Authors
Shanna N Felix, Merideth Garcia
Publication date
2023/8/25
Book
The (Mis) Representation of Queer Lives in True Crime
Pages
141-159
Publisher
Routledge
Description
On March 13, 1964, between 3:15 am and 3:45 am, a 28-year-old bartender named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death outside of her apartment building in Queens, New York. In the years immediately following, Genovese's death was used as the defining example of the bystander effect, the psychological phenomenon in which bystanders do nothing while watching a dangerous situation unfold. However, by 2004, the narrative of Genovese's death had evolved to become a classic example of queer women's invisibility and erasure in the Stonewall era. In this chapter, we propose that Genovese's story is an example of a haunting: No matter who tells her story, the story is rarely about Genovese herself, but, rather, it is a ghostly reflection of much larger underlying societal issues. A haunting magnifies the fears of the reader or listener, whether it is a fear of victimization (while …
Scholar articles
SN Felix, M Garcia - The (Mis) Representation of Queer Lives in True Crime, 2023