Opportunity Knox

The murder of Meredith Kercher ticked all the right boxes: young British female victim, in a foreign country with a somewhat different legal system (which for some immediately translates into "inferior legal system"), and a young couple heading the list of suspects, one of whom just so happened to be an attractive woman.

Anybody who believes that feminism is now obsolete because women are basically men's equals now and in some cases have more rights (and there are plenty of blokes who complain about TV adverts portraying men as spineless gimps, etc) need only take a look at the media coverage of Amanda Knox to discover how wrong they are. Her then-boyfriend and a small-time drug dealer have also been found guilty of the murder, but they are both (a) male and (b) non-English speaking foreigners, and have been given comparatively few column inches. On the other hand, American hottie Amanda, aka Foxy Knoxy, has been fair game from the start.

An awful lot has been written and said about Knox as a depraved, evil temptress, and most of it has been delivered with undisguised relish. We can talk all we like about modern women having all the rights and freedoms they need - the fact remains that any woman suspected of a crime is treated a million times more harshly than if she'd not been born a member of the "fairer sex". See, society still holds women to the higher standards it did in the past. Men were the ones who should go out and work for a living, with all the stress and pressure that entails - who could blame them if they occasionally went off the rails? Women were supposed to be nice and fluffy, looking after our homes and raising our kids. How could such gentle creatures be capable of insane acts of violence? Any woman who does, or is suspected of doing so, is therefore far more evil than her male equivalent.

Knox even received a longer sentence than her ex-boyfriend. Maybe this genuinely reflects the facts of the case, but it does add more fuel to the huge fire of scurillous nonsense. An interesting article on the BBC site by an author writing a book on the case notes that Amanda's family hired the services of a big-name PR firm to combat the "super tanker of disinformation" printed and broacast about her. For example, her "Foxy Knoxy" nickname was earnt when she was eight by dint of her football skills, and not for the obvious reason.

And yet. Perhaps it's time for the Knox family to hush up a little. Yes, Amanda's treatment by the media has been awful, way out of proportion even to what a murder suspect deserves, but the family's determination to conduct their own counterattacking media campaign has only served to shove her even further into the limelight. I remember an episode of Tonight with Trevor MacDonald (or some other bastion of journalistic integrity) which consisted entirely of Knox's parents defending their daughter, who in their eyes is utterly innocent. But she has now been found guilty in a court of law.

I'm sure no parent wants to believe that their flesh and blood is anything but perfect. But I can think of any number of incidents in my past which I'm glad my parents don't know about, and I've led a fairly boring life. Very few of us are totally sweet and innocent, and for Mr and Mrs Knox to keep insisting that their daughter fits that description is hopelessly naive at the very least. She may not have committed murder, and hopefully her appeal will establish her guilt or innocence once and for all. But nobody is perfect, and nor should we expect one sex to be more so than the other.