Val McDermid’s A Darker Domain is a nicely constructed, complex tartan noir about a 20-year-old cold case; a murdered woman and her missing baby, and a missing miner. Though the book isn’t character-driven on the surface, it’s the characters who stand out for me, in particular DI Karen Pirie and Bel Richmond. Neither Bel, the ...
When Kamaljit Kaur returned to her home in the Netherlands, she intended to wrap up her life there and start a new one in Canada. But on February 1, she was found dead in her living room in The Hague, allegedly murdered by her estranged husband’s best friend. Now her children are in immigration limbo ...
Canada’s annual Women’s Memorial March brought thousands of people to the streets of Vancouver on Tuesday. The marchers sang and beat drums to remember the more than 600 women who are either missing or murdered in Canada. Among the crowd was Bill Hiscox, a former employee of serial killer Robert Pickton. Hiscox had tried to ...
Four men in South Africa have been sentenced for the murder of a 19-year-old lesbian woman. She was stabbed and stoned to death in 2006. The court found that the girl was targeted due to her sexual orientation. Cases like this sadly are not uncommon in South Africa. The Human Rights Watch claimed that ...
Canada’s controversial honour killing trial has ended with a conviction of murder in the first degree for Montreal’s Shafia family. Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Shafia and their son Hamed were found guilty Sunday of murdering three sisters and the father’s first wife. They were sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 25 years. A recent ...
With the Shafia honour killings case ongoing in Canadian courts, it’s important to look at why women take part in abusing, or even killing, other women. Tooba Yahya, accused with her son, Hamed Shafia, and husband, Mohammad Shafia, of the murder of her three teenage daughters and husband’s ex-wife, is becoming a familiar face. Yahya ...
In Maryland, two doctors are now facing murder charges after allegedly providing late-term abortions to five patients. During the 16-month investigation, authorities found that Steven Brigham and Nicola Riley initiated abortions in a New Jersey clinic (owned by Brigham) by giving pregnant women preliminary injections, and they then finished the procedures in Maryland. Women should ...
A UN inquiry was announced today investigating the huge number of Aboriginal women that have gone missing in Canada. According to The Native Women’s Association of Canada more than 600 women have gone missing or been murdered since 1990 and this is a direct violation of the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms ...
The majority of women will experience violence in their lives, most before the age of 25. Violence against women is one of the world’s most pervasive problems, and yet it is rarely in the spotlight. Tomorrow it is. December 6th is Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. The date commemorates ...
David Kato was murdered in January this year in what was a controversial case. He was an active gay rights activist in Uganda, a country where homosexuality is illegal and where a bill is waiting to be decided on that will give the death penalty for being gay or for having HIV. Other activists claimed ...
The latest film in the American Pie series, American Reunion, contains a shocking scene – male full-frontal nudity including...
Dear Madame X, I have just started seeing this girl. She seems great, but she recently told me she...
Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved arrived in my hands via a public library, when I was a broke teenager with...
My attention was drawn this week to an article about the reaction at a Canadian university to proposals to...
Airport security. Bloody nuisance. Also a conspiracy designed to subjugate women. Allow me to elaborate. Despite flying quite a...
The Cannes film festival has kicked off this week with controversy over the lack of films made by women...
Dear Madame X, I seem to be only attracted to men who are macho assholes. I like them at...
When A Clockwork Orange was published in 1962, the term sexualized violence wasn’t in use. The distinction between sexualized...
