Ms Rubenhold Wants a Ripper Tour Mural

[erobitha]

Have you considered going back to your book Azarna?

The problem she has (as I see it) is that Jack the Ripper as a subject matter these days is not something the mainstream has the same intrigue for as once was. For all the correct reasons Azarna listed about the victims, that wouldn't have got as much traction as painting the victims as being mis-represented by history. Adding these human elements that claim misogyny labelled these women wrongly (which they were not), Ms Rubenhold was able to give them a new victim status, which in modern context of 'wokism', elevates them beyond from where they were before. Now they are purer somehow. To the point now anyone who says "Jack the Ripper" or expresses an interest in those crimes, are seen as "weirdos" and that the victims and their lives is all we are permitted to reasonably discuss, providing we don't call them prostitutes.

We cannot have a rational mainstream debate around the crimes as the subject has been poisoned through the lens of modern sensibilities. It was undoubtedly a brutal era for women, especially those with alcoholism issues and suffering poverty. They occasionally, and in some cases regularly, sold their bodies to raise money for drink. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands of women in Whitechapel living the same lives. To pretend that wasn't the case or that didn't happen is in effect re-writing history the way you want it to be presented. It's disingenuous. It's not real history.

That should be left to writers of fiction, like myself.

[Herlock Sholmes]

The problem she has (as I see it) is that Jack the Ripper as a subject matter these days is not something the mainstream has the same intrigue for as once was. For all the correct reasons Azarna listed about the victims, that wouldn't have got as much traction as painting the victims as being mis-represented by history. Adding these human elements that claim misogyny labelled these women wrongly (which they were not), Ms Rubenhold was able to give them a new victim status, which in modern context of 'wokism', elevates them beyond from where they were before. Now they are purer somehow. To the point now anyone who says "Jack the Ripper" or expresses an interest in those crimes, are seen as "weirdos" and that the victims and their lives is all we are permitted to reasonably discuss, providing we don't call them prostitutes.

We cannot have a rational mainstream debate around the crimes as the subject has been poisoned through the lens of modern sensibilities. It was undoubtedly a brutal era for women, especially those with alcoholism issues and suffering poverty. They occasionally, and in some cases regularly, sold their bodies to raise money for drink. There were likely hundreds, if not thousands of women in Whitechapel living the same lives. To pretend that wasn't the case or that didn't happen is in effect re-writing history the way you want it to be presented. It's disingenuous. It's not real history.

That should be left to writers of fiction, like myself.

Well put Ero. To put it an even simpler way - all stories become more ‘attractive’ and more saleable if they have a good ‘bad guy’ and HT created her own Hannibal Lecter - us. It became ‘good vs evil’ with the noble HR, armed with truth and justice, fighting off the dragon of ripperology.