Back in the early days of True Crime Fiction I reviewed a BBC podcast called Who Killed Emma? A really excellent, and brave piece of journalism from Sam Poling. The case covered the death of Emma Caldwell, who was found dead in woodland in Lanarkshire, outside Glasgow, in April 2005. Last week, Ian Packer, was …
Continue reading International Women’s Day 2024, including updates on Who Killed Emma?
Once-upon-a-time there was a young girl from Cuba, who emmigrated to the United States. She studied art at college under a great teacher, moved to New York, married a well respected artist, died and became a success. The idea that artists have to die before they become successful was mainly popularised by Vincent Van …
Continue reading Death of an Artist: A True Crime Podcast About The Death of Anna Mendieta
There are some emotions, some cognative processess which different cultures don't do well with. It's nobodies fault. Something happened, probably at a formative point in the culture which meant that whatever feeling or opinion was under examination, would not again be the choice of that group of people. Many cultures which have western christianity as …
Continue reading Shadow of Doubt: An Australian True Crime Podcast About Familial Abuse
Through the decades of speculation all the focus has been on the who of the killer, not the who of the women, who were easily dismissed and almost faded into the background while the mysterious Bible John, became bigger than life in the way that unsolved mysteries often do.
Bates book is part of a genre I have decided to name True Dystopia, so unrelenting and difficult to counter are the subculture she maps. However, at the end of the book we do gain some glimmers of hope as to how these incidious and dangerous ideas can be dealt with, and it will take a lot more energy and time than I suspect many realise. It is not the internet per say that has created these groups, but general culture, the internet just allowed communications between their individual members, who have used that opportunity the way any living organisim does, to grow, to become stronger, to reproduce.
Yet, when we look at the evidence over time it's likely that women have been just, if not more prolific in their voilence. A combination of using methods which have been more difficult to detect and less showy, such as posoin, combined with cultural taboo's that still exist around women, caring and motherhood which mean their violence can often not be contemplated, very weirdly leads me to conclude this is yet another area in which women's contributions have been overlooked. And as pshycologist Anna Motz says, when we deny women's violence, we deny women.
