In this episode, Dara considers violence against women and the recent clear-eyed responses to it by Hollywood regulars Anna Kendrick and Saoirse Ronan, as seen in Kendrick's impressive directorial debut 'Woman of the Hour', and as heard in Ronan's bulletproof interjection on the Graham Norton show. After reviewing Kendrick's chilling movie and contextualising Ronan's comments, he recalls a key moment of Rachel McAdams' character in the second season of True Detective which laid out with absolute clarity the power differential between men and women.

Dara anticipates self-defence instruction for his daughter in the future and talks about the significance of power and strength imbalances in karate when a male and female practitioner face each other, which was often the case between him and his last instructor. He looks at the male responsibility to think about how they are perceived by women in different contexts and how easy it is to make small changes in behaviour to minimise negative assumptions. Regarding how he thinks of himself as a male of the species, he revisits memories of boyhood and adolescence where he certainly was not seen as threatening!

A key corollary of women being preyed upon is how often they are not listened to, ignored, blamed for their own misfortune, deliberately misinterpreted or otherwise dismissed. It begs the question - when will sexual or violent assaults of women be treated with the seriousness they warrant? And how is it, almost 50 years after the harrowing ending of 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar', that a female treatment of violence against women is still somehow niche or novel? As Marina Hyde in The Guardian said, women are no longer in the mood for joking about this stuff.

Marina Hyde on Saoirse Ronan's comment: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/29/chatshow-saoirse-ronan-graham-norton-women

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