Author Elizabeth Flock tells stories of women who used violence to fight abuse

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• Geoff Bennett:

  In Greek and Roman mythology, the Furies are three goddesses who punish the wicked, delivering vengeance to an unfair, unlawful world.

  William Brangham talks with a former "NewsHour" reporter and the author of a new book that paints a portrait of three modern-day women who similarly used violence when they had no other option.

• William Brangham:

  In Alabama, Brittany Smith shot a man who she said had just raped and nearly killed her and was choking her brother. In India, Angoori Dahariya, a lower-caste woman unfairly evicted from her home, rises to become the leader of a gang of women who punish those who hurt other poor women.

  And, in Syria, teenaged Cicek Mustafa Zibo joins an all-female militia that's fighting a violent campaign against the Islamic State group, which is terrorizing their country.

  How this violence changes each of these women and has lasting implications on them and their broader communities is the subject of a new book called "The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice." And it is written by journalist Elizabeth Flock.

  Liz, so good to have you back on the "NewsHour."

  Can you just tell us a little bit more about these women and why their stories jumped out at you?

  Elizabeth Flock, Author, "The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice": Yes, so I started this project as a journalist because I found myself so interested in stories of female vigilantes, antiheroes. They populate so many of our movies and songs and books and mythology.

  And I really wanted to understand why that was. And I think we're obsessed with these stories because we wish in a way that we could be them. One in three women has faced domestic or sexual violence in this country and in the world. And so I think when we see these depictions on screen in pop culture, we wish that we could be those women fighting back.

  And so, as a journalist, my next question was, are there real-life versions of these women who have fought back? So I spent five years going around the world looking for women who had fought back against violence with violence of their own, and I wanted to understand whether that violence helped or harmed them and their communities and to understand why they had to fight back and what had happened that they hadn't been protected.

• William Brangham:

  I mean, that last point seems to be the central thrust of the whole book, that, while these women's circumstances are all quite different, they each felt, no one else is looking out for me in this given circumstance, and so they had to take the most drastic step.

• Elizabeth Flock:

  Right.

  In all of those instances, what I found is that institutions had failed them in some way, whether it was the police or the court system or the state itself. They hadn't protected women, hadn't responded to their complaints of domestic or sexual violence, and so the women ultimately took up arms themselves to defend themselves and their communities, and felt that they had no other option.

• William Brangham:

  I mean, it really is a condemnation of our collective society.

• Elizabeth Flock:

  Yes.

  I mean, I think this book is not an argument in favor of violence to say, hey, this is the solution, but it is asking the question, what would you do if you were in a scenario where you were facing domestic or sexual violence and no one was responding to your complaints or protecting you? You would have to — would you take up arms yourself?

  And so I think that was a question I had as a journalist throughout this project and trying to understand. Brittany Smith shot a man who she said raped her. What should she have done instead? Angoori Dahariya was wielding bamboo canes against domestic abusers, but that was after police had failed to respond to complaints of domestic violence for years.

  And Cicek was a fighter in an all-female militia fighting ISIS after the total failure of the Syrian state. And so she felt like there was no other option as well.

• William Brangham:

  One of the things that's so striking about your book is, you just — you refuse to romanticize these women.

  I mean, you portray them, in some ways, all taking heroic and at times inspiring actions, but you also show the flip side of that, that their violence has implications, that the corruption can come with power, and that that seems to be a real central focus of this, that it's not a rosy image of all of this.

• Elizabeth Flock:

  Yes, I think, even as a journalist, when I started out, I did have a little bit of rose-colored glasses on about these women.

  I thought, wow, this gang of women in India is fighting domestic abusers. How cool. How interesting. And even the YPJ in Syria, the all-female militia that Cicek fights for, the Western media has glamorized them quite a bit and said, look at these amazing women wielding Kalashnikovs against ISIS.

• William Brangham:

  And sexualized them too.

• Elizabeth Flock:

  And sexualized them and exoticized them.

  And the longer I worked on this, the more complicated I found all of these women. Brittany struggled with drug addiction. Angoori was really invested in her own power. Cicek really was obsessed with the ideology of the Kurdish leaders. And I think that was really important to show.

  And that's why you work on a book project this length, because you're trying to push back past the two-dimensional depictions of these kinds of women. And so this is the story of women doing extraordinary things. But it's also the story of the complications of that. And I think, I hope that the reader would wrestle with that throughout. Like, is this OK? Is this not OK? Where did they cross the line with their violence? What would I do?

  And just how complicated all of that is.

• William Brangham:

  You were saying before that, as you have been going out on your book tour, you have been hearing from other women who have had kindred kinds of experiences.

  Can you explain what you're hearing?

• Elizabeth Flock:

  Yes, I mean, so many women have come up to me, young women, older women, and said, I faced some kind of sexual or domestic abuse, or even just something as low-level as sexual harassment, or something really violent, and felt like they didn't know what to do, that they looked back and wished that they had fought back, that they understood what this book was about, that they felt some kind of rage or violence.

  A lot of people have said just the word relatable. So, I think, unfortunately, it is still such a silent epidemic, domestic and sexual violence. We know it's all around us, but we often don't hear about it, and I think there's a reason that these stories really resonate with everyone.

• William Brangham:

  In the epilogue of your book, you say that, as you were saying, the women's actions both helped and hurt them.

  No one gets a happy ending in this book, as you report, but you also say that's partly because they live in — quote — "damaging cultures of honor." What do you mean by that?

• Elizabeth Flock:

  Yes, so all of the women were punished for fighting back, right? And so it's kind of a double thing that's happening to them, which is that, first, they're not protected, and then they fight back and then they're punished for it.

  So, Brittany was arrested and charged with murder. Angoori was also arrested and sometimes ostracized in her community. And Cicek is suffering with PTSD from fighting in war, which so often happens.

• William Brangham:

  Grievous injuries.

• Elizabeth Flock:

  And grievous injuries. Her whole stomach is split open, her arms and legs. She was hit by drone strikes. The stories are incredible.

  But I think part of the reason is that I found all three of these women — and I didn't choose these locations. They — these locations really chose me because of the stories that I found, and I realized that all of them, whether it was rural Alabama or Northern India or Northeast Syria, all of them had these cultures of honor, where honor was such an important concept for the men that live there and defending their honor.

  And I think that is what led to a lot of the domestic and sexual violence that took place. And, as a result, these women were punished for fighting back and speaking up.

• William Brangham:

  The book is "The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice."

  Elizabeth Flock, so great to see you. Thank you.

• Elizabeth Flock:

  Thank you, William.