September 29, 2009

"Killer Groupies an unexplained mystery"

From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Killer Groupies an unexplained mystery
Stefan Tomik, Chronicle Staff Writer

Even in his death row cell, satanic serial killer and rapist Richard Ramirez, the "Night Stalker,"receives bags of mail. And of the dozens of people who try to contact him each year, officials say, about 90 percent are women.

It's not just Ramirez who gets the attention, nor is Scott Peterson alone in the way he attracted admiring women even after he was sentenced to die for killing his wife and unborn child.

Death row prisoners often join the horde of grooms married in group ceremonies such as the one planned Saturday at San Quentin State Prison.

It's a phenomenon that's little understood and seldom studied: Women who fall hopelessly in love - or at the least become wildly infatuated - with the most feared killers.

"Our high notoriety inmates get the most interest," said Lt. Sam Robinson, a San Quentin spokesman. "I have tried to figure this out, but I don't have an answer."

Ramirez was convicted in 1988 of 13 murders and 30 other felonies, among them rape and sodomy. He had terrified Southern California in the mid-1980s and was called "the Night Stalker" because he killed his victims in their beds.

After he was caught and arrested, he met freelance editor Doreen Lioy. In 1988, the year he was convicted, he proposed. They married in the San Quentin visitor waiting room in 1996.

Ramirez had a choice. Other women had proposed to him, and today there are a handful of women who regularly maintain contact.

Some of them write to him or visit him, including a 30-year-old woman from Washington. The woman, who did not want to be identified by The Chronicle, said most relatives don't know about her relationship with Ramirez, although her disapproving husband does.

She said she started writing to the Night Stalker - a habit that sometimes exceeded 20 letters a week and frequent visits - because she was fascinated with his case.

"He is good looking and I loved his big hands," she said of Ramirez. "The thrill of danger of going up to a state penitentiary made it all worth it because to me it was like a dream come true to face one of the world's most feared men.

"Like my mom used to say, you can love someone but you don't have to like them," she says.

And Ramirez, despite being her "best friend," deserves to die for his crimes, she said.


A reader writes:
I have a few oddball speculations to explain this, such as womens' drive for 'bad-boy' alpha male types, like, say, the Menendez twins, that are willing to break social norms & laws to get ahead. These guys could be seen as ruthless providers of security & money, if a confused woman were inclined to squint the wrong way.

Other draws might be a mixed-up maternal instinct trying to 'mother' them back to the fold, a test of the womens' sexual attraction (Am I hot enough to tame this murderer with my feminine wiles?), or simple lust for fame & noteriety.

Good old fashioned mental illness & female irrationality might explain some of this too, but, if so, then similar #'s of women would be throwing themselves at other norm breakers (homeless) or better providers (accountants) when they are not.

One person quoted in the article suggested that guys on Death Row have more time on their hands to write back than do other kinds of celebrities.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

105 comments:

Anonymous said...

Calling Roissy for an explanation................

josh said...

"testing 99" sitting down at PC.Grabs a diet Coke. Shuts off cellphone.No distractions. And now,begins typing...

Jim Bowery said...

The government is a gang. The incarcerated is an individual. The gang binds the individual. Unfair fight. Save the man's genes from extinction by the disgusting metazoan.

The Outsider said...

For some older cases of this phenomenon, check out the crime books of Colin Wilson.

Anonymous said...

Women love testosterone. Rapists tend to have more of it than non-rapists. Same with murderers. I don't see what the mystery here is. Why are people surprised?

I see they didn't mention OJ in that article. I've read media reports about his enormous success with women since his first trial.

rob said...

The killer groupies (which I thought meant groupies who kill, but hey) likely have the same explanation as battered women. Some chunk of women, for whatever reason, seek it out.

I wonder how much of the groupieism is just caused by fame: all half-way attractive famous guys will have groupies. The women may just be responding to negative noteriety the way men respond to fake tits.

The reason they aren't studied is really simple: it won't make women look good. Studying it would be easy: prisoners are a captive test group. Participation in a study could be a condition of communication on both ends. Even without compulsion, some groupies would participate.

The least negative explanation is sane reason some people like scary movies and roller coasters: danger at a safe remove. Quite a few people watch serial killer movies and teevee. Some take it a bit further and read true crime, some want 'directors commentary.'

Prisoners serving life w/o parole are much safer than someone who might get out, so thrill of danger predicts those prisoners will have more groupies.

I wonder if killing men vs. women gets more groupies. Seems like one does better killing women.

Anonymous said...

For this particular mode (crazy in a cage) I think it's partly that they get a thrill of a dangerous masculinity with zero genuine danger and no icky, thoughts-of-mortality-inducing life commitment (the death penalty enforces youthful transience, at least in theory) or interference in their other (likely theoretical) affairs.

I'd predict that the type of woman interested would be late nubile, have mediocre looks and some frustrated pretensions of intellectualism.

Groupies in general are probably mostly girls that were acting out pseudo-relationships with unattainable celebrities who are given a surprise chance to actualize their fantasy for an evening and take it. The girls that try to make it a lifestyle are probably rare and self-destructing.

outlaw josey wales said...

There is a whole forum out there, I forget the URL, dedicated to women who are in love with guys like this. Roissy had a post about it within the past month, I believe.

Short answer: because they're women.

Xenu said...

Human beings are a vile, disgusting race. It's stories like this that make me hope that the Singularity will happen soon. Human beings don't deserve to exist, and I gladly welcome their demise at the hands of super intelligent AIs.

Anonymous said...

"testing 99" sitting down at PC.Grabs a diet Coke. Shuts off cellphone.No distractions. And now,begins typing...

FYI, Whiskey/testing99 drinks Tab.

Anonymous said...

"Some of them write to him or visit him, including a 30-year-old woman from Washington. The woman, who did not want to be identified by The Chronicle, said most relatives don't know about her relationship with Ramirez, although her disapproving husband does.

She said she started writing to the Night Stalker - a habit that sometimes exceeded 20 letters a week and frequent visits - because she was fascinated with his case.

"He is good looking and I loved his big hands," she said of Ramirez. "The thrill of danger of going up to a state penitentiary made it all worth it because to me it was like a dream come true to face one of the world's most feared men."

Who wants to bet that "my wife fell in love with a serial killer" doesn't win hubby any points int he divorce?

Anonymous said...

Female Misogynist (http://malechauvinist.blogspot.com/) has her own explanation (or maybe it's a commonly accepted one, what do I know): women behave like this because of "their cave-woman reactions",
"they respond to imminent violence by creaming their panties. That way, the invading Cro-magnons will be appeased with sex and won't kill them. This is why women write love letters to serial killers on death row(...)"

Anonymous said...

What Roissy likes he calls 'alpha' and what he doesn't like he calls 'beta' so I doubt he'll have a useful explanation for this phenomenon. He might come up with something twee like serial killers always walk to the outside of their women and hold hands with palm facing back.

These guys are canned excitement, let them out of jail and their groupies will find ways to hide.

Anonymous said...

I need two ideas to process this in any way:

1. Perhaps women are different from men.

2. Perhaps women are no more honest in understanding and explaining themselves than men are.

I doubt that there are a significant number of men groupies of female death row inmates.

For most of my younger days I believed the conventional; women were like men, wanted respect and equality, were mostly rationally motivated, etc.

However, great swaths of literature were unitelligable to me.

Ayn Rand having her herione raped and afterwards lovingly, even heroically, attached to him. Her saying women seek a man to look up to (not an equal, a better).

"Hotel New Hanpshire" where I believe a teenage female character is raped by a football star/team and spends the rest of the novel trying to hook up with him again, writing him love letters.

One of those popular crime fictions, "Silence of the Lambs" or the earlier one by the same author. The narrator's wife is in an auto accident and has a broken leg. A passerby rapes her while she is in pain. She reports to the police who round up a lowlife suspect. She says "no he is not the man, give me his address so I can send the poor man $20." He, of course, is the rapist and she uses the contact information to start an affair with him.

In all these case there is a sense of masochism as well as an appreciation (let us say) for masculine agression which is outside my mormal paradigm for understanding human behavior.

It is one thing to desire an assertive man, but to lose your affections to someone who would rape a woman injured in an accident with a broken leg. It defies belief. As a man I could never respect such a person or even view them with more than loathing.

Of course this is all literature, by mostly make authors, who could be writing a world that they wish of. Still the very existance of those stories were perplexing to me in my prior worldview.

Anonymous said...

Female Misogynist

Wow - is that chick single?!?

Andrea Beavis Butthead said...

Could be part of our evolutionary heritage. In the animal kingdom, females go with the toughest, most ruthless, and murderous males. Just look at lions and gorillas. The top males fight, beat, and even kill other males, keep the females in line, and even kill the offsprings of dethroned rival males.
Also, there may be some thrill in the fact that these murderers killed women. Women are very competitive. They want to win the attention of the male, so a man that has killed OTHER women may turn on certain women crazy for jealous attention. Some women might be delusional enough to think, 'he killed all those bitches to be with me!!!' (Consider the fact that the mostly black female jury at the OJ Trial loved the fact that OJ killed that no good 'white bitch').
Btw, the very nature of groupie-dom is pretty grotesque considering that athletes and rock stars--who happen to be craziest, wildest, and most aggressive--are most attractive to groupies.

Or, maybe some women just have a deathwish or are fascinated with DANGER. Why do some people go into mountain climbing or long motorcycle jumps? The chances of them dying or being mangled is pretty high, but they do it anyway. And, there are plenty of men who devoted themselves to femme fatales out of some crazy allure. They know the woman is wicked and no good but they would rather die at her feet than just walk away.

And maybe there is an element of Christianity in all this. Western history is very big on the idea of saving the sinner. Missionaries have gone to headhunting tribes to win converts even if there was a good chance that the natives might have them for supper. In Crime and Punishment, Sonia devotes her life to the killer Raskolnikov. There were many leftist social worker-types in the 60s--like Fay Stender--who got close to dangerous convicts out of ideological commitment, do-goody intentions, and sexual fascination.

I think most women have enough conscious sense to know what is safe and what is foolish. But it's possible that ALL women on a subconscious level are attracted to the DANGEROUS TOUGH male. Perhaps some women are more in touch with their subconscious urges and do stupid stuff like chasing after serial killers.

Asher said...

Maybe the moral of the story is that if a guy wants to have the women all over him then he needs to kill someone. After all, it's why "disaffected youths" join gangs, not because of the money which is usually less than minimum wage. This reminds me of Sodini, since it would seem that if he hadn't turned the gun on himself he'd be in prison getting proposals right about now.

Svigor said...

Fame. Draws 'em like flies to shit. Some aren't particular as to which circles the high status applies.

Truth said...

Do ALL of you guys idolize Roissy?

Anonymous said...

Steve,

I've been a regular reader of yours for years and have posted, always anonymously, for that same time, especially now.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I may be your only reader who can honestly say that her mother did fall in love and have an affair with a murderer while he was in prison.

It's an extremely interesting story, of course, but I'll try to keep it brief as I don't have much time. I want to touch on who she was and which men did, and did not, find her attractive.

Much of the folk wisdom about alpha/beta and dad/cad has some truth, but there is a lot that is missed. From experience, I can confidently tell you that the "missed" parts will not be welcomed.

My mother was very beautiful, though well past her prime and in her '40s; she had been captain of the cheerleader's squad in h.s. She was surprisingly intelligent with an I.Q. in the 140s. She was also very liberal socially: she was pro-choice; pre-marital sex was fine; and divorce was fine; even if it was only because the woman had put on some weight. She believed that when one wasn't happy one needed to take whatever measures necessary and an intact family just wasn't something that should be so enshrined as holy. Families are nice, but not that nice. She had always been faithful to her three husbands and cooked them two meals a day (they were at work during lunch) and very good ones at that. She was never in love with them though, despite her affirmations that she was; I picked up on this at an early age.

Who did she attract? In short, men like her. With the exception of my father, her first husband, they were all socially liberal men with the same views. The difference between her and them, until she met the prisoner, was that while they were selfish, they didn't quite match her. She always did the leaving. My father stood out with his conservatism and high intelligence, but was not a brave man; he wouldn't stand up for or defend anything or anyone.

So up to this point, most of your readers will be nodding their heads in recognition of this pattern.

What they miss is that she was far more liberal than the average woman. She was, as the cliche goes, turned on by the excitement of this aggressive prisoner. For a person to willfully overlook all the warning signs is by definition someone who doesn't live in reality, a liberal.


I will be brutally honest. Some of the bloggers who write about game and all remind me so much of her admirers that I got to observe close up as a teen-ager: they love the bad and loose woman and want her to be "bad" with them and then miraculously become faithful Suzie homemaker. As such, they are liberals. The good girls are "boring" and "repressed".
Other bloggers are much wiser and realize that that such a woman doesn't transform, but they completely inverse the situation when it comes to themselves and can't understand why they can't find a good woman; I believe they put it thus, "There are no good women". That's for another time :)

BTW, which men did not come around: well-to-do conservative men who fought for whatever they believed and whomever they believed in.

I believe this happened with my mother: she had a tragic childhood, with a dash of MacKenzie Phillips type stuff, and slutted it up as did many other baby-boomers. She met my father and cleaned up her act and hoped to fall in love with him. He was a timid type and if she said she regretted her past, hey, who was he to judge? He wanted so desperately to believe she would be a good wife and mother, all evidence to the contrary. I believe she never realized and accepted how unattractive she made herself by her promiscuous ways and social liberalism and was so delusional that she felt she could do better than this weak, but loyal man. She left and did worse. She left again and did even worse. She fell for Mr. Murderer who, finally, was the person who outdid her in being a psychopath (not hateful, but careless with others emotions). Today, she is alone, in her fifties, and has been for years.

Anonymous said...

Isn't this phenomenon, and the stories based on it, what Steve often accuses the MSM of engaging in - highlighting "Man bites dog" stories. Statistically speaking, I'm sure the number of women attracted to serial killers is MUCH less common than these other categories of "deviancy" -
1. Adults over the age of 50 who have never had sexual intercourse.
2. People who have engaged in intercourse with species other than homosapiens.
The fact that 100 women, in a state with millions of women, engage death row inmates in extended correspondence doesnt tell us anymore about women than a lone white racist commiting a hate crime tells us about racism in our society.

Svigor said...

Female Misogynist (http://malechauvinist.blogspot.com/) has her own explanation (or maybe it's a commonly accepted one, what do I know): women behave like this because of "their cave-woman reactions",
"they respond to imminent violence by creaming their panties. That way, the invading Cro-magnons will be appeased with sex and won't kill them. This is why women write love letters to serial killers on death row(...)"


Read about a recent study where women get wet when watching pretty much any sex act: men + women, men + men, women + women, animal + animal. Men got hard pretty much just watching their chosen flavor.

This is different from admitting being turned on, which got very different replies from women.

Sounds like the chauvinist found the logical extension here, but that might be too radioactive to even study.

But I don't buy the explanation vis-a-vis groupies. Fame (AKA status, even the creepy maladjusted kind) is the key.

Mitch said...

I wonder how much of the groupieism is just caused by fame:

All of it, I've always thought.

Men achieve status by their achievements. Women achieve status by their relationships ("I married a doctor!").

So groupies have decided that being chosen, however temporarily, by a rockstar or famous killer is the highest status relationship they can get.

Anonymous said...

Two other comments from daughter of murder lover:
1. I lived with her and observed this on a daily basis for over two years.

2. It is not analogous to wonder about female death row inmates. Basically, there are characteristics we admire in the opposite sex, but for uber-liberal/delusional types, they turn the notch up to 11.
This means that being a ruthless killer is mistaken for "bravery".
I truly believe that men are much worse judges of character, but their mistakes aren't quite so deadly and remarkable. The hot woman may take every penny, but she rarely kills you!

Svigor said...

Btw, the very nature of groupie-dom is pretty grotesque considering that athletes and rock stars--who happen to be craziest, wildest, and most aggressive--are most attractive to groupies.

No, violent convicts are craziest, wildest, and most aggressive. But they're waaaaaaay down the list compared with rock stars and athletes. Now, what does one group have that the other doesn't?

Fame/status. Duh.

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

Obviously there is a correlation between the number of dead bodies in your backyard and the size of your penis. Now where's my lye and shovel?

Rain And said...

Being a famous killer has all the social cachet of a D list celebrity.

If large numbers of people know your name and something you did, regardless of why, you have above average male mate value.

I have no reason to care about Susie Q. Anonymous on the street, but if she tells me she's banged Gary Coleman, Mini-me, Screech, or Ted Bundy, all of a sudden she's "important" too. Her pathetic, insignificant role in the universe has somehow been expanded a little by latching on to a larger celestial body.

Anonymous said...

If the audience for HBD blogs wasn't almost exclusively nerdy omega guys and instead included a lot of young women, Steve would be cleaning up as the "Godfather of HBD Bloggers" atop the HBD blog status hierarchy.

Steve Hsu said...

Size doesn't matter.

Anonymous said...

"If the audience for HBD blogs wasn't almost exclusively nerdy omega guys and instead included a lot of young women, Steve would be cleaning up as the "Godfather of HBD Bloggers" atop the HBD blog status hierarchy."

Some of these blogs all but hang a sign outside that says, "Girlz not allowed!"

When I visited GNXP yesterday, there was yet another post on porn with the comments mentioning things like "wet hairy v**" Romantic!

Even Jason Malloy, one of the brightest stars, at Evo and Proud today linked to Erik Holland! Yuk! Pure prole! I asked Holland a couple years ago why he wasn't using classic high art to make his points about women since a man is totally free to depict what his dream woman would look like and would make his points even better about what men like. "They're not real" he replied as if that's an answer.

mnl said...

Some of them write to him or visit him, including a 30-year-old woman from Washington. The woman, who did not want to be identified by The Chronicle, said most relatives don't know about her relationship with Ramirez, although her disapproving husband does.

I practically fell out of my chair laughing at this one. Moreover, the next paragraph says that this same woman writes Ramirez up to 20 letters/week!

And therein is a clue to the attraction. Her husband is merely "disapproving" of the behavior. Not to let her entirely off the hook, but her husband has likely lost his sack, is not a leader in the relationship, is no longer a challenge or thrill to the woman.

Anonymous said...

She was, as the cliche goes, turned on by the excitement of this aggressive prisoner. For a person to willfully overlook all the warning signs is by definition someone who doesn't live in reality, a liberal.

Will Komment Kontrol allow me to say that, in reading this passage, I immediately thought of an old iSteve thread about Stanley Ann Dunham?

Or would that observation be out-of-bounds?

Whiskey said...

Anon -- "A lot of young women" would mean Steve would fight for the same audience that Dlisted does ... and lose.

Roissy, Theodore Dalrymple, and myself have all observed the same phenomena. It's not just women with serial killers (known to be killers), it's the woman that Steve noted (with the tramp stamp) who did all to advertise to the tattooed bicycle messenger. Women ARE flexible, but with security easily satisfied, women can AFFORD danger, excitement, and the thrill of brutality.

Black Bloggers (the Rawness comes to mind), Dalyrmple, Roissy, and many others have noted that this behavior (women seeking violent and dangerous men) is a continuum, and one that is the result of easy/safe/cheap contraception, anonymous urban living, and rising female incomes.

Women do not need, nor do they WANT a provider. As Dalrymple says, his educated and professional nurses all to a woman sought dangerous and abusive men (including those who abused them at work) and found decent, kind men "boring." This only stopped (seeking violent and dangerous men) after menopause.

Women consistently overestimate their ability to control violent men, and often willingly go with violent men to their deaths: the girl in Aruba, the Petersons (Scott and Drew) wives, Scott Peterson's girlfriend Amber Frye who was of course not killed, but was with him BECAUSE he was dangerous.

The ugly truth about women is if they feel high levels of security the baser appetites they have (as base as men's, but different) and satisfy.

Look at all the women defending Roman Polanski. Including btw Anjelica Huston, who blamed the 13 year old. Polanski while not handsome, is powerful, famous, wealthy, and approved of by the "right" people -- so many women defend him.

It's no different from vampire fantasies, or soap operas, or anything appealing to women. [Whoopi Goldberg on the View opined Polanski was not guilty of rape to applause from the audience and her co-hosts.] Women CRAVE violence if they feel safe and secure. It's as old as Lady McBeth.

There is no mystery to this. Not every or even most women would be groupies of killers, but that tendency is there to be expressed somehow according to IQ, Future Time orientation, and socio-economic status. In other words, time to ditch the pedestal.

And I drink coffee.

Anonymous said...

I don't know what I detest more life in general or women? I could have done without being put on this planet, as I think Mark Twain said, without anyone consulting me beforehand.

Truth said...

"(Consider the fact that the mostly black female jury at the OJ Trial loved the fact that OJ killed that no good 'white bitch')."

Apparently the three whites on the jury were happy to see the "no good 'white bitch'" get it too: Or did the prosecution just not make a good case?

Melykin said...

Only a very tiny percentage of woman are interested in killers, and those woman are deeply disturbed.

The vast majority of woman prefer non-violent men and want nothing to do with any sort of violence.

Frankly, their seems to be an unhealthy amount of interest here in the very troubled women who are attracted to killers.

Anonymous said...

OK you basement dwellers don't understand groupies.

It took me a long time to understand I was one, because it wasn't about the *bands*. It was about the *parties.* Groupies are in it for the social life, which involves quite a lot of dressing up and showing off for other women. And I don't know anything about athletes, but musicians aren't thugs. A lot of them are pretty asexual. But they create a fun party atmosphere. That's why the pretty girls come. This phenomenon is not related to stalkers or to women in love with murderers at all.

lakupadestilipgudastroed said...

Calling Testy. But seriously, in my own life I've experienced this first hand. Wimmenz go for the bad guys even if you have more to offer. Being decent, i.e. doing what ma told you to do is the best way to bore women.

dingdong said...

Andrea Beavis Butthead sed:

"Why do some people go into mountain climbing"

This is where your theory breaks down. I am mostly a passive and quiet guy, i.e. a beta in the sense of Testing99. Yet I was a very good rock climber and did some crazy solo climbs. However none of that much attracted wimmenz. They went for the guys with fast cars, lots of money and a foul lifestyle. I reckon that money is the most important factor when women make choices. Second comes that aggressive rebel attitude. That explains why rock-stars and athletes are so popular, with criminals a third. All of these are rebels with money, cept that criminals have lower social standing.

klausen said...

It was about the *parties.* Groupies are in it for the social life, which involves quite a lot of dressing up and showing off for other women. And I don't know anything about athletes, but musicians aren't thugs. A lot of them are pretty asexual. But they create a fun party atmosphere. That's why the pretty girls come.

Right. Except by "*parties*" here you mean orgies.

headache said...

Truth sez:
Do ALL of you guys idolize Roissy?

I cannot access him from my work computer coz he get's filtered under "Sexual/Explicit". So I read Steve whilst waiting for routines to finish.

Jack said...

"Frankly, their seems to be an unhealthy amount of interest here in the very troubled women who are attracted to killers."

Somehow, these killers attract much more female attention than let's say, average-looking, nerdy accountants or computer programmers or engineers. Or even medical or law students. So yes, it is important to discuss it even more, to shine light on the dark and destructive nature of women.

neus said...

To Anon with the beautiful liberal 140 IQ ma who loved a murderer:

Thanks for sharing, I was riveted. I am a single beta male who does not believe the crap that T99 raves about (Roissy and all that). As far as I am concerned betas are natural losers, regardless of their accomplishments, much like the "faithful Suzie homemaker" is a loser to the beautiful slut. It’s the way the system is gamed.

Anonymous said...

Rob - The killer groupies (which I thought meant groupies who kill, but hey)

Heh! Thats exactly what I thought too.

So there was that guy who shot Reagan and the mad bloke who shot John Lennon (neither of them groupies really) and er...thats it. Couldnt think of any more remotely applicable examples, then I actually read the post...

eh said...

Ramirez is on MySpace.

Apparently.

Anonymous said...

I very much doubt that female serial killers get men writing/visiting the same way.

Also females in bands just dont have groupies the way men do. Ive read interviews with girls in bands and there is often the jokey question about groupies, the answer is always no, there arent any bar a few shy boys leaving cards/flowers/presents. Any attractive woman will get male attention anyway, being famous or at least well known probably just puts some men off.

Women writing to serial killers in prison, has that ever been addressed in a movie, other than 'the fight to clear his name' cliche? Im sure men would also fantasize about writing to a serial rapist/killer in prison with a view to finally meeting them - and then killing them.

eh said...

But they create a fun party atmosphere. That's why the pretty girls come.

Girls just wanna have fun

All she wants to do is dance

Heed the oracle of popular music.

l said...

Sondra London is the Pamela Des Barres of serial killers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondra_London

Errol Morris did an episode on her for his 'First Person' TV series -- 'The Killer Inside Me'. Best 1/2 hour on TV evar.

speaking of which... said...

Jane Goodall noted that most chimpanzees tended to mate within their group sometime during their teens (they have a chronological life cycle similar to humans.) There were always, however, a certain minority of females -- always very young,usually inexperienced -- who were drawn to mating in other chimp groups, especially groups who had been hostile towards her own. I may be forgetting a few details as to how these groups were categorized but the final result was often very bad for the wandering female, who not infrequently ended up dead, attacked by both males and females in the alien group.
I can't help but be reminded of the behavior of some young females who are drawn to other races sexually during their teens, more often than not to those members of the other race who are least like those of her own. In such cases it usually ends badly for her.

general torpor said...

I think some of the commenters here would like to write letters to the women who are writing letters to the killers. Obviously they are experiencing some sort of third hand thrill and angst. While I won't suggest they get out more, I do think they need to accentuate the positive.
This is an HBD -- blog. People are diverse, not that there's anything wrong with that. There is a positive use for male energies, and there are negative. Ditto for the women. We used to call the urge to develop in a positive direction spiritual direction.

HBD blogs are about genetics and this is a subject that should include both genders in its very nature. GNXP sometimes has been improving in a higher direction the past 3 years at least. However, that comment on gnxp about the "hot, wet v" porn picture perhaps repelling a dainty 10 year old boy, btw, was from a female. Chicks have to be as careful about hanging out too much with the guys as guys have to be about handing out too much with the gals. You need a balanced, pov, like what did Roman Polanski's victim think of his - oh, well, you know. btw, Polanski once bragged he "had" them as young as eleven. Read that in a biography. That's why he was surprised they were making such a deal out of the 13 year old. Women aren't defending the crime. They're defending the old guy they think of as a "friend" much as locals might defend the meek 90 yr old neighbor who turns out to be a Nazi. Then too, they're show business. Wasn't there a whole movie about one, long, dirty joke that is show business?

Back to serial killer lovers.
This story makes them sick of women!? A tiny minority of deluded, unthinking, deranged females write letters to canned killers, who are now firmly under the control of the (mostly) male jailers, and this somehow makes women in general despicable? Ok then. Give those man-hating feminists a break when they point to Ramirez and say "behold-male Man."
One of the defining factors of the 20th century is the extent to which the exceptional was made to seem -- operative word seem -- the norm, or the norm to which we should all achieve.

Anonymous said...

I come from a Christian Arab family. The idea of my mother being attracted to a serial killer or even petty criminal is really funny.

My sister is a different story. She was raised in this country and in her teen years ended up falling for this alpha Arab wigger. One night after coming home late my parents beat her silly. No alpha thugs since (that we know about).

White women are so beautiful. It's beyond sad to see what rotten creatures their men have let them become. Roll back feminism-the rest of the West's problems will fix themselves.

Anonymous said...

One of my duties working in Prisons was to examine mail for contraband, coded messages etc. so I had to read a ton of dreck.

The worst was from women in relationships (not with the convict). They would write things that would embarrass a porn actor and many would say, 'I would never do this with my husband but...'.

A lot of the letters read like bad parodies of romance novels. The women get hooked for a couple reasons, first they have control. They can simply quit writing if they want. Second they are at a safe remove. Most of them never visit much less get a conjugal visit. Third, they have the thrill of a bad boy without the real danger.

However, the inmates know this and know how to manipulate the women involved. Women are also much easier targets to manipulate as well. I saw many women officers get compromised.

Edward said...

Anon daughter wrote

She fell for Mr. Murderer who, finally, was the person who outdid her in being a psychopath

So what is true love is for a woman who is seeking? Finding that special someone who's just that little bit more of a psychopath.

But when both pairs are emotional vacuums, psycho-psycho relationships don't last. Psychos are left alone... and do psycho stuff which gets them jailed.

So there are three basic relationship types -

Psycho-Normal
(Abusive/Dysfunctional relationship. One dominant partner, one submissive).

Normal-Normal
(Both partners possess a high degree of social skills that enables them to handle emotional situations better and work out arguments.)

Psycho-Psycho
(Torrid affair. High sexual component. Frequent violent arguments).

Bill said...

I've actually got an idea about this. Haven't had time to write it up yet. Maybe next week.

Truth said...

"Frankly, their seems to be an unhealthy amount of interest here in the very troubled women who are attracted to killers."

That's not hard to explain; there's an unhealthy amount of interest in ANY male who gets attention from women here, because the people who would find HBD an interesting subject are not generally the ones who do.

There are a few compounding factors:

1) All men see other men who are successful with women and think, what's he got that I ain't got?

2) I would seriously doubt that most of you guys qualify as "stable providers" either; in other words, not exciting enough to be dangerous, not interesting enough to be "scholarly" and not solid enough to be "avuncular."

"Boring" introverted guys who don't have resources, conversation skills, flashy markers of success, passion, or obvious virility generally turn into what I like to call "liberal misogynists."

Bill said...

Melykin said...

Only a very tiny percentage of woman are interested in killers, and those woman are deeply disturbed.


So how does that explain the fact that rapists and murderers are so prevalent in romance novels (i.e. female porn)?

Asher said...

His pride is "I do". Her pride is "He does".

Nietzsche

Anonymous said...

You mentioned a few crimes that were show trials in California. The Menendez brothers were Jewish kids who killed their parents. Next thing you know the L.A. Times says they're in Israel - I presume, asking for sanctuary. But that didn't fly (their parents were Jewish).

The long Scott Peterson trial was done as an object lesson for white males. Don't act black, or we The State will come down on you like a ton of bricks and drag your name through the mud for months on TV. We got the message.

Baloo said...

Isn't 'beta male' being used in a different sense here than usual? In my experience, an 'alpha male' is a leader, and a 'beta male' isn't. No implication that he's a loser, just not a leader. Shouldn't losers be deltas or gammas or something?

Andrea Beavis Butthead said...

"It took me a long time to understand I was one, because it wasn't about the *bands*. It was about the *parties.* Groupies are in it for the social life, which involves quite a lot of dressing up and showing off for other women. And I don't know anything about athletes, but musicians aren't thugs."

But Mormons and Robert Warren's flock have lots of parties, picnics, and social gatherings too. Why don't groupies join those things? Get together and sing songs and play bingo?

Also, even though lots of rockers are not actual thugs, they put on the satanic crazy image which turn some women on. And, a lot of rappaers are indeed thugs.

josh said...

The BIG question is:how do you explain the appeal of the Jonas Brothers?? BTW I once had groupies! Well,sort of. As a "yute" I worked as a security guard at Chicago Fest at Navy Peir.My first day a "set" of sweet young things began talking to me. I was a bit nonplussed. Their fascination with me didnt last too long,and I was a bit relieved when they moved on. Yet I remember it...

Asher said...

Yes ... now imagine one of the Jonas brothers being convicted of capital murder. The marriage proposals would number in the tens of millions.

Heh.

albertosaurus said...

There are at least two separate effects at play here. The first is the desire of women to be around a dangerous and cruel man. The second is what I will call the appeal of the mighty hunter.

Currently one of cable's most successfull series is Dexter. The eponymous hero is a serial killer. Since this is a cable show there is a lot of naked female flesh. The chicks really dig this whacko.

He is a sort of "nice" serial killer in that his victims always had it coming, but how he kills them and dismembers the bodies is not very nice at all. Irrespective of his niceness he is portrayed as sexually attractive.

Dexter is like a movie vampire. He is shown to be an apex predator. He preys on people - dangerous people not just some helpless forest animal. He is a great hunter.

About 99% of all human existence has been tribal - hunter gatherer tribal. In these small groups the best hunter could always expect female admiration. It is not so surprising that some of the female regard for the hunter can be seen in the fascination with serial killers.

The second aspect of the serial killer groupie phenomenon is BDSM. A lot of women are sexually aroused by pain and humiliation. No one knows for sure what the real numbers are, but it seems to be larger than the numbers of women who are homosexual. Maybe two or three percent of all women want to have sex with another woman but probably five to ten percent want to have sex with a man who also spanks them. Pain, danger and sexual excitement are intricatly intwined in the hearts of millions of American women.

Real sex with killers is dangerous - obviously. But for millions of women they have their vibrator and their fantasies - and it couldn't be more safe.

Classically women have amused themselves with fantasies of being raped by Nazis. Serial killer mastubatory thoughts seem rather wholesome in comparison.

Svigor said...

Apparently the three whites on the jury were happy to see the "no good 'white bitch'" get it too

Hahahahhahaahhaaha! I mean, not to lend any weight to the guy you're responding to, but that was just too funny. Oblivious!

Anonymous said...

Jesus Christ - I was thinking about posting something akin to what albertosaurus just said, but I figured that there would be no way in Hell that Komment Kontrol would ever approve it.

Wow.

Melykin said...

Bill wrote:
So how does that explain the fact that rapists and murderers are so prevalent in romance novels (i.e. female porn)?
---

The hero in your average romance novel is not a rapist or murderer. Have you actually ever read a romance novel?

Admittedly there might be a few romance novels where the hero is a bit rough around the edges, but definitely not a murderer or rapist. I once started reading a romance novel and near the beginning of the book the hero killed a dog. I stopped reading it immediately and threw the book out. It was a complete turn off. Disgusting.

Truth said...

"They were intimidated and didn't want to argue with the angry and united blacks. Lots of whites are like that."

So you're saying that white people are cowards?

Melykin said...

albertosaurus wrote:
There are at least two separate effects at play here. The first is the desire of women to be around a dangerous and cruel man. The second is what I will call the appeal of the mighty hunter.

Currently one of cable's most successfull series is Dexter. The eponymous hero is a serial killer. Since this is a cable show there is a lot of naked female flesh. The chicks really dig this whacko.


-----------------
The chicks on the tv show might dig Dexter, but I doubt very many chicks in real life do. In fact I'll wager that very few women even watch the show. It sounds horrible. Dismembering people? I wouldn't watch it if you paid me.

You guys are deluded if you think woman like dangerous and cruel men. Nothing could be further from the truth.

spacehabitats said...

"Love" in this case is more obviously sub-rational and, as such, must be triggering a specific female evolutionary strategy. The Alpha male theory is probably the best that Steve mentioned, but this gets blurred with the rapist/excess testosterone theory.

The important thing to remember is that most females in modern society have been pushed toward a reproductive strategy called "sexual selection". They are operating in an environment where the male role as protector/provider (which tends to value a male's loyalty, intelligence, monogamy, etc.) has been subordinated to the stud/animated "bag of sperm" strategy.

This is triggered in the female when it seems clear that her offspring can grow to reproductive age without the consistent support of a male provider. In such an environment, the optimal male strategy becomes even more heavily weighted toward promiscuity. Not only is male fidelity no longer valued in prospective mates; it is seen as a sign of genetic inferiority; being reproductively maladaptive.

BTW, the sub-Saharan gene pool(not having been filtered through generations exposed to harsh northern climates) switches into this mode far more easily and naturally. In fact, I would predict that almost none of these Death Row groupies are African-American. Why bother writing letters to a guy in prison when you are surrounded by men with similar male "credentials"?

Anonymous said...

albertosaurus sez:
Classically women have amused
themselves with fantasies of being raped by Nazis
Jeez, them Nazis sure were an enterprising lot. Apart from wrecking Europe and Russia in a bitter high-tech war, and killing lotsa non-combatants and u know who, they even managed to imprint themselves on the sexual psyche of millions of Anglo wimmenz.

ricpic said...

Well, I didn't read through all the posts so this may be redundant but the answer can be summed up in one word: masochism. Many women are masochists. They WANT to be abused. And any man who isn't aware of that is dreadfully green when it comes to women and what they want. Women get out of line, they test you specifically so they'll be chastised, the more physical the chastisement the better. Women 101.

Anonymous said...

Right. Except by "*parties*" here you mean orgies.

Sort of, sometimes. It's my observation that there are particular aspects of female sexuality that only unveil themselves in a completely safe and protected environment. Porn is a faked-up version of the real thing. The kind of damaged teenyboppers who get pulled in on Roissy's 900th attempt of the night will also enact a fake version of this because, trained by porn, they wrongly intuit this is how they can satisfy their father-hunger.

In the comparatively safe world I grew up in, the biggest threat men had to shield women from was the threat represented by themselves. This changed in my lifetime, and the really awesome parties started getting *physically* difficult to get to, along with being socially difficult. Many people have observed that the primary reason Burning Man is in the desert is that it is too hard for NAMs to get out there in any appreciable numbers, and of course, Burning Man is not that awesome a party, since you've heard of it.

But when I was a young teenager safety was represented by androgyny and kindness, and I took the bus to the parties.

Again, this is not something incarcerated men can provide. Women who get off on male violence are not rock'n'roll groupies. It's a different phenomenon.

acy said...

Bill, as a fairly avid reader of romances, I can tell you the murderers and rapists are what the hero rescues the heroine from. Or teaches her to defend herself from. Older romances or novels (eg - GWTW or The Fountainhead) sometimes depicted rape as part of a romantic relationship but that has been unPC and not done since the early 70s as far as I can tell.

Albertosaurus, an upscale hotel in Seattle just handed out key cards advertising the season premiere of 'Dexter.' The evocation of a serial killer as you go up the elevator and walk the empty hall and enter a strange room ought to be piss-poor marketing, I would think. Was for this customer.

Svigor said...

So you're saying that white people are cowards?

I thought we were talking about women. Oh wait, that would violate your ethos (the PC racial hierarchy), sorry.

Svigor said...

but that has been unPC and not done since the early 70s as far as I can tell.

The 70s were fascinating in terms of pop culture. So many things like this happened, where, as culture-makers adjusted to their newly found freedom, they went just a biiiiit too far. Several examples spring to mind, like open, sometimes even negative Jewishness, ugly chicks (mentioned in a post here recently), violence (I bet I Spit On Your Grave was made in the 70s), depravity (I bet Deliverance was too), juvenile delinquency (would Goonies (80s I know) or Bad News Bears be made today?) etc.

Anonymous said...

That's all true, but part of it is also that the women who do this themselves are often psychopaths with similar personality traits to the killers, although expressed in a feminine form. Women like this may need more extreme expressions of male dominance than normal women to feel sexual attraction, because of their own above average selfishness and callousness.

"Relationships" with life sentenced inmates are not real, they are fantasy relationships in which the women has all the power. She can cut him off at anytime and for any reason and he can do nothing about it.

Anonymous said...

"probably five to ten percent want to have sex with a man who also spanks them."

More like 100%.

Truth said...

"I thought we were talking about women."

He first referenced the Simpson murders, not me.

Anonymous said...

More like 100%.

No kidding.

rob said...

Sailer,

please please stop letting the rape-fetishists comment. Especially "Andrea."

"Andrea" dude, there are fetish websites: go there.

The rest of you, was it just a small step from Roissy to thinking women want to get raped?

David Davenport said...

Will Komment Kontrol allow me to say that, in reading this passage, I immediately thought of an old iSteve thread about Stanley Ann Dunham?

Or would that observation be out-of-bounds?


...

Rob - The killer groupies (which I thought meant groupies who kill, but hey)

Heh! Thats exactly what I thought too.

So there was that guy who shot Reagan and the mad bloke who shot John Lennon (neither of them groupies really)

...

aroused by pain and humiliation ...


This Komment Kontrol Komplainer -- s/he strikes me as some sort of masochistic Steve Sailer groupie or stalker. KKK, if you want to speak freely, why not get your own damned blog?

Or are you going to start emailing threats to Steve if he doesn't love you more?

Ray Sawhill said...

A pretty interesting pop-psychology book on the topic:

http://burnurl.com/wIYcpo

One element no one's mentioned that seems to me key is this: The guy isn't just behind bars, isn't just convicted of murder .. He's also reaching through the bars to her. Reaching for her, restrained by bars. It's a sexy image of yearning and need, and women respond like crazy to men wanting, struggling with their feelings, with all that desire and emotional congestion focused on .... HER.

Gals love being reached for and ached for, especially by King Kong, especially when he's in chains.

Anonymous said...

Calling all dateless geeks.

Stop reading isteve and become a serial killer.

headache said...

Testy, according to "Anon daughter" guys like you who follow Roissy are actually liberals. That's really neat. I always thought Roissy must be a creepy guy. I couldn't understand why Testy was freaking out so much about wimmenz until I got the Roissy angle. Testy is just sore he lost out on the really gorgeous and slutty chicks. And "Anon daughter" caught him out on it coz she knows how the system works from the inside (you cannot cheat a kid).

Gil said...

"Isn't 'beta male' being used in a different sense here than usual? In my experience, an 'alpha male' is a leader, and a 'beta male' isn't. No implication that he's a loser, just not a leader. Shouldn't losers be deltas or gammas or something?" - Baloo.

Yes the term 'Beta male' get overused. The correct term for a full-on loser who can't get ANY women to notice is an 'Omega male'.

Anonymous said...

Do ALL of you guys idolize Roissy?

That's a goofy question. Roissy gets criticized in the blogosophere all the time, particularly for his misuse of the terms "alpha" and "beta". The herpes vectors of Roissy's ilk get a lot of flak from the traditionalists / conservatives of the blogosphere.

Anonymous said...

The correct term for a full-on loser who can't get ANY women to notice is an 'Omega male'.

No no no no no.

The Omega male is the one who makes even the uber-alphas quiver in their boots and lose their urinary continence.

Think Keyser Söze.

Gil said...

No an Omega male is a uber-loser. Alpha = first, Omega = last. An Omega male is not some sort of super-contrarian.

Asher said...

The rumor is that in the upcoming season of Dexter he kills the Jonas Brothers. I mean, come on, if they don't "have it coming to 'em", who does?

Anonymous said...

David Davenport - I was the anon who mentioned the Lennon & Reagan shooters. I dont who made the other comments, so I dont think you can build all that into some theory or other.

Anonymous said...

"The rest of you, was it just a small step from Roissy to thinking women want to get raped?"

It's a pretty well established fact that a large percentage of women, possibly a majority, fantasize about rape. Now that doesn't mean they want to be really raped, but they do want a man who they have already selected to be forceful and dominant.

Anonymous said...

Omega = last.

No.

Omega = THE END.

As in "the end of you".

As in the Pale Horseman of the Apocalypse.

As in "a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun".

Gil said...

Yes, Omega = last. I'm sure some Omega males like to believe it means some sort of 'counter-Alpha' (brains versus brawn?), however even Wiki backs me up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(biology)#Beta_and_omega

general torpor said...

"Now that doesn't mean they want to be really raped, but they do want a man who they have already selected to be forceful and dominant."

well, then that's not exactly rape, is it? I think it's the words "already selected" that changes that scenario from rape into a bodice ripper tale.
btw, children under 15 or so, definitely under 13, cannot 'select' in any clear sense of the word.

Anonymous said...

They aren't using the term correctly.

Gil said...

You wish!

Lint900 said...

Re the key to female attraction:
The attracting force is social status (popularity, fame, etc), but of course status comes in different forms. All women are attracted to high status male personas (not to be confused with the actual personality or physicality of the man himself), but different women are attracted to different flavors of high status - eg the sensitive musician, the shark lawyer, the park avenue surgeon, the sinister serial killer, the thug gang banger, etc. The flavor of high status man desired is secondary to the desire for high status men overall over non-high status men. The woman who lusts for the infamous serial killer will quicker date the corporate lawyer over the petty thief. Even though her preference is for criminals, it is first for high status.

This is analagous to male attraction to youthful beauty, which comes in different flavors, where different men will have different tastes (curvy, petite, blonde, brunette, pale, dark, boobs, butts, etc), where these tastes are secondary for the overall desire for beautiful women over non-beautiful women. A man who likes blondes will still choose a beautiful brunette over an ugly blonde. Even though his preference is for blondes, it is first for beautiful women.

Re female rape fantasies in romance novels, soaps, etc:
Women want to be "consensually raped" by an alpha male. This may seem like a contradiction, but it is not. Ostensibly, by all objective measures, it is rape, in that the male himself neither seeks nor receives her consent, and may even receive resistance from the woman. If anyone were to walk in on the act, there would be no question it was rape.

However, the woman secretly wants the man to ravish her. She may or may not have made sexual overtures to him. The key is that he does not know she has consented and in his mind it is non consensual sex that "the slut really wants/needs/likes/will learn to like".

The woman herself does not think of it as being raped - but as being ravished - because she secretly desires it and is secretly consenting, although there may be ambivalence.

However if she were to lose status as a result of the sex, e.g. if they were found out and family/friends disapproved, if the man turned on her and told everyone about it and she got branded a slut, if she had deeper feelings for him and he just moved onto another girl, etc - she may subconciously withdraw consent after-the-fact and now believe it was rape, and even tell others she was raped, etc.

One can easily see how this "consensual rape" may've been an evolutionary psychological adaptation that would've allowed a non-virtuous woman to keep her cover as a virtuous woman - only she knows she consented, and she may even deceive herself about this.

MaryJ said...

GWTW does have a rape scene, with Rhett and Scarlett; but it also has a long scene where Rhett breaks down and cries into Melanie's skirts after Scarlett has a miscarriage.

Women don't consider Rhett any less attractive or romantic because of the tearful Melanie scene.

How does that fit into your theories?

MaryJ said...

Women want to be "consensually raped" by an alpha male.
-----------------
You have completely ignored female vanity. I suspect that most women who fantasize in this way like to imagine themselves as so beautiful and desirable that the man just "couldn't help himself." You see this attitude with a lot of Muslim women who have embraced wearing the burka: "I am so devastatingly attractive that men will be driven wild by the sight of my elbow, so therefore I must cover my whole body up from head to toe."

Anonymous said...

Dunno if anyone is still reading this, but speaking just for myself, I had those kinds of rape fantasies when I was a teenager... probably not coincidentally the last time I would have been attractive to you all posting that all women want to be raped. It's not appealing now.

I agree that the vast majority of American women (and a small majority of American men and a small majority of non-American women) are emotionally adolescent, so yes, probably most American women still get off to that fantasy. But as a previous poster pointed out, what that fantasy is really about is about being overwhelmingly attractive to a high status man. This is something that teenagers want. Grown up people are not interested.

Anonymous said...

Accepting all that, it makes the man guilty. He was "innocent", he was "seduced." SHE did it. SHE is guilty. Now if we're talking about peers, it's sort arguable. But when we're talking about extreme violence from strangers, or the rape of children, it becomes grotesque. And it is to such grotesqueness that this view leads.
There was a case in Iraq of a nine year old raped by strangers, whose brothers wanted to kill her. Even if one of them had raped, they'd want to kill her for their "honor."
This sounds insane, but it's "woman as seducer" taken to an extreme that seems logical to some.

Anonymous said...

You see this attitude with a lot of Muslim women who have embraced wearing the burka: "I am so devastatingly attractive that men will be driven wild by the sight of my elbow, so therefore I must cover my whole body up from head to toe."

Good grief. You have never read cases where physically unattractive women have been mocked in court because they were raped? In addition to being initimately assaulted by a violent, repulsive, possibly diseased and murderous stranger, she also gets mocked for thinking, with her looks, who'd want to rape her?
There was a reason for feminists going on about the psychology of rape and its place the legal system of a society. I don't agree with everything feminists did and said, but some of it was truly necessary.

spacehabitats said...

It all gets back to genetics and Homo sapiens' evolutionary stable strategies.

A sexual "fantasy", male or female, is the shadow of a sub-conscious (limbic)drive impinging on the "rational" (neo-cortical) mind.

Death Row groupies are just another symptom of individuals whose programming is too far out of sync with their allowable societal roles.

A woman who might have been very happy and reproductively successful in a Danish fishing village becomes neurotically perverted in 21st century America.

Is the fault with the woman, or with our wonderfully diverse culture filled with street smart guys and their "bitches"?

Should she be adapting to a sick society or finding or forming a new one?

Andrea said...

There's a great movie that sheds light on this issue. Shohei Imamura's VENGEANCE IS MINE. It's based on a true story about a serial killer who terrorized Japan in the early 70s.
In one scene, the killer pretends to be a respectable man and shacks up with a woman(who lives with her mother). She finds out his true identity but doesn't call the police and continues to live with him. Why? Part of the appeal is her identification with his maverick outcast status. Living on the edge of society herself, she sees him as a low-born person who doesn't just passivley accept his lot in life but rebels against society. It either doesn't occur to her that he might kill her too--she may be deluded enough to consider herself as indispensable to him--or she may feel murder at his hand might not be a bad way to die, what with elements of romance, darkness, sorrow, hope, despair.
If a serial killer spares your life, you may feel a sense of self-worth. After all, you can believe there is something uniquely precious about you that convinced even a ruthless killer to spare your life. Like the story of lion and thorn in its paw. Lion spares the man who pulled out the thorn, and therein lie the magic and wonder. She may feel that she calmed a certain sickness in his heart, and if she has the power to do that, there must be something special about her.

In one scene, the man is about to kill the woman's mother but the old woman tells him that she too is a bad apple. She killed her husband and served jail time. The old woman may take some pleasure in identifying with a DANGEROUS figure. There is a certain sense of importance, power, and authority in being DANGEROUS. It's as thoug the old woman wants him to recognize her as a fellow badass dangerous rebel against rotten, corrupt, and cowardly society. (Ever notice how all those blacks on talkshows brag about how much wrong they'd committed? Even blacks who preach morality and decency scream and holler about how they'd robbed, raped, murdered, and etc in their youth and served jailtime and that's why they have the authority--even moral authority--to preach to the rest of us. It's like a veteran of war who's killed a lot of people feels he has deeper understanding of both war and peace because he'd been to hell and back.)

To an extent, we all have this attachment to a man of power. In one episode of Brady Bunch, Peter idolizes Jesse James and forgets that Jesse killed ordinary people. (He finds out the stupidity of his ways only when he has a nightmare where his hero Jesse kills his entire family.) And, there are plenty of educated Westerners who wax romantic about killers Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, and Che. Look at Anita Dunn. These people would have been wiped out by communism, but they are deluded enough to think they would have been either (1) spared by the revolution (2) been part of the revolution--preferably as the avant garde elite or (3) nobly sacrificed in the cause of something greater than themselves. Recall that so many revolutionaries in the USSR went to their deaths with utter loyalty to the Revolution and to Stalin himself. Though they knew they'd been accused falsely, they still felt their 'sacrifice' was for the NOBLE CAUSE.

And, if you ever listen to young people, they like to brag about all the dangerous, badass, and rebellious friends they know(or pretend to know) than all the squares they know. They'd rather say they know some biker dude or even a gangster criminal than Eugene the geek in the house next door.

It's cooler to say you have all the Megadeath albums than the albums of the Carpenters or Simon & Garfunkel. It's like people want to identify with lions and bears than with hamsters and racoons... though lions and bears are far more dangerous to humans. Though we fear danger, we admire it too. Danger is power. Danger is badass. So, we want some of the dangerous badassness to rub off on us, if only through association or imagination.

Andrea said...

To an extent, we all have this attachment to a man of power. In one episode of Brady Bunch, Peter idolizes Jesse James and forgets that Jesse killed ordinary people. (He finds out the stupidity of his ways only when he has a nightmare where his hero Jesse kills his entire family.) And, there are plenty of educated Westerners who wax romantic about killers Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, and Che. Look at Anita Dunn. These people would have been wiped out by communism, but they are deluded enough to think they would have been either (1) spared by the revolution (2) been part of the revolution--preferably as the avant garde elite or (3) nobly sacrificed in the cause of something greater than themselves. Recall that so many revolutionaries in the USSR went to their deaths with utter loyalty to the Revolution and to Stalin himself. Though they knew they'd been accused falsely, they still felt their 'sacrifice' was for the NOBLE CAUSE.

And, if you ever listen to young people, they like to brag about all the dangerous, badass, and rebellious friends they know(or pretend to know) than all the squares they know. They'd rather say they know some biker dude or even a gangster criminal than Eugene the geek in the house next door.

It's cooler to say you have all the Megadeath albums than the albums of the Carpenters or Simon & Garfunkel. It's like people want to identify with lions and bears than with hamsters and racoons... though lions and bears are far more dangerous to humans. Though we fear danger, we admire it too. Danger is power. Danger is badass. So, we want some of the dangerous badassness to rub off on us, if only through association or imagination.