XX Factor: the blog

Why Women Love True Crime

There's a new study out that says women are bigger fans of true crime—defined by the Web site ScienceDaily as the "genre of nonfiction books is based on gruesome topics such as rape and murder"—than men are. According to research initially published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, "what makes these books appealing to women are relevant in terms of preventing or surviving a crime...By learning escape tips women learn survival strategies they can use if actually kidnapped or held captive."

Reading the research, it seems like the authors are making fairly unfounded assumptions about why women prefer true crime—it doesn't actually seem fear-based at all. In one experiment, participants of both genders were asked to choose between a true crime book that pondered psychological motivations for the killer and another that didn't. More women chose the book that included the psychological motivations. The study's authors write, "Such understanding might increase a woman’s chances of detecting the signs that a jealous ex-lover or stranger may turn violent."

Or maybe women just prefer knowing the psychology of a situation because they find it thrilling—not because they wish to apply it to their own lives. As someone who has read Helter Skelter more than once, I certainly enjoy the true-crime genre, but I don't find tales of violent death intriguing because I fear it happening to me. In the case of Helter Skelter, I was curious about how all those nice suburban high school girls ended up murdering in the name of Charlie Manson and how their stories fit into the cultural upheaval that was going on around them during the '60s. I'm not interested in the Manson women because I secretly fear that my perky girl friends are going to murder me eventually. Still other women may be interested in true crime for more titilating reasons: They're sort of turned on by it. When Daniel Bergner posted calls for women's sexual fantasies on his DoubleX Desire Lab blog, he received many responses from women who enjoyed rape fantasies. Either way, the notion that women who like true crime are only reading it to assuage their fears seems like a misguided intellectual leap.

Tags: helter skelter, murder, Rape, true crime

Jessica Grose is the managing editor of Double X and the co-author of Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home. Click here to follow her on Twitter.

Comments

Truth is stranger than fiction

By: another vermonter | Mon, 01/18/2010 - 18:19

Truth is more interesting than fiction. Also, true crime is almost always solved, and resolved. This is satisfying. Plus, no matter how weird or dysfunctional your own family is, most of us can feel the relief that our mom never tried to get us to kill our grandpa. Most of us resist killing our own children, too. Makes your own foibles easier to deal with.

@Ankhorite

By: Jessica Grose | Mon, 01/18/2010 - 11:01

We try to monitor the spam the best we can--we have interns and editors looking at it daily. In this particular instance, the post went up on a Friday right before a long holiday weekend, which is why the spam collected. I am in the comments section on what is ostensibly a day off for me. I think that shows that we are doing the best we can with limited staff resources.

XX EDITORS, WHERE ARE YOU?

By: Ankhorite | Mon, 01/18/2010 - 06:45

What would it take to get XX to allow readers to flag comments which are:

sexist, racist, religiously bigoted
death threats
totally off-topic
overly crude
and -- see below -- spam, spam, spam, spam?

Why bother with the comment section, when XX has clearly surrendered it to the trolls? Come on, you can afford a couple of interns to read and delete the flagged posts all day.

yay!

By: kate1981 | Sat, 01/16/2010 - 16:03

Great post Jessica!!!!

@Katie27again

By: rcwilliams83 | Fri, 01/15/2010 - 18:46

The problem isn't with speculating about why women like true crime. Speculation is a long-attested and valuable human passtime. The problem is that these authors are calling their speculations "science." Introspection isn't data. If they have data supporting their interpretation of why women like true crime, then they ought to produce it. Until then, it's perfectly reasonable to point out that there are variables the authors haven't excluded, like titillation, etc.

Relevance

By: Katie27again | Fri, 01/15/2010 - 18:16

I think it is safe to make the speculative "leap" that people are attracted to what they find relevant to their own lives. Random horrifying brutality is overwhelmingly a woman's issue. And any inventory of the most random and most brutal incidents leave no woman, in any situation, unthreatened (even if that threat is a fraction of miniscule). Married women, single, co-habitating with either a man or woman, mother, it doean't make a difference. It may not be scientifically proven, but I think it having something to do with fear is EQUALLY plausible as sexual arousal or psychological thrills. What's wrong with fear, anyway?