No More Dead Women on my Bookshelf

I have taken to reading mysteries this summer. I chose this genre because I wanted intrigue, suspense, plot twists and nail biting.

Instead, I have ended up with dead women, sexual assault, misogyny. It seems to me that violence against women is used in lieu of plot or character development.

Violence against women is committed in the real world, to real people daily... and our society virtually ignores this issue. In fact, most “beatings” that women receive from abusers would only qualify as misdemeanor assault in a court of law. Many of you probably know the statistics, but let me refresh your memory:

1 in 4 women will be abused by a partner in her lifetime. (American Medical Association)

In 92% of all intimate partner DV incidents, the crimes are committed by men against women. (Violence Against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, January 1994).

30% of women killed in the U.S. die at the hands of a husband or boyfriend. (Uniform Crime Report of the FBI)

This is a reproductive justice issue because the ability to live and love free from fear is a central right. Additionally, in relationships where domestic violence is present women are not able to control their reproductive lives, and violence increases when a woman becomes pregnant. This problem is all too real, and in real life, detectives are not assigned to research domestic violence cases, domestic violence is not covered adequately or with enough sensitivity in the news, and victims are blamed.

Yet... we read about brutalized women for pleasure. My first mystery of the summer, _Through the Heart_ featured a woman who falls in love quickly with a man who has all of the warning signs of being an abuser: sweeps her off of her feet, controls what she wears and where she shops, "frees" her financially by paying all her debts, and he asks her to cut off her hair to prove that she loves him. This woman is murdered, and of course the boyfriend is a suspect. It turns out her mother, who has also been abusing her for the duration of  her life is the culprit. Many women who are in a relationship with an abuser were abused as children. What the plot ignores is if the main character had not been killed by her mother, there was a very strong likelihood that she would have been killed by her new abuser.

The next, a very popular book _Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_, features a who-done-it plot, a historical mystery, and corporate scandal. I will take the corporate scandal and the historical mystery but please leave the raped, mutilated, burned women behind. In addition, one of the main characters, Lisbeth Salander clearly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is brutally victimized in the story.

I don’t even remember the title of the third book, but the plot was so similar I just had to put it down. Each time I opened a new book I convinced myself that it would contain an original idea, but no. I should have just watched Law and Order SVU.  Some would interpret this analysis as me being an over-sensitive feminist who can’t “relax” but violence against women is not entertainment.

I refuse to be entertained by tales of intrigue about women being killed while there are real women living as prisoners in their own homes and our culture at large and societal institutions do little to address the issue. To redress this, the authors should give portions of  their proceeds to domestic violence and rape crisis agencies that are woefully under-funded. Oddly, this is the exact penance that Lisbeth requires of one of her abusers in _The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo_.