Reading this quote about dystopian fiction gave me food for thought. It might also explain why true-crime and murder mystery thrillers are such popular genres specially with women
Studies of true crime have found that white women are the largest demographic that enjoys the true crime genre. The hypothesis is that because “women, in particular, have anxiety about potential threats,” they turn to true crime to feel better prepared if something violent were to happen to them. One piece of research that Phillips uses in Media Ethics confirms the theory through studies that examine women’s consumption of nonfiction violent media and why it is higher than men's.
Maybe dystopian fiction allows the entitled people to feel prepared for bad things should they come to pass, much like women supposedly use nonfiction violent media to understand what is possible and how to be prepared. As a mother, I have always paid close attention to real stories of girls and young women who got in harm's way. It adds to the repository of knowledge we use trying to keep our daughters safe. This is the supposedly the underlying driver for the popularity of the murder mystery genre with women.
..safety. To my mind, that’s the real pointer toward why women love murder mysteries. Safety is, for us, an all-important consideration. As women, we understand what it feels like to live with fear humming constantly in the background of our lives. Most of us grew up being consistently told—by the media, by our protective parents, by horror tales at summer camp, by the experiences of our older sisters—just how vulnerable we are. We’re not to wear short skirts. We’re not to walk alone at night. We’re not to smile at men in bars. We’ve been told effectively that just by virtue of being female we’re wearing a big sign proclaiming, “Victim here! Victim here!”
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