I am extremely tempted to package this book up and mail it to her with the words "Scraping the barrel?", except that they won't stick in her mind as they did in mine and doubtless in the minds of other disability-knowledgeable people. This, as near as I can get it with an imperfect memory, is what she said: "Should I add more feminist crime novels? More female detectives? Gay and lesbian detectives? A black detective? A dog detective? A disabled detective - no, that would be really scraping the barrel." She told us that she was thinking about adding new books to the course, and asked for suggestions. Anyway, that took my breath away, but the following week was even worse. In all the other books we read for the course, it just meant murder. I constantly regret not standing up and pointing out to her that I am not weak for wanting a warning before I read stuff like that - I am, after all, someone who has been sexually assaulted - and that "crime" does not and should not automatically mean "rape and torture". One problem was that when I sent in an anonymous suggestion that she warn students of the level of sexual violence in one of the books, she responded that students shouldn't be such "fragile little flowers", and should have expected it on a course about crime. It was fascinating stuff, but I had major problems with the lecturer. Once upon a time, during my undergrad, I did a module on crime fiction.
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