Something different: true crime podcasts

When I was a wee lass (just shy of turning nine), an older cousin started lending me all of her Agatha Christie novels, one by one.¹ I was already a reader, but this is what made me a fan of mystery. A couple of years later, when she moved away, she gifted me with the books, cementing my love affair with fictional sleuths.

It was perhaps two years after I started reading mystery, that I found my first true crime non-fiction book, An Autumn of Terror: The Crimes and Times of Jack the Ripper, at my father’s house.²

I’ve been interested in real crime, mostly cold cases (both solved and not) since, so when I ‘discovered’ the plethora of real crime podcasts available today, I started listening to a number of them.

Through trial and error, I’ve found a few that I really enjoy, and others that, frankly, annoy the bejesus out of me.

Content warning: I go into some detail about some gruesome stuff below the fold, including crimes against children.

A little dog: an emblem of male fragility

(Originally posted to the Community section at MyMedia)

Male artist makes a statue of a little dog raising its leg to pee, and places it so that its aiming at the feet of the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street.

He says it’s not an anti-feminist statement, but a protest because the Girl is ‘interfering’ with the work of another artist (the creator of the Wall Street Charging Bull).

Never mind that the Girl is there for a limited time (extended to February 2018), after which it’ll be shunted somewhere else, out of view.

Call me whatever you want, but I find it incredibly amusing that the little, innocent, peeing dog, was designed specifically to interfere (not interact) with the work of another artist (the creator of the Girl). Irony, dead.

Also endlessly amusing: the peeing dog creator didn’t get a permit, and removed his work after about three hours–presumably, just long enough for people to post images to social media, and to get feminists riled up–because he didn’t want someone (cops, maybe?) to ‘take it.’

Male fragility, what you gonna do?

Child brides

Originally posted to the Community forum at MyMedia

When I tell people that I’m a feminist, I am often told that I should stop worrying about catcalling and other harassment, because it’s “not so bad,” that I should worry more about things like FGM or child brides in other, frequently Muslim, countries. Because here, in the glorious USoA, women have it sooooo good already, we should stop with the whingeing and complaining.

However, being a whole person, I can care about multiple things, and, turns out, I am concerned about child brides.

Particularly child brides of the Christian variety in the USoA.

Right here, right now.

Girls as young as 10, some already having given birth from rape¹, are forced by their own families to marry their rapist. Usually, this man is much older–an adult himself, so it can be anywhere from 10 to 15 years older than his ‘bride.’

Traditional publishing, and the risks thereof

Originally posted to the Literature forum at MyMedia.

I’ve written here, more than once, about genre romance being the single most successful genre in publishing. Not too long ago, genre romance accounted for about 40% of income for traditional publishers.¹

Since the late 70s/early 80s, romance sales have floated other fiction at pretty much all the big houses. To this day, many of the big advance names in so-called literary fiction never earned those advances back–while romance writers of the same caliber routinely do.

Those literary books may earn all the important prizes, and get lots of review space in the big papers, while romance is generally dismissed as pabulum and ‘mommy porn.’

But everyone in publishing knows that the money comes from genre fiction, and that genre romance brings in the lion’s share of the revenue.

Understanding consent: a cup of tea

Originally posted almost two years ago to the Community section of MyMedia.

I thought I had posted something about it here as well at that time, but a search shows me that I hadn’t. Unfortunately, people (mostly men, but not just men), seem to continue to struggle to understand consent as a concept, so I’m remedying the oversight now.

~ * ~

A couple of months ago, someone sent me a link to a blog post that used an innocuous, simple analogy to explain consent.

Why even go there? Easy. As the author, one Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess, explains, it’s because it would seem people just don’t get it:

Women have it SO good.

(Originally posted to the Community section of MyMedia)

Another day in that Utopia where “women have it so good.”

A couple of months ago, Oklahoma State Representative Justin Humphrey kindly explained that women who become pregnant are merely hosts, stupidly deluded into thinking that it is their own body going through the pregnancy. Therefore, and whether that pregnancy is simply unplanned, not wanted, or the result of rape, those women ‘invited it in’ and should therefore be required to obtain the father’s permission in order to obtain an abortion.

IWD thread: an update

(Originally posted to the Community section of MyMedia)

For those who read this thread, I offer an apology.

It’s very difficult for me, given current events, to find motivation to continue talking about the need for everyone–including women–to see everyone else–particularly women, both cis and trans, and gender fluid/gender queer people–as equals.

The current administration has declared April to be “Sexual Assault Awareness Month.”

Irony has died.