Why hasn’t true crime radicalized more women?

It’s no secret now that by and large women are the biggest producers and consumers of true crime as a genre. Some studies put the percentage as high as 80%.

I’m not immune. I become engrossed in these stories, I empathize, I listen, and file away the behaviors and red flags that I would need to observe to not end up as one of the victims. Sometimes it feels almost obsessive and morbid, the ways I pick up pieces of information to try to try and arm myself from the destroyed lives of other women.

The more I listen, I am picking up on patterns I never saw before. Little behaviors, attitudes, certain remarks that repeat in sometimes radically different stories that shed some light on these dangerous men.

But mostly, after everything, I feel a cold and steady rage. The most horrific of true crime stories, some of the most appalling abuses of human rights have women (and secondly children) as the victims. And you listen to these horrible stories, and then how justice systems and their communities fail them a second time - again, and again, and again, and again.

For me, the recent Gisele Pelicot case has given me a deep, unsettled anger. Her story and then the Telegram hidden chat one has began to radicalize me.

I’m wondering why so many women listen to true crime, but are not radicalized by it. Men can be radicalized by so little. Women, even when faced with literal generations of extreme abuse, torture, and murder - haven’t acted out in such a way. Why do you think this is?