Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(4) Helen Gavin

 

Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(4) 

Helen Gavin

 

3. Society (4)

    As well as developmental theories, there are compelling social explanations for serial murder. The more sociological in nature suggest that high crime rates are a result of societal problems and that serial murder is no exception. This may not hold completely true for some of the more lurid of the serial killers’ behaviour, but a society that allows sex workers and runaways to remain unprotected may need to take some blame. In addition, inadequate socialisation may be a direct result of a societal breakdown at a micro level. Serial killers rarely come from a background of understanding and caring, but usually one of abuse and neglect, teaching the child that his (or her) world is one of pain and rejection. But so many abused children fail to become serial killers; if abuse and poor socialisation were an adequate explanation the world should be rampant with hate, and female serial killers. It is more likely that the experience of inadequate socialisation feeds into a complex interaction between psychological and biological predispositions and development. There is however, one societal position that begs to be considered in our examination of the female serial killer.

    Some of the most notorious female serial killers are seen as subservient to their male partner, which feeds into the questions of normative gender roles. Some of these women have killed within partnerships; whilst they are viewed as monsters because they are women who kill, they are also viewed as less likely to be blamed for initiation of killing.[i] Other female serial killers are described as either the comfort type, ones who provided services to those they killed, or as healthcare workers taking mercy killing a little too literally. In this case, it would seem that many women have potential access to victim types that fit these typologies of female killers. So, why are serial killers predominately male? Feminist positions suggest that violence against women is misuse of power by men socialised into thinking that control over women is a right. Serial killer victims are predominantly female and sexual murder is seen as an extreme example of the violence designed to override woman’s choice about sex, life or death, what Caputi calls a patriarchal act of sexual terrorism.[ii] The high levels of sexual sadism that is seen in male serial killers killing women is of the most revolting kind, but some suggest that this establishes in the male murderer a viable if skewed, sense of his own worth.[iii] As such, it illustrates the difficulty of determining where violent behaviour originates, the family, peer groups or media. Wherever it is an inherent part of the learning about social interaction, the lack of a wave of female serial killers could be due to differential male and female socialisation. If women/girls are taught to be compliant and deferential in the various levels of social learning processes, then it is not surprising that the majority of female serial killers are in subservient partnerships.

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[i] Helen Gavin, ‘‘Mummy wouldn't do that’ The Perception and Construction of the Female Sex Offender,’ Grotesque Femininities: Evil, Women and the Feminine, ed. Maria Barrett (Oxford: ID-net Press 2010). 7

[ii] Jane Caputi, ‘The Sexual Politics of Murder,’ Gender & Society 3 (1989): 437-456. 439   

[iii] Andrea Dworkin, ‘Pornography: The New Terrorism,’ New York University Review of Law  & Social Change 8 (1978): 215