The Key Word Here Is 'Fiction'

Nine of the 10 bestselling fiction paperbacks in the UK this week have one thing in common: a woman is murdered.

So? The big seller is crime novels, someone has to be murdered. I don't want to read a novel about bank fraud, my maths isn't up to it!

While the titles range from historical fiction to domestic noir and police procedurals, each centres on the death of at least one female character.

The key word there being 'fiction', of course, and literature is hardly the main culprit here, movies, tv shoes and even computer games also feature murders of women. 

Only The Correspondent, a novel about the art of letter writing, breaks the pattern.

Wow, that must be a rivetting read! 

The trend was highlighted on Instagram by the author Wendy Jones, who wrote: “So 84% [sic] of the books people bought and read in the UK this week involved a woman being murdered for entertainment. What is going on here?”

But why does commercial fiction keep returning to the same story? Critics argue that repeatedly turning women into victims risks normalising violence against them. Yet the genre’s paradox is that women are also its biggest consumers, with some arguing its appeal may be a way of processing real-world fears.

Longrider weighs in on this 'paradox' too. 

The crime writer Mel McGrath wrote that the genre has, in some ways, moved on from the time of male authors such as Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane killing off women chiefly so the men investigating their deaths could be heroes. “Reading crime fiction written by women remains a powerfully feminist act,” she said. The crime writer and critic Laura Wilson explained that domestic noir is popular at the moment because it reflects “some very real fears”.

No, it's mostly that mystery is the hook here, not the act of murder. 

The novelist Denise Mina traced the appetite back to the broadsheet sellers of 18th-century London, who found that manufactured crimes sold copies so long as the victim fitted a particular profile.

A traditional crime novel, Rader-Day said, wraps up in under 400 pages with the mystery solved and order restored, “not at all like what actual death is like”, which is precisely why it’s so comforting. She said both craft and culture explained why the victim is so often a woman.“Most readers, most consumers, are women too, so if a writer wants to showcase anyone’s anxieties, a woman’s is a good choice – the anxiety that they themselves could become a victim,” she said.

That would imply that horror is popular because people can imagine themselves summoning demons, wouldn't it? And what about sci-fi? 

Well, That's A Turn-up For The Books..!

Bloody misogynist right-wingers, denying a feminist shibboleth like th...Oh hang on, 'Guardian' letters page? Really?

I write about the recent coverage of the Fordingbridge case (Court of appeal to review rape sentences of three teenage boys, 26 May). I experienced a remarkably similar crime over 20 years ago: same number and age of perpetrators, same incident, same court outcome.

Still, I’m worried by some of the discourse for the girls in question and others who have experienced similar. There have been comments in print and social media which, in attempting to emphasise the severity of the crime, have said things like “their lives are ruined” or “they’ll never heal”.

Yes, that’s been the case for some time, why, when the perpetrators are from an identity group, do you want this not to be the case? 

Now, on the one hand, the impact on my life can hardly be overstated. I’ve struggled to make healthy decisions for myself, had a number of harmful coping mechanisms, and spent many years either feeling numb or creating or fabricating problems in the present because, surely, the pain I’m feeling can’t still be a result of what happened. I’ve allowed people to treat me very poorly and struggled to see it, subconsciously modelling a template that had been set.However, to say that my life is ruined? Hardly. I have many wonderful friendships, a successful career in a field I’m passionate about and I’ve travelled the world.

The girls in the Fordingbridge case – and others in a similar situation – are going to need a lot of support, time and space to feel a lot of things (I would advise them to seek out places and people that provide these, and to give time and space to themselves too), but I hope they can know that there is hope for the lives ahead of them.

Its a measure, I suspect, of how cynical I’ve become, that I firmly believe that we’re the perpetrators of this crime white men of Christian Anglo Saxon heritage, not only would we not be seeing members of the lanyard classes writing in to the ‘Guardian’ about it in this fashion, they wouldn’t be published if they did!

Liars Love New Opportunities...

...and the grooming scandals have provided just that, haven't they?

She alleged in 2018 Mr Ramzan suggested she travel to Amsterdam, where he put her to work in a brothel and then sold her at auction for €25,000, although she was allowed to come home when the buyer could not make the payment. The court heard that when police made inquiries into Mr Ramzan's whereabouts at the time of the alleged trip, they discovered a 'more mundane' story.

Mr Sandiford said: 'They found his phone did not leave Barrow on those few days. 'They looked at his bank cards and in fact, instead of acting as an international human trafficker in Amsterdam, he was buying things in B&Q Barrow and filling his car with petrol in Asda.'

Amazingly, the police appear to have done actual investigative work in this case, rather than simply arresting the accused entirely on her say-so and retiring to the canteen for breakfast... 

Williams denies seven counts of doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of justice. Her trial, which opened on Tuesday, is expected to last up to 10 weeks.

Why? Why must we spend yet more money on this? 

10 whole weeks of taxpayer expense that could be avoided if the police just told these women to do one when they waltzed in the station?

Because No-One Other Than Ethnic Minorities Do This...

A majority of women of colour felt they needed to hide their identity at work in some way, with more than 60% modifying their language, hairstyle, clothes or diet in order to fit in.

Yes, it's another useless report by the usual suspects, the Fawcett Society (who - to the best of my knowledge - are doing their best to ignore the real issues facing women), and the Runnymede Trust.

More than half of Muslim and black African women said they had changed the clothes they wore at work, while a quarter of those with Indian heritage said they had changed their name.

Do they really think other women - and men - don't do the same? Are they unaware that very, very few people don't change the way they dress and speak and behave when at work? 

The research also found persistent obstacles to career progression, with more than half of women of colour reporting discrimination in the application or interview process and 42% saying they were passed over for promotion.

Was there any evidence that this wasn't simply their perception?  

The report calls on the government to force companies with more than 50 employees to publish ethnicity pay gap data, which it has resisted, leading to accusations that it lacks the “will or care” to create a fairer and more equal society.

How would this do that? Wouldn't it just provide more fuel for the grievance indus...oh, I see.

Hopefully, since we have a conservative government, these idiots will be put firmly back in their box? 

Responding to the findings, Caroline Nokes, the Conservative chair of the women and equalities committee, called for “positive action from the government”.

*sighs* 

Have The Progressives Given Up On Redemption, Then?

It is “shameful” that David Goodwillie was allowed to continue playing football after being found by a court to have committed rape, the woman he assaulted has said.

Cue 'the great and good' - in the shape of left-wing author Val McDermid and failed Prime Minister Gordon Brown - demanding the club drop him, which of course they cravenly did. He'd have been better off mistreating an animal in front of his child, clearly!

At a civil case at the court of session in Edinburgh in 2017, Goodwillie and his former Dundee United teammate, David Robertson, were judged to have raped Clair and ordered to pay her damages of £100,000.

Wait, a civil case? Where the balance of probability is lessened? Not a criminal case? 

No criminal charges have been brought against either of them.

Well, well, well... 

She told the Sunday Post newspaper: “It’s shameful they have allowed Goodwillie to continue playing all these years without taking any action. They are just as complicit as him and Robertson with their silence and looking the other way.”

She insisted: “It is not enough for the footballing authorities, the league, the SFA [Scottish Football Association] to stay silent on this. They talk so much about equality and respect but when faced with actual reality instead of waffle, their silence deafened me.

“There needs to be officials who do nothing but ensure players and clubs are properly made aware of their responsibilities. They should be developing educational programmes about sexual violence. Practical measures, not warm words about nothing, could promote real change.”

So do we not believe in redemption any more? Are some 'crimes' so heinous that someone should never work again? Even if they haven't actually been convicted of them?

"How Dare You Resist!"

Something rapists probably say. But it's not just confined to them, is it?

Channel 4 is facing the wrath of female stars and staff...

Oh, what now? 

...for giving the actor Noel Clarke airtime to plead his innocence over groping claims by 20 women.

Employees at the network fear a Channel 4 documentary with the former Doctor Who star will allow him to seek sympathy and question why the public turned against him after the allegations.

You mean he should just lie there and take it, ladies? 

Women working across the entertainment industry are also incensed, with one well-known female star describing the planned show as 'an insult to every woman treated so appallingly by this man'.

Aren't you missing the word 'allegedly' there? He hasn't, after all, been convicted of anything. And he may never be...

Clarke, 46, is also believed to have sought the advice of an expert in reputational damage in an effort to navigate a successful comeback to the entertainment world.

Aha, that's the real issue for these malicious bitches - the idea that once they've cast their runes, he might escape his fate after all.  

"Not Fair, The Police Are Treating Us Equally!"

Criminal justice solutions that were purported to address gendered violence have only made matters worse for many women.

Says who? Well, Aviah Day, who is apparently a lecturer in criminology at Birkbeck, University of London. So she must know her stuff? 

Oh, wait, she's also 'an activist fighting gendered and state violence'.

Sadiq Khan’s response to the Sabina Nessa case has been to revive proposals to make misogyny a hate crime, but we already have laws against harassment and assault, and they have done nothing to stem gendered violence. What’s more, the additional police powers and longer sentences that promised to tackle gendered violence have backfired spectacularly – women are being criminalised by the same measures that were introduced to protect them.

Ummm, how so?  

In recent decades responses to domestic violence have favoured carceral (prison) over community solutions resulting in a rise in women being locked up.

Ah! But...surely they will only be locked up if they've done something wrong? Very wrong, since the tag 'pussy pass' exists on the blog for good reason? 

My own research has found that the increased presence of police in women’s lives has made it more likely they will be arrested, through perpetrators manipulating the system...

Eh..? How are they doing that, then? Surely she couldn't mean that men are pointing out the times they were attacked, and expecting equal justice? No! Perish the thought... 

...or police targeting women for unrelated matters such as immigration enforcement.

Ah, you mean 'doing their job'..? 

A 2018 freedom of information request found that more than half of all police forces in England and Wales have a record of arresting domestic and sexual violence survivors who have insecure immigration status.

By 'insecure immigration status', does she really mean 'women who shouldn't be in the country at all', perchance? 

Women should be allowed the right to protest against this system – a right that the “kill the bill” movement is fighting to preserve in the face of the extraordinary police powers proposed in the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill – and should fight for a transition to education and community-based solutions.

Because they've worked so well with other crimes, and with mental illness? 

Only then can we end the cycle of violence.

You'll never end the cycle of violence. It's inherent in humanity. Better you spend your time educating women to check out their partner's criminal history before shacking up with him.  

I Don't Think Joan Smith Understands What 'The Basic Job Of The Criminal Justice System' Is...

Some may be the type of case that the police and prosecutors find most challenging, where the accuser and alleged perpetrator are known to each other, and may have consumed alcohol before the attack. I don’t doubt that the assurances now being offered are sincere, but the risk of creating unrealistic expectations is very high.

We live in a society where half the population faces an ever-present threat of sexual harassment and assault at school, at work and in our own homes. But the criminal justice system is so intent on protecting the interests of men and boys accused of rape, it no longer does its basic job of providing justice for victims.

The criminal justice system doesn't 'protect the interest of men and boys' at all; it protects the interests of defendants. Of whatever sex, colour or creed.

It says 'the Crown alleges, and it must prove'. The kind of justice system that Joan seems to want would be one where the mere word of accusation suffices as proof. 

In short, she wants a reversal of the kind of justice system that feminists rail against in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where a woman's testimony is worth less than a man's...

You Gambled, You Lost...

Bonny Turner, whose rape case was dropped by the CPS, said: “I feel shocked, devastated and angry that the court has sided with the CPS and refused to uphold EVAW’s claim that the CPS have failed victims of rape … there have been demands for more convictions and tougher sentences for male violence against females, but none of that is achievable until we look upstream in the criminal justice system and prosecute more cases.”

And if that's what happens, the ratio will drop further. The CPS proceed with cases they think they'll win, or it's in the public interest to prosecute.  

The case was crowdfunded with thousands of small donations, many from women whose rape cases did not make it to court. The claimants will now be expected to pay £75,000 in costs and a CPS spokesperson confirmed it would seek costs in order to fulfil its “responsibility to the taxpayer to recoup costs from legal action which we always argued was without merit”.

Good. I hope they don't manage to screw this one up, because it's about time these single-issue looks started paying the price for their antics. 

Well, Off You Go Ladies, And Die For Your Country!

Women’s groups have warned the government that a campaign to honour more than 1,700 war heroes with statues will further exacerbate...

Oh, god, let me guess... 

...the “astonishing” gender imbalance of the UK’s civic statues.

Yup! Thought so... 

The Common Sense Group of Conservative MPs has proposed that every recipient of the Victoria Cross and George Cross be immortalised with a statue in their place of birth. Just 11 of the 1,761 holders of these honours are women, according to the Fawcett Society.

Well, yes. Women haven't - historically - been to war. Give it a few more decades and there may be more. But the men will always likely outstrip them. 

InVisiblewomen, a virtual museum and national campaign for gender equality in UK civic statues, says that while all 1,761 are heroic people, to erect statues of so many men would be wholly retrograde.

So you can't have a well-deserved award because of your sex? Isn't that illegal discrimination? 

In a letter to Sir John Hayes, the chair of the Common Sense Group, and copied to Dowden and Jenrick, Terri Bell-Halliwell, the founder of inVisiblewomen, writes: “The best estimate of the number of UK statues of named non-royal men was 500 at last count in 2016, while named non-royal women numbered just 25. Given this astonishing existing imbalance, I was shocked by the proposal of the Common Sense Group concerning the erection of statues to all holders of both the Victoria and George Cross.”

She told the ministers that there are a number of active campaigns for statues of women, including the suffragettes Mary Jane Clarke, Amy Walmsley and Sylvia Pankhurst, the palaeontologist Mary Anning, the MP Barbara Castle, the author Virginia Woolf and the Matchgirls, the working-class women and girls who became pioneers in the unionist movement by campaigning for better conditions at their London matchmaking factory.

“If the public purse is really to be used for new statues surely it is these women who should have first call on such funding? Even if every one of them had a statue, we would still not have come close to gender equality in who we look up to on civic plinths, but at least it would be a step in the right direction,” she wrote.

I've got a better idea: let's send the SAS to burst into Terri's bedroom, kit her out, and drop her into Iraq. If she makes it back alive, she gets a medal and a statue! 

Aren't You Forgetting The Damage To The Innocent..?

The film-maker Vanessa Engle calls it “vagina snap”: female-centred fluff that meets diversity targets, but is not the sort of documentary commissioners boast about, and certainly is not about to enter for awards submissions.

But don't they have their own awards for this sort of stuff anyway? 

...she has just found out that her 2019 film The $50 Million Art Swindle has been nominated for a Grierson award, the highest accolade in documentary film-making. This will be her eighth nomination, and yet Engle, who is 57, has never won a Grierson, or a Bafta for that matter.

“I will let you be the judge of whether it is right to be up for it eight times and never win it,” Engle observes.

So if I enter the London Marathon eight times (and never finish) they have to give me the medal? Cool! 

Why is this person getting a puff piece in the progressive press? Well, she's made a documentary about the effect of the disastrous Carl Beech case, and the effect it had on the victims.

No. Not those victims... 

When BBC Two approached Engle to make the film, she debated whether to say yes, fearful that publicising Beech’s lies more widely would cause people to feel sceptical when future survivors come forward with allegations of abuse.

“I didn’t want to tell the story of a liar at the expense of genuine victims of child sexual abuse,” she explains.

But she decided to go for it, first, to show the damage Beech had done to legitimate victim-survivors who might now struggle to have their stories taken seriously.

I think I see why you've not won anything. Try tweaking your moral compass a bit... 

It's Over, Surrender, Give In...

Roald Dahl fans have slammed Sainsbury's for bowing to pressure and stripping Matilda mugs from their shelves after campaigners claimed it could 'encourage domestic violence'.

Good lord, what does it say? 

The 'offensive' £5.50 mugs carry the phrase, 'a brilliant idea hit her', an adaptation from a sentence in the children's classic, 'the germ of a brilliant idea hit her'.

Err... 

...Roald Dahl fans called on the supermarket to 'resist idiocy' and said no one was going to read the mug and think 'Oh it's fine (to hit you) honey, the mug said so'.

A spokesman for Sainsbury's apologised and said they are 'working with' the Roald Dahl team to remove the mug from sale and review the design.

Which idiots led this charge? Well, idiots like this one:

And this one: 

In other words, rabid feminists with smaller follower lists than the Twitter account for the Upper Bugford Horticultural Society...

Oh, and some fakecharity lobbyists, of course:

Women's Aid has also slammed the mug with Ruth Mason, its Head of Change That Lasts, stating: 'We were dismayed to see the Sainsbury’s design with the slogan.

'This slogan can be read two ways - and that is the problem.

'It can be read as the author Roald Dahl wrote in Matilda: ‘When at last the germ of a brilliant idea hit her'.

'However, it can also be read - as many have noticed and commented on social media - as a trivialisation of the violence that women experience in their own homes.'

Who'd read it like that? Only someone obsessed. 

'The design uses a different font and capital letters for the words ‘hit her’ which further emphasises the ambiguity.

'In addition, the quote is not in full and out of context.

'Perhaps it would be a ‘A brilliant idea’ to change the design and donate to domestic abuse charities instead.'

Ah. A shakedown. So thanks, Sainsbury, you've now made yourselves and everyone else a hostage to fortune by treating this lunatics as if they had a genuine grievance... 

Well, Do We Believe In Rehabilitation, Or Not?

A jihadi convicted of terrorist activity? Awww, give him a chance! And if that turns out to be wrong, don't you dare criticise the valuable concept of rehabilitation!

A boyfriend convicted of stalking after a messy break up? He's a monster! He should be exiled to the farthest reaches of the world and never allowed to complete his education!

Double standards - I know I keep saying it, but if it wasn't for those, the Left wouldn't have any at all, would they?

No! We Can't Handle The Truth! Pt248624

Police have been accused of hanging “victim-blaming“ baubles on a Christmas tree in a church.

Yeah. You all know where this is going, right? And why?

“Don’t drink to excess” and “being drunk makes you vulnerable” are printed messages serving as decorations for Suffolk Constabulary’s festive tree, according to images posted on social media.

Amy Roch, from Suffolk Rape Crisis centre, told The Independent the messages are "totally wrong" as they are "focussing attention in the wrong place".

God forbid women take responsibility...

Charles Jenkin, the vicar for the church holding the Christmas tree festival, said: "St Mary-le-Tower church welcomes the 'Suffolk Police Safety at Christmas' tree in our festival.

"It is full of sensible advice, although taken altogether it is a rather sad reflection of how careful people have to be these days to stay safe."

How long do you give it until he - and Suffolk Police - are forced into a climbdown, and have to remove the tree?

I Thought Labour Were Against Hunting..?

Yet here they are, attempting to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds...

Labour has said that it will preserve women-only spaces where such treatment “is justified”, amid an internal rift over its policy towards trans people.

The clarification from the party came after women’s rights activists accused the party of backsliding on its manifesto commitment to retaining “single-sex-based exemptions”. They said the exemptions were necessary to ensure that services such as refuges, prisons and changing rooms would not have to be open to people who self-identify as female, as well as those born female.

Confusion emerged after Labour’s equalities spokeswoman, Dawn Butler, attacked what she described as outdated legal measures designed to protect single-sex facilities. She said there was “no way [that] spaces will be permitted to discriminate against trans people”.

I guess she didn't get the memo. Or, like her fellow MP, is too thick to understand it.

Me, I'm ordering more popcorn!

It's Always Men's Fault...

Knife possession offences involving women in England have increased steeply since 2014 - rising by at least 10% every year, police figures show.

Yeah, it's gangs and enrichment, of course...

Youth workers say some women carry weapons for gangs as they are less likely to be stopped by police.

But wait! Surely, somehow...?

Jennifer Blake is a former gang leader from Peckham, in south London, who now works as a community support worker and independent gangs consultant.

"For some women it's a normal thing to have in your bag, like lipstick," she says. "We have got girls that stab, but it's just like the elephant in the room. No-one wants to talk about it because no one knows how to deal with it.

"Everywhere you go you have problems with girls and their identity, their self-worth and those are the vulnerable ones that boys end up picking up."

Yup! Thought so.

Headline Should Read: "Attention-Seeker Gets It, Doesn't Like It"...

...since the award, she said: “I have received a lot of explicit messages from men who seem to be under the impression that I hate all men.

“This couldn’t be further from the truth frankly”.

I tweet a lot about dangerous dogs. This might give you the impression I want dangerous dogs dealt with severely, but this couldn't be further* from the truth...

She said was inspired by her own experiences of “manspreading” and other women’s stories of sexism.

She said she was also inspired by the “The Everyday Sexism Project”, founded by Laura Bates, which collects women’s daily experiences of gender inequality.

Of course she was...

* is actually accurate

Time To Make Up Your Minds, Ladies...

Is it 'I'm the equal of any man, how dare you treat me differently!'..?

Or is it 'Waaah! You manhandled me, you brute!'..?

Police began looking into the incident on Thursday night after footage seemed to show Mark Field pushing the female Greenpeace activist against a pillar and grabbing her neck.

There were calls for Field to lose his position as a Foreign Office minister.

In the fevered atmosphere and times in which we live, any activist should be considered a potential threat, shouldn't they? And treated accordingly.

No matter that gender they are. 

The Liberal Democrat former cabinet minister, Sir Ed Davey, called on Field to resign from the government.

“No ifs, no buts about this. The sight of some penguin suited Tory minister behaving in a violent way towards a female Greenpeace activist absolutely stinks.”

You male chauvinist pig, Davey! Who needs your white-knighting? Am I right, ladies?

Or are you all just opportunist hypocrites?

And When You Still Don't Get The Viewers?

David Baddiel and Frank Skinner’s football song Three Lions has been rewritten as a feminist anthem to cheer on England’s women team in next month’s World Cup.

It'll take more than that to make it popular...

The theme of the reworked tune swaps low expectations about the England men’s team with sexist attitudes about women’s football in general.

The lines “That England’s going to throw it away, gonna blow it away” are replaced with “That we don’t have the skill in their eyes. Well we’re tired of the lies”.

And “All those ‘well done girls’” replaces “oh-so-nears” as the source of wearing down England supporters.

It's the supporters you need onside. Preaching at them isn't going to do it, even if it's set to a catchy beat.

It's Always 'White Men'. ALWAYS!!

A scoop for the New Yorker:

The magazine detailed the deceptions of Dan Mallory, who is the author, under the pseudonym AJ Finn, of the bestselling psychological thriller The Woman in the Window.

But his launch into authordom came after a career in publishing in London and New York, during which, the investigation found, Mallory had deceived colleagues, telling them a range of stories including that his mother had died of cancer (she is alive); his brother had killed himself (he is alive); and that he himself had suffered from brain cancer.

Mallory has admitted to some of this, saying that he used the excuse of brain cancer to cover up his shame at his real suffering from mental illness.

Man who invents fiction proves to have....well, invented a lot of fiction. And so?

His account would not explain instances where he inflated his professional experience to smooth his rapid advance up the ranks of publishing. When the immediate thrill of reading the New Yorker’s exposé had passed, many working in the industry reflected on what the story reveals about their profession.

And what's that?

While publishing as a whole is dominated by women, specifically white women, its most powerful positions are still mostly occupied by white men.

*blinks*

Yes. Clearly that's the thing to take from this.