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Liz Porter kicked off this year’s debate, arguing that women did it better because we don’t get caught (that’s why the stats are so low for convicted females). She also went on to talk about some staggering tales of women
who DID kill and how well they did it and about about secret women’s business – women passing down sponge cake recipes and tips on how to kill your husband to their daughters.

Next up was Peter Corris, who literally spoke for about a minute! He took the crime fiction approach, saying that male authors invented the crime fiction genre; that the best villain was a male (Hannibal); and that he was created by a male.

Next it was my turn. You can read my full speech here, but in summary I referred to some research on how women do it better in terms of controlling our aggression (our frontal orbital lobe is much larger) and how a hitman manual that was published in the 80s talked about how women made great hired executioners (because of our naturally deceitful and game-playing natures – ha, ha). Then I pointed out that more female authors than male authors are on the NYT Bestseller top 20 before moving onto the greater variety women have as characters – heroines and villains. At this point Liz and I drew various weapons – from cleavage, handbag and knee-high boots.

John Silvester was up next – he’s such a funny speaker. He talked a lot about Melbourne’s underworld, but in terms of his debate argument he mostly emphasised that women are the fairer sex and too smart to get involved in the criminal world – hence they didn’t do it, rather than men doing it better.

While John Silvester was the best speaker of the night/debate, the audience clapometer gave it to the women – only just. Hooray for the women!