Baby Reindeer Got Me Fucked Up.
Let's talk about Stalking and MALE DISCOMFORT.
Take a trip down memory lane with me.
It’s April, 2024.
Yet again, corporations went too far with their April Fool’s pranks (STOP TRYING TO BE CUTE, WALGREEN’S, I’M JUST TRYNA BUY SOME ORGANIC TAMPONS.) So did some of your tacky ass coworkers. So did Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, probably.
Spring weather is giving us hope, ushering us through yet another winter, and US temps are 2.7°F above average, which stresses us out—cause, you know, climate change—but we are secretly happy about it, ‘cause fuck winter. Warm is nice.
Vaughan Gething is confirmed as Wales' new First Minister and the first Black leader of a national government in Europe. It’s about damn time.
I’m feeling sad. I’m feeling hopeful. I’m feeling happy. I’m feeling like there is no hope left in the world. Ya know, normal I’m Alive in 2024 Feelings™.
Dune: Part Two has been out for a month (and tbh I do not care, though I will care about Dune star Zandaya’s film Challengers that will be coming out later in April).
Curb Your Enthusiasm ends after 12 seasons. You had a good run, kid.
All of a sudden, I’m hearing Baby Reindeer this and Baby Reindeer that. I think, what’s this? A documentary about baby reindeer? Sounds fucking adorable. I’m in. I turn on the TV. I find Baby Reindeer. I see that it is, in fact, not a documentary about baby domesticated caribou (yep, that’s what reindeer are, in case you didn’t know). I click on ‘Series description’ to see what it’s actually about.
I say to myself, “Fuck, this show’s about a stalker? Dark. Oh, he’s not the stalker? Oh, she is? Oh, and everyone is talking about this? Oh. Interesting… ”
I read Reddit threads online (always a dicey idea—the incels on there have so much time on their hands and love hurling slurs). I see how everyone is shouting from the figurative rooftops how brave the creator/star of Baby Reindeer is, for speaking his truth.
My stomach starts to sink. I can’t name why I’m upset—yet. I can’t name why the existence of this show and its steadily gaining popularity and critical acclaim is annoying me and making me angry. I can’t explain why every time I hear someone waxing poetic about Baby Reindeer I low-key want to punch a hole in a wall.
I sat with those feelings for a while. And then I wrote this.
I have some serious questions for you, dear readers.
— — Why is the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people” typically reserved for men? — —
— Why is it so easy to believe men, and not women? —
— — — Why is it so easy to root for men and to tear women down? — — —
— Why are women so often the punchline? —
— — — Why do so many of us throw the punches? — — —
Before I dive in and talk shit, I want to make a few points clear up top:
I have survived sexual assault, and I have experienced cyber-stalking by an ex-intimate partner.
I have countless friends who have endured/survived sexual assault and stalking. [Disclaimer: The vast majority of these survivors that I know are women and/or gender non-conforming/non-binary/gender queer. Their assaulters and stalkers were men, every time. I know one friend of a friend who is a cis man who has been stalked.]
I believe people who say they were assaulted; I believe them immediately and every time. In tandem with this value, I believe victim-blaming is not okay—is never okay.
This essay does not mean that I think Richard Gadd (the creator of Baby Reindeer) is fabricating this ordeal. I understand he went through something scary and awful and I am so sorry he did. I am aware that everyone grieves differently, and we all process things differently and move through life differently.
Now. The aim of this essay is not actually to tear down Baby Reindeer, so if you came for that, sorry, guess I catfished you.
It is more so that I am flummoxed and flabbergasted at the White Cisgendered Maleness of it all. To go through this horrific thing and say, You know what? I’m not just going to tell my story, I’m going to fictionalize details and sell it to a major streaming platform, and then I’m going to star in the series. And people are going to eat it the fuck up. I’m going to win a god damn Emmy. I’m going to win several Emmy’s1.
I am jealous of that chutzpah and scared of that confidence. It’s dizzying.
The question isn’t even, ‘How does one act out their trauma, in a very literal, up-close way?’ or, ‘Why would someone choose this [very public Netflix series and fame]?’ And again, I want to make clear the question is not, ‘Did he go through this?’ If he says he did, he did.
Props to him for being so brave, but again, these are not the things I am dissecting; this is not why I am upset.
I feel angry and exhausted in the depths of my soul when I think of the countless female and non-binary SA survivors and stalking survivors who have to be brave every day while navigating micro aggressions, and how it often isn’t safe for us [women] to be this strong and honest—certainly not publicly. And it sure the fuck is not applauded and given a multi-million pound budget.
Actually, Netflix signed a new deal with Gadd for nearly a million pounds, co-chief executive Ted Sarandos has revealed. The executive praised Gadd as a “brilliant storyteller” while speaking at the Royal Television Society’s London Conference and said Gadd’s story was something that was “unique to the times that we live in”.
Yeah, um, it’s unique because approximately 78% of stalking victims are women, and about 87% of stalkers are men, and people of color are more likely to be assaulted than White people, but y’all executives don’t wanna talk about that, huh?
More on these statistics later.
I feel angry and exhausted when I think of all the stories that were pitched to studios, streaming platforms, agents, managers, publicists, and were told Maybe later, or given an emphatic “No chance in hell. This won’t sell.”
Women’s pain is not marketable. Or, rather, it is marketable in very specific ways—full on trauma-porn (especially regarding black women’s stories and pain), or superficial and watered-down trauma that is easily digestible to the Live Laugh Love crowd, and maybe even to the Mom’s for Liberty crowd.
It’s fucking bullshit that because our trauma is abundant and shared—not ‘unique’, as Sarandos stated—it isn’t exciting or worth funding. It is not worth it. We are not worth it.
It pains me to think about how if the same stalking-situation that happened to a woman was given a green light and actually turned into a series–by a woman, starring a woman (instead of Gadd)–the discourse surrounding the show would very likely sound more like this:
“She is making this shit up🤡”
“I’m sure she exaggerated.”
“A hot piece like her shiiitttt I’d probly try to stalk her too 👀”
“Bitch probably deserved it.”
“I don’t believe her for a second.”
“Ain’t no way her ugly ass gettin’ stalked! 🤣”
Am I wrong?
There is something about Gadd and Baby Reindeer that does perplex me. Apparently, Gadd’s intentions and aims for the series were to show ‘human gray area’ and nuance. He wanted to make sure the show had no hero or villain.
I’m fucking sorry? Nope. I promise you– in my abuse stories there was a fucking villain. And there was a hero coming out stronger on the other side. I know I don’t speak for everyone. But every friend I have who has been raped or stalked or assaulted or viciously harrassed in some way does not carry this notion around with them, the notion that the (usually male) person who did this to them is ‘just a human who deserves some grace’. If anything, they blame and hate themselves.
I find the societal idea that we should ‘forgive those who’ve hurt you’ to be hella favorable to fucked up people, and not at all reasonable. It is very akin to the propaganda-fueled thought that ‘family is all we got’ or ‘blood is thicker than water’ (which is not even the entire phrase). All these mindsets do is encourage people to be on their worst behavior, because the poor schmucks in their life will be conditioned and pressured to forgive them no matter what. FUCK THAT SHIT.
[Spoilers ahead:]
In Baby Reindeer, (completely unrelated to being stalked by Martha, a woman,) Gadd was raped repeatedly (by a man), and this turns out to be a huge revelation in later episodes in the season.
And yet somehow, the mainstream discourse around this show is not,
“Hey, can men stop raping people for fucks sake?” or,
”Did you know 92-99% of rapists are male?” (depending on your source), or “90% of sexual assault victims/survivors are female2,” or,
While 80% of reported rapes are against white women, people of color are more likely to be assaulted, and of the reported data, 17.7% of SA survivors are White and 18.8% are Black3, or even,
“20% of women in the United States have been raped” (yes I’m aware this show takes place in the UK; I can imagine the data is pretty similar on that side of the pond).
Somehow, the status quo is still Bitches Be Crazy, and Men Gonna Be Men, shrug.
The mainstream discourse is still Gosh, white men are interesting and smart, let’s keep believing them and giving them chances even if they fuck up big time—women? Nah. Fuck them.
There are pockets of the internet where the nuance–the statistics and double standards–are being earnestly and fervently discussed, and for that I am thankful.
But I need society, including and especially the studios and streaming platforms who greenlight or pass on shows, to Step the Fuck Up already.
Gadd, a man, gets to be a Multifaceted, Flawed Victim™ who also acts creepy and problematically in moments. He gets to be far from perfect. Really, he just gets to be human. Martha? The woman? The fat woman? The same grace is not afforded to her. (What she did is not okay. But that is not the point of this essay, friend.)
The discourse surrounding this series, including the on-screen characters, and the real-life people who stalk and are stalked, is unsettling and tiring, and yet unsurprising. All the tropes get played up. The Women Are Too Emotional trope. The Fat Women Are Desperate trope. The Boys Will Be Boys trope. Fuck that noise.
Fiona, the woman who [[allegedly]] stalked Gadd in real life, has received death threats and been stalked/cyber-stalked by people since the show became a household name. Pretty fucking ironic.
Something else to note about the series, as NPR writer Glen Weldon argues, “The series repeatedly and clumsily conflates the horror of abuse with the simple fact of queer sexuality. Purely for dramatic purposes, Baby Reindeer implies that Donny's [Gadd’s] sexuality conforms to the laws of cause (the abuse) and effect (queerness). Worse, it does so in a way that seems specifically designed to reassure those audiences who believe queerness is something that happens to people, something that can be triggered from the outside.”
I want to point out here, that generally, research shows that LGBTQ+ individuals are more likely than heterosexual and cisgender individuals to experience stalking.
To be clear–I have not watched Baby Reindeer, and I won’t–I have heard from trusted friends how horribly triggering and painful it was to watch and have read enough reviews and analyses online to know I would be insanely triggered and upset by the show’s contents. I have a line I do not cross when it comes to certain handlings of SA and I don’t think I’d be well in the head if I sat through all the episodes. In fact, I know I wouldn’t be.
Without further ado…
Let’s get into the discourse surrounding stalking, because I’d like to disrupt the fuck out of this zeitgeist.
For research, I compiled a list of 16 of the most well-known and successful movies and television series about stalkers and stalking, that I’ll refer to as Perps in Pop Culture.
I went through the synopses if I hadn’t personally watched the film (I’d seen several of them), and tallied up how many of the movies portrayed the Perp as a man versus a woman, and how many of the stalking victims in the movies/shows were women versus men.
Out of these 16 films and shows, 8 of the Perps of Pop Culture were men, and 8 were women. The gendered breakdown of the stalking-perpetrator was represented as exactly 50/50.
Now here is reality.
According to the Office for Victims of Crimes, about 87% of stalkers are male (and if you can do math, that means 13% of stalking perpetrators are female).
One more time for the seats in the back—movies and shows that we have been watching since the 1950’s portray a reality that stalking is perpetuated by just as many women as by men. This is fucking false.
Now let’s look at the victim breakdown in the Perps of Pop Culture data set. In these sixteen films and TV shows, there are 7 male victims, and 11 female victims, or rather, 39% of the pop-culture victims are male, and 61% are female. This is closer to reality than the previous statistic, if we’re being generous, but it is still not nearly accurate enough.
The reality is: 78% of stalking victims are female (according to the Office for Victims of Crime). (And yes, I am acutely aware this is not taking any non-binary person or genderqueer person, etc, into consideration. These are the statistics being considered and reported. It is violent and negligent in of itself.) 22% of victims of stalking are male.
More statistics? Per the CDC, 88% of women who have been stalked were stalked by a man. 55% of men who have been stalked were also stalked by a man. This means 45% of men who were stalked, were stalked by a woman, but to reiterate the aforementioned data, only 13% of stalking victims are male at all.
From 1994 to 2010, the era when Gadd’s rape and stalking was happening, approximately 4 in 5 victims of intimate partner violence were female. 1 in 5 were male.
The following statistics have no gender: The average duration of stalking lasts about 1.8 years. In one study (per the US DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics) 10% of victims were stalked for 5+ years. WHAT THE FUCK. That is about 5 years too long.
I think it is very telling that there is not more information about stalking that is readily and easily available on the entire goddamn internet, including key data points or more updated and culturally relevant stats. I know the reason. It is the same reason that women were only included in medical studies beginning in fucking 19934 my guy, and the same reason that crash test dummies were modeled after average-build men, and none were modeled after women (or children) until fucking 20225!!!!!!!!
It is because society does not love and care about women (or children!!) the way it cares about and loves and believes and supports and coddles grown men.
All I can do is call this shit out and ask people to do better.
Xoxo,
Jazz
Below is the full list of film and series referenced above, with notes & data. You will see I included who (as in what sex and race) directed each film or show. I think it paints quite a clear picture of society when you look at all the deets together.
Perps of Pop Culture —
All About Eve (1950; Female stalker; Female victim of stalking; White Male director)
Baby Reindeer (2024; Female stalker; Male victim of stalking; Two white female directors)
Black Swan (2010; Female stalker; Female victim of stalking; White Male director)
Cape Fear (1991, original release: 1962, loosely based on the 1957 novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald; Male stalker; Male victim of stalking; White Male Director)
— Huge side note about this fucking piece of shit movie. Spoilers ahead and big-time trigger warning. At the genesis and center of this film is rape of a woman girl, and yet the entire film is actually about a man stalking a man (who, to clarify, did not get raped). To elaborate, the literal rape survivors are made into collateral damage and the story is not centered on them at all. Instead, the films ‘real victim’ is a man. It immediately devolves into men viciously fighting each other, hogging all the attention in the movie, doing all the ‘heavy-lifting,’ and of course the ‘protecting.’
Additional very fun information about the movie: the sixteen year old rape victim—so, a child—was considered to be ‘promiscuous,’ which might have lightened her adult rapist’s sentence or acquitted him altogether, but those reports were hidden from the judge and jury, and for this he is aNgRy. THIS IS THE REASON that when he gets out of prison he goes on to stalk the lawyer who hid this information from the court. THIS IS THE BASIS OF THE FILM. He goes on to rape another woman in the film, who doesn’t report it because she, too, fears law enforcement won’t take her seriously because she flirted with Cady before he raped and beat her, and you know how us women are always asking for it with our flirting!!!!! FUCK THIS MOVIE. Seriously, the rape scene at the beginning of the movie was so triggering for me I had to stop watching. It was filmed with no care, no discretion—it is just straight up trauma/rape bait and is super exploitative and crass. It is worth noting that the first film adaptation is more faithful to the novel, with the 1991 adaptation being considerably more brutal and violent. The novel doesn’t contain such gratuitously violent and sexist themes.
This is what happens when men adapt and direct movies about already-sensitive and violent topics and the whole process is done through the lens of masculinity and whiteness. This is not the way stories are told or shown when queer, BIPOC, femme, survivors tell the story.
The Fan (1981; Male stalker; Female victim; White Male director)
— Spoilers ahead: I hate the film poster. It makes the main character look so ‘helpless,’ when in actuality she is a badass; She confronts her stalker and ends up killing him in self-defense. I also cannot with how the tagline is “a fan who went too far”—uh, if you want to call intense stalking and violence ‘too far,’ sure. Way to water it down, bro.
Fatal Attraction (1987; Female stalker; Male victim; Directed by a super creepy (white) man who also directed 9 ½ Weeks, a viciously uncomfortable film about a man who psychologically abuses and rapes a woman he’s dating yet the film is portrayed as smut (proof that the 50 Shades series is not only performative, problematic garbage but it’s also a rip-off, okurr))
Greta (2018; Female stalker; Female victim; White Male director)
Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992; Female stalker; Female victim; White Male director)
Hush (2016; Male stalker; Female victim; White Male director)
The Invisible Man (2020; Male stalker; Female victim; White Male director)
Misery (1990, adapted from the 1987 Stephen King novel; Female stalker; Male victim; White Male director)
One Hour Photo (2002, Male stalker; Male and Female victims; White male director)
Play Misty for Me (1971; Female stalker; Male victim; White Male director)
Sleeping with the Enemy (1991; Male stalker; Female victim; White Male director)
Unlawful Entry (1992; Male stalker; Male and Female victims; White Male director)
You (2018; Male stalker; Female victims; developed by a White man and a White woman)
— Side note about You: The series is portrayed almost exclusively from the POV of the stalker, which more than humanizes him; the series turns this piece of shit into a swoon-worthy object of desire.
Baby Reindeer also has a staggering 99% ‘freshness’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but you know what I found out while researching this essay? That Rotten Tomatoes’ reviewers are 71%-78% male depending on the genre of the film or series being reviewed (and they also have no gender category for anything other than ‘male’ or ‘female.’ Why am I not fucking surprised.
I apologize for the grossly binary language; a lot of the language regarding reported sexual assaults, especially on ‘official’ websites, is not inclusive of other genders
“Statisitics.” RAINN: Rape, Abuse and Invest National Network, n.d. Web. 2008.
in 1993, the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring the inclusion of women in clinical research
Swedish engineers create the prototype for the first crash test dummy modeled after the average woman's body https://www.npr.org/2022/11/01/1133375223/the-first-female-crash-test-dummy-has-only-now-arrived
Dope. I need more.