‘I’ve seen the trollingnicola gets and it is disgusting, depressing. We’ve gone back to the Dark Ages.’
Val Mcdermid says women, such as former FM, still face misogyny
It is an abuse almost as old as time itself. Throughout history, women have been marginalised and misrepresented. Misogyny is present in the reading of Shakespeare to the surfing of the internet, with women in public positions particular targets.
According to Scotland’s crimewriting ace Val Mcdermid, not as much has changed as we might have hoped since the English Bard wielded the quill 400 years ago, erroneously writing the real-life 11th Century Scottish Queen Gruoch ingen Boite as the evil harridan Lady Macbeth.
Now in today’s Sunday Post, Kirkcaldy-born Val tells how she is “setting Shakespeare straight”, while at the same time opening up on her own experience of bigotry and sexism, and on how vile, misogynistic trolls targeted her close friend, Scotland’s former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Edinburgh-based Val, 68, a former tabloid journalist-turned writer and producer, best known for the hit TV series Wire In The Blood, Traces, and Karen Pirie, thanks her wife Jo Sharp and Ms Sturgeon in the book’s acknowledgements for helping her solve “an awkward plot point” over dinner and “a few glasses of red wine”.
Speaking ahead of the book’s May 2 launch and just as the second in the Karen Pirie TV series is about to be filmed, she revealed: “It was back in November and Nicola had come round for dinner as she does fairly regularly. I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do to get round this,’ and we started talking about it. In the course of that conversation the solution arrived. We talk about all sorts of things, and we talk a lot about books. Now that Nicola is writing her own memoir she is always on the lookout for good tips.”
Sturgeon stepped down from the role of first minister in March last year after 3,051 days – the longest serving FM – and a tumultuous period that saw the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent inquiry, and an ongoing investigation by Police Scotland into the SNP’S finances, which included her arrest and release without charge in June last year.
Val said: “People come up to Ni cola all the time to say she did an amazing job. I am often in England where people say, ‘You had the best leader out of the lot of us’. Despite the efforts of those who stand against her, her legacy remains pretty solid with the public.”
But she claims sturgeon has been the victim of misogyny. She said: “There are a lot of men who do not like the idea of a successful, powerful woman, in whatever walk of life.
“I have seen some of the tweets, some of the trolling she gets and frankly they are disgusting. They would not speak to their mothers, their daughters, their wives, or their girlfriends like that. It depresses me beyond belief. I really thought we had made progress in recent years but we are in some respects back in the Dark Ages.
“I like to think of my country as being a place where people are fair and supportive of each other and that it is a decent country to live in, but having seen some of that stuff, I have my doubts.
“I was a journalist for 16 years. In that time people were offensive about your appearance, your gender, your sexual choices. You have to ignore it, get on with your life and continue to behave in the best way you can, to be decent, generous and kind.
“I brought my son up to have respect for women and I see the way that he lives his life, and I am proud of that. It’s sad that people hide behind aliases online because they have this well of bitterness and vitriol inside themselves.
“If I ruled the world, the first thing I’d stop would be anonymity on the internet. I know some people say they can’ t speak out if they have to give their name publicly but that is a small price to pay to be free of the poison and viciousness out there.”
And human nature, she says, hasn’t changed very much over the centuries. She explained: “If you look at history, women are the ones accused of being responsible when things go wrong. The witch trials are an example. Women were blamed
for everything from shipwrecks to the milk going sour, and gruoch was no exception. “Shakespeare painted her as a psychopath who incited her husband to murder and then had a nervous breakdown and committed suicide. But the truth is a very long way from that. The historical record is a bit scant but given the things we do know about that time, it does seem that Gruoch and her Macbeth (real name Macbethad) were good, popular rulers.” The were not, she says, “the power-hungry bloody tyrants that Shakespeare wrote.” During turbulent times when Scotland comprised a series of largely warring kingdoms, she points to how the couple unified Alba and Moray “to make what we now think of as Scotland” and ruled side-by-side in relative peace for 17 years. “They even managed to go on a long pilgrimage to Rome leaving their kingdom in the hands of a regent and when they came back it was still there and intact,” she said. “If you look at the history of Scotland in the Middle Ages, it was an exceptional rule.”
The writer says Shakespeare had, in writing Macbeth, sought to “curry favour” with England’s new king, James I, who had been James VI of Scotland for 36 years before succeeding Elizabeth I in 1603. He introduced The Witchcraft Act of 1604 that declared anyone found practising “Witchcraft, Enchantment, Charm or Sorcery… shall suffer pains of death.” And many believe the Bard “stoked” the populace’s fear of witches. It’s said 90% of those who were burnt to death, drowned or slaughtered in other ways were women.
Publishers of the Darkland Tales series of which Queen Macbeth is part say Val’s reimagining is important for “busting the myth” of the Macbeths and “dragging the truth out of the shadows.”
Val – herself dubbed by fans “The Killer Queen” – said: “There is always another side of the tale. For too long the people who have been written out of the stories have been refused a voice. If you are writing about something like this, it is incumbent upon you to look at it from 360 degrees and not to assume that the things we’ve been told are the way it was.
“When you look at so much of the historical record, women are either completely written out of it, or cast in roles of villainesses. But there is so much more to women’s roles in history than that. For young women it is important that they see other images of themselves and other possibilities for themselves from the historical record.”
Queen Macbeth: A Darkland Tale, by Val Mcdermid published by Polygon. Val and The Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers will be at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in June and the Edinburgh Festival in August.