Blood, guts and the female readership
A brilliant and provocative article recently published in The Guardian’s books pages. Julie Bindel examines why it is that, contrary to established belief, women swell the ranks of those reading and writing thrillers and crime:
Given my work as a feminist activist and writer, you might expect me to hate the crime genre. I have spent the whole of my adult life fighting male violence, and much of my work involves researching topics such as rape, child sexual abuse, pornography and murder. I talk regularly to women who have survived sex attacks, and have had to look at crime-scene photographs showing mutilated corpses of women who have been raped, tortured and murdered. It was as a direct result of the hideous brutality of a serial killer – Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper – that I became a feminist in the first place. Yet, when it comes to fiction, the serial killer genre is my favourite. Read on here…