Why are so many women interested in true crime?

[KnopkaPixie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5BQCFMQd3mPqj7YT4hlvdCL/true-crime-five-reasons-why-women-love-it

Here's an article from the BBC giving five reasons why true crime as a genre is so popular amongst women.

On the face of it, I wouldn't have thought of it as a particularly female interest and certainly not a genre dominated by women either as readers and listeners or authors and content creators.

I like a bit of true crime myself and it's the whodunnit element that draws me in but I could get that and probably played out with a better script from crime fiction.

So, have Woman's Hour explained it properly or have they missed something? Do you like true crime? Probably to do with my age but the first case that drew me in was the disappearance of Madeleine McCann but it certainly didn't do me much good anxiety wise.

I wonder what it says about us and our society that so many of us are so intrigued by this? Is it healthy? Is it fear porn?

Back to the original question, just why is it so much more popular amongst women than men?

I really like true crime. I used to read books on serial killers, I watch lots of documentaries. I look at crime scene photos and read up on evidence.

I'm very interested in human psychology and my interest mainly lies in what drives people to behave in the way they do.

I'm a big fan of true crime. I recently completed a Criminology degree with the Open University and I'm hoping to eventually be able to put it to good use.

I like finding out about what leads people to commit crimes, and then how they're solved. Putting little bits of information together to build a picture of what happened, when, where, why etc. That, and real life is often much stranger than fiction.

😂 Sounds like you've got an excellent reason.

I'm interested in fraud/scammer stories more than hideous rape & murder investigations. I do watch some of those, but generally prefer my gruesome entertainments to be fictional. Like most of you above, the hook for me is the behavioural psychology. I find the insides of people's minds endlessly fascinating, including those of stone-cold psychopaths and the victims they manipulate.

It's like observing an exaggerated version of everyday human life.

I am interested in true crime.
It’s just so alien to me. The enjoyment from hurting someone. It’s just fascinating because I can’t comprehend it at all.

Putting little bits of information together to build a picture of what happened

That is really fascinating, @MirrorMirror1247! I think great detectives must fairly thin on the ground: you'd need a particular kind of brain (not like mine) to take in thousands of details and be able to spot which ones might relate to some of the others in a useful way.

Interesting piece here on CrimeCon in the US.
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/crime-con-true-crime-report

CrimeCon coming to London shortly.

I also watch and listen to a lot of true crime, but nothing involving children after I watched the American Murder documentary and it has haunted me ever since.

I mainly listen to podcasts because I find them less upsetting than watching TV programmes but the main reasons I do so are that I think the stories need to be heard, empathising with victims and that I enjoy logic puzzles. I like hearing about the legal process, how the criminal was caught and piecing together what happened via the evidence. I'm definitely an armchair detective.

It is interesting that all of my favourite true crime podcasts are hosted by women.... I'd never actually made that connection before. I listen to True Crime Creepers a lot and my favourite long running investigative journalism podcast is In The Dark.... particularly the series on the case of Curtis Flowers (black man in Mississippi tried 6 times for the same murders) which I think is an extremely important story to hear.

I don't watch much of that stuff, but when I do, it gives me great pleasure to see the despicable bastard who did it finally get their comeuppance.

I hate it, for me it’s like voyeurism. It makes me feel a bit sick that people are entertained by other people’s devastating tragedies. I think it’s because my family had a horrific tragedy occur, and I genuinely despise the thought that other people would see a programme about our experience as entertainment.

There are different kinds of entertainment, though, aren't there, @WhereHasMyPlanetGone. Replies here are mostly about learning something. 'True crime' shows are very different from fictional dramas, they don't really linger over violence or glamorise the crimes.

I disliked some of the Jeffrey Dahmer retrospectives because they did exactly that. They made a big deal out of stressing that they were dramas 'based on' real events but got a lot of criticism.

I’m about to start my masters in forensic psychology…….
The “why” behind crime as opposed to the “what, who, where, when and how” although those things obviously do come into it to build up the whole picture of the “why”.
Women are disproportionately the victims of violent, sexually motivated murder, particularly serial murder. And the perpetrators of such crimes are almost always heterosexual, white, males. I’m intrigued by the psychology behind those behaviours and why they seem so prevalent among that particular group of people.

The post is about women being more likely to like true crime. And I'm saying that that can influence the career they go into. And that could be why the probation service is largely staffed by females. Certainly in my office, the trainees who are female absolutely gobble up details of offending. To the point it's distasteful. It's like it's entertainment for them and they have forgotten there is a/ many victims connected to the offence.