How to Write a Feminist “Dead Girl” Story
John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1952.
This past Sunday, the governor of Virginia quietly signed into law Senate Bill 565, which adds misdemeanor assault and battery as well as criminal trespass to the list of offenses for which, if convicted, the perpetrator must give a sample of their blood or saliva to be retained in a statewide DNA database until the end of time. In common parlance, this bill is known for Hannah Graham, the white University of Virginia sophomore whose body was recovered in a creek bed outside Charlottesville. The preceding nonstop thirty-six-day search was the most expensive Virginia search effort to date.
Hannah Graham’s parents were the chief advocates for SB 565. Her mother pleaded to the Justice Committee, “Please don’t let what happened to my beautiful daughter, Hannah, happen to another young woman in Virginia.” While SB 565 may indeed have prevented Graham’s death (her killer turned out to have a long history of violence against women and a prior conviction for criminal trespass), critics, worry about its potential to sow more injustice. , “It actually is a creeping assault on Virginians’ privacy and due-process rights that could lead to
