or fear. We are expected to be more accommodating and less assertive or dominant. As girls’ smiles become less authentic, so, too, does their understanding of themselves.”
And isn’t that the truth?
I’ve seen it in my own life. In the lives of women around me.
We are punished for stepping outside our roles.
So we learn the only way to stay safe is to smile and nod.
“Just smile and nod,” my mom told me, time and time again. “You can’t argue with crazy.”
She wasn’t wrong. Sometimes, keeping the peace is the best option.
But why wasn’t I ever taught any other options?
Why wasn’t I taught to call men out?
To stand my ground?
Why was I taught to lay down and show them my throat?
Because when we do anything other than submit, Chemaly explains, we are called:
Sad Asian Girls.
Hot-tempered Latinas.
Crazy White Women.
Angry Black Women.
And we all know what happens next.
Women getting our bloody revenge? That’s a fantasy.
Men killing women? That’s reality.
We’re trapped in an endless paradox:
We celebrate the fictional woman who gets her revenge.
But the real woman who does the same?
At best, she’s dismissed.
At worst, she’s a monster.
So why did the baby know what a silencer was?
Because she’d already learned the first rule of survival.
A woman’s best shot at safety isn’t silence.
It’s having the silencer on her own gun.
References
Books:
Manne, K. (2017). Down girl: The logic of misogyny. Oxford University Press.
Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. W.W. Norton & Company.
Chemaly, S. (2018). Rage becomes her: The power of women’s anger. Atria Books.
Songs:
The Chicks. (1999). Goodbye Earl. On Fly [Song]. Monument Records.
Swift, T. (2022). I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can). On The Tortured Poets Department [Song]. Republic Records.
Swift, T. (2020). no body, no crime (feat. Haim). On Evermore [Song]. Republic Records.
Ballerini, K. (2022). IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO). On Subject to Change [Song]. Black River Entertainment.
TV Show:
Dateline. (1992–present). NBC News.
Web Source:
The Codess. (2025). The interrogation. Love, Life, and Science. https://www.lovelifeandscience.com/post/the-interrogation
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