This book, Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists is by the co-chair of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, Joan Smith.
It’s great. Do read it. Some reasons:
- she talks about woeful inadequacy around domestic abuse, and missed opportunities to convict for domestic abuse which allowed men to go on to commit terrorism or mass murders
- she has good material on coercive control
- she convincingly argues about domestic abuse being a common factor among terrorists
- she demonstrates how misogyny and abuse is not taken seriously and needs to be
- she cites the wonderful Karen Ingala Smith
- she knows the difference between sex and gender
- she mentions “‘brocialists’ who pay lip service to feminism”
I need to read her other books. She mentions ‘Misogynies’ where she talks about the Yorkshire Ripper and how police and journalists didn’t take it properly as seriously until they observed that “the killer had started to target ‘innocent girls’ instead of prostitutes.”