The Effect of Gender

Written: September 17th, 2025

The Menendez brothers’ case is a fairly popular case. Erik and Lyle Menendez’s 4-year-long trial started with the murder of their two parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in 1989. In 1990, the two boys were arrested for the murders. Prosecution claimed the two boys did it for money, arguing that the two boys wanted their wealthy parents' money after finding out they were going to be taken out of the will. However, when the trial began in 1993, the defense brought forward evidence proving that the boys did it to protect themselves. The Menendez brothers shared their story of the sexual abuse that they had been

facing since the age of 6 from their father, Jose Menendez, as well as the abuse they faced from their mother, Kitty Menendez. The two boys wanted the abuse to stop. They were scared their parents were going to kill them. The prosecutors argued that the boys could have just run away if this were true. Yet even a mental evaluation proved that the boys were not mentally mature enough to understand how to be without their parents. This caused their first trial to end as a mistrial; their second trial ended in two counts of first-degree murder.

Now, if you look at a similar case with similar reasoning, and the only difference being that the killer is a woman, you might just see a different outcome.

Christine Varness was 43 years old when she drowned her 61-year-old mother, Lois Huysman, in a bathtub. Varness’s mother was ill and needed help bathing, so on one occasion in September of 1990, while Varness was helping her mother bathe, Varness brought up her feelings towards the sexual abuse that she had been put through by her stepfather from ages 6-10. Her mother responded by

saying that she was aware of the abuse going on, and instead of sympathizing with her daughter, she blamed her for that abuse, claiming that it wouldn't have happened if she weren't the way she was. Varness became enraged, which ultimately led to her drowning her mother in the bathtub. She then cut her mother's body into several pieces, some of which have still not been found. Varness’s Defense used the abuse as the reasoning for the killing, just as Lyle and Erik’s defense had. Christine Varness was given 10 years of incarceration for this crime because she was found guilty by the jury.

The two cases happened around the same time, and while they have their

differences, they're very similar; they just had different outcomes. All of them

were considerably good people, and all of them had committed a horrendous

crime, yet the woman was given 10 years while the two men were given life. It

really makes you wonder, doesn't it? Because why is it that even after 56 witnesses

Those boys were not believed, but without any witnesses, a woman was. It's simple, really; the majority of people believe that a man cannot be abused, specifically sexually abused, because he is a man. The two boys' stories of abuse were seen as a lie because, in the eyes of the prosecution, the jury, and a good amount of society, a man cannot be sexually abused, especially not by his own father. The idea of masculinity makes these people believe that this could never have happened, especially not in this way, and it removes that form of defense for men. Yet it's more believable for a woman to have been abused in that way because she is a woman. After all, a woman is considered more vulnerable than a man, even though that isn’t true; it’s what society tends to believe.