TV lacks female perspectives

We are now in the 21st century and Ripper Street could have been made entirely differently, focusing on the lives of the prostitutes.

Showing them as human beings with childhoods, hopes and dreams (cruelly taken away), friendships and emotions and intelligence.

Imagine the tables turned with a series about men being depicted as purely sexual objects.

Aimless, empty-headed male prostitutes used and abused by countless women. Two-dimensional characters in a various state of undress being slapped about, tortured, raped and killed.

Policed by a force of arrogant women who are given unquestioned respect simply because they are women. A feeling that the male victims have brought it upon themselves.

If such a thing were ever made, there would be an outcry from men and an urgent examination of cultural attitudes.

In this Western culture misogyny in entertainment seems so widespread and entrenched that it seems impossible to change and challenge. This BBC drama series has just added to an already saturated state of affairs.

As someone who has changed from male to female I perhaps have a unique objective viewpoint of gender in society.

I can see the hypocrisy of the West that holds its hands up in horror at the rape incident in Delhi yet revels in the gory killing, torture and abuse of fictional female characters in Ripper Street.

It's time to have the courage for a sea change of the portrayal of women in contemporary culture and see things from a woman's perspective.

To have the guts to realise that women are human (the same as men) and half the population and that it is morally wrong to show violence against women unchallenged, unquestioned and unexamined.

Vanessa Smyth

North Shields