EP 300 Why Do Women Love True Crime?

EP 300 Why Do Women Love True Crime?

The statistics tell us that men more often than not are both the perpetrators and victims of violent assault and murder.  Yet if you look at the audience for the growing number of media outlets devoted to it, women are obsessed with it.  Movies, TV shows and networks, books and podcasts may have trouble filling the pipeline for stories about true crime as the actual number of homicides has been going down, while the fascination with the topic continues to skyrocket.  Author Rachel Monroe, who admits to having fallen into a crime funk from time to time, dissects the various ways and reasons that women seem to have ‘Savage Appetites’.  She studies four women, in particular, each relating to one of four archetypal crime figures: the all knowing detective, the wronged victim, the crusader defender and the dark, raging imaginings of a killer.  How does a woman’s vulnerability in our society explain this phenomenon?  How is this genre not just sensationalist entertainment, but a window into political and social realities worth taking seriously?  Now even this podcast enters the realm of true crime. 


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