Tag: cross-examination, gender, misogynist

Bailey, a former prosecutor, attacked her credibility scattershot, an approach he would use throughout the trial, particularly with female witnesses. …He accused her, that is–without coming out and saying it–of being a certain kind of woman: conceited, disingenuous, and dissatisfied. The universal misogynist caricature.I’d never gone in for academic gender theories, but Bailey’s cross-examination strategy–with Farrar and other women to come–convinced me that the culture of criminal justice has a fundamentally masculine tilt. Repeatedly, in a manner that I suspected was typical in modern courtrooms, he portrayed the female mind as intrinsically unreliable, ruled by emotion, immune to logic, prone to pettiness, swayed by lust, and corrupted by vanity. It rarely spoke plainly. It was seldom candid. It was composed of layers of hidden agendas. It put up a front, behind which was another front. It either aimed to please or to conceal, which were often the same thing. The only way to get the truth from it was to push and prod until it snapped. Make it angry. Make it cry.