Bay, Hatice2024-02-222024-02-222023Bay, Hatice. “Instead of Pumping Iron, She Was Pumping Bullets into Her Husband”: The Portrayal of a Female Perpetrator in Nanette Burstein’s Killer Sally. [Inter]sections, no. 26, 2023, pp. 59-69.https://intersections-journal.com/2023/12/03/intersections-26-2023/https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12695/2666In the media, the law, and the public opinion, women who resort to violence within abusive relationships are often depicted as either victims or monsters. Nanette Burstein’s threepart docuseries, Killer Sally (2022), reexamines this binary which focuses on Sally McNeil, a former professional bodybuilder who murdered her husband, also a professional bodybuilder, in Southern California in 1995. Drawing from research and analyses found in Belinda Morrissey’s When Women Kill and The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies, this article argues that Burstein questions the discursive, performative, and one-sided dimensions of media and legal portrayals of female perpetrators. By placing both the perpetrator and the victim within complex socio-psychological and posthuman frameworks, Burstein broadens the discourse on battered women who kill by granting the perpetrator agency and voice.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessfemale perpetratorbattered womenSally McNeilRay McNeilNanette BursteinKiller SallyArticle267484