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I commented on the original article last week so I have nothing to really add on that, but this piece is typically Frenchian, with an interesting addition of ahistorical ignorance.
Did French not read any history, or even historical fiction like Tale of Two Cities? There was no lack of female influence amongst the French Revolutionaries. Some even did the violent violence themselves like Charlotte Corday and Théroigne de Méricourt.
I suppose the claim that there was not multiple "squadrons of women" who ran guillotines might technically be true. I am not actually well versed enough in French history to know of such a female guillotine squad. But I do know that on top of the violence doing women participants there were many more agitators like de Gouges and Pauline Leon who essentially helped construct lists of folks they think should be sent to their deaths, and eventually I think one or both of them were victims of their own success.
The Bianca Censori red carpet incident was a heavy blow, but this might just be the final nail in the coffin of the Theory of Nominative Determinism.
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I would push against your point here, though I agree French is off base (for different reasons). Men and women have different roles in society (by nature or nurture, doesn't matter), and inflicting violence has been and is squarely men's domain. Women simply do not inflict violence of the sort that actually physically harms someone, compared to men. They will and do participate in violent structures but always at arms length.
Where French is wrong is that it's silly to blame the bad cop when two cops are playing a good cop/bad cop routine.
You do not find women often in the trenches of wars. But you will find them very often acting violently when the situation stabilizes and they have ability do do petty violence safely. Famously Mao's cultural revolution was heavily supported by women, who had at least 50% membership in Red Guards. They were amongst the most ferocious when it came to struggle sessions, parades - including parading with severed limbs of victims etc.
I'd say that women are much worse when it comes to controlling their violent impulses compared to men as they were never socialized for it, in fact they are often initiating physical violence such as slaps etc. The only mitigating factor is that they are weak. But if they are put in safe place of power such as owning slaves, they are perfectly capable of extreme cruelty and torture. The same goes for other natural experiments. For instance in countries where corporeal punishment of children in education is legal, female teachers have no compunction physically abusing their students. The whole schtick about fairer sex is a myth, I'd argue that men are more benevolent compared to women accounting for strength difference. If the situation turned and women were stronger than men, I do not think that men would have it nearly as good as women have it now under patriarchy.
Very specious but I have always felt that rivalries in female MMA tend to be significantly more personal and women are more likely to crank submissions with the intent to injure.
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