Review: Sexual Murder

Author(s): Eileen B. Leonard

Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 3, No. 4, Special Issue: Violence against Women (Dec., 1989),
pp. 572-577
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/189777
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 Review Essay

SEXUALMURDER

TheAge of Sex Crime.By JaneCaputi.Bowling Green,OH: Bowling Green

State UniversityPopularPress, 1987, 246 pp., $23.95, $11.95.
The Lust to Kill: A Feminist Investigationof Sexual Murder.By Deborah
CameronandElizabethFrazer.New York:New YorkUniversityPress, 1987,
207 pp., $35.00.

Overthe pasttwo decades,feministresearchhasbegunto reshapethe field

of criminology,addressingsome of its most glaringomissions and challeng-
ing its basic assumptions.This new scholarshipexplores the crime, punish-
ment, and victimizationof women, while much of mainstreamcriminology
still resists any more than a superficialconsiderationof gender issues. The
two books under review illustratewhat the mainstreamhas ignored.They
deal with the most gruesome of subjects-sexual murder.The stories they
relateare chilling, the realityhardto confront.
Criminologyhas largely neglectedthis topic, and, equally significant,its
truncateddiscussion of these crimes tends to be extremely individualistic,
avoiding sociological insights. Although all known sexual murderersare
male and the majorityof theirvictims female, gender has not been used to
analyze these events. Jane Caputi,DeborahCameron,and ElizabethFrazer
providethe firstsystematicanalysesof these crimesin termsof gender.In so
doing, they challenge individualisticexplanationsof these horrifyingevents
and offer a fundamentallydifferent way of understandingthese murders.
Cameronand Frazerare more successful in their attemptto come to terms
with this phenomenon,althoughbothbooks explore importantnew territory.
In TheAgeof Sex Crime,JaneCaputispecificallyaddressesthe sexualized
serialmurderof women by men. She arguesthatthis phenomenonis new and
that it is dramaticallyincreasing.These crimes are grisly and often involve
tortureand mutilation.EdmundKemper'scase serves as an example. He
killed at least six young women in the SantaCruzareain the early 1970s. A
necrophile,he mutilatedand even beheaded some of his victims. He also
confessed to cannibalism.
GENDER& SOCIETY,Vol. 3 No. 4, December1989 572-577
? 1989 Sociologists for Women in Society
572
 REVIEW ESSAY 573

Although often regarded as "motiveless," Caputi insists that "these are

crimes of a sexual/political-essentially patriarchal-domination" (p. 2).
She acknowledges that some of the victims of sexual murder are male but
chooses to concentrate on the torture and murder of women and to explain
them in terms of "gynocide." She follows Andrea Dworkin's definition of
gynocide as "the systematic crippling, raping, and/or killing of women by
men ... the relentless violence perpetuated by the gender class men on the
gender class women" (quoted on p. 3).
Caputi dates the beginning of the "Age of Sex Crime" with the crimes of
Jack the Ripper in London, 1888. She regards him as the gynocidal archetype
and sexual murder as a ritual that deliberately and explicitly communicates
female degradation and destruction. These criminal acts or rituals help
maintain "the loathing for women which riddles patriarchal culture" (p. 8),
and thus they perpetuate the status quo. She links them to a long line of such
"sado-rituals," including the murder of the Goddess.
Caputi begins by exploring the "central/father" figure of Jack the Ripper,
detailing his crimes as well as contemporary atrocities. She abhors the
absence of political analysis of these events and the tendency to view them
as beyond explanation and, indeed, beyond control. She repeatedly charges
the media with sensationalist coverage that feeds the myth that such killers
are individual monsters and unstoppable.
Caputi claims that sexual murder not only maintains male power but is
also a source of male pleasure. She comments:
For the sexual killer-no matterhow hypocriticallyreviledby his patriarchal
culture-should be recognized, finally, as its "ultimateman," its subliminal
hero, the inevitableenactmentof phallocracy'smost fundamentalconceptions
of manhoodandgodhood. (p. 62)

Caputi claims that this link between manhood and sexual murder is
illustrated in the fictional accounts of sex crime that dominate the media, and
she turns to an analysis of several books and films of the 1970s and 1980s in
order to demonstrate this link. Her primary interest is in the ways these
accounts

explicitly encouragemale readersto identify with the sex murderer,enabling

thatgroup to collectively experiencean acceptableif not preferredfantasy,to
vicariouslythrillto the graphicand elaboratedepictionof gynocide. (p. 64)
Caputi attempts to connect contemporary sex murder with the witch craze
of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. She views both as a response to
rising female autonomy and as an attempt to consolidate patriarchal power
during a time of sweeping social change. The political implications of both
574 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 1989

are obscuredwhen, in the firstcase, the murderof women is referredto as a

"craze,"or in the modernera, when the murderersare regardedas "socio-
paths."Caputi insists that sane men, not monsters,commit these atrocities.
She makesherpointwhen she notes thatcases of serialmurdernot only elicit
copycats and even false confessions by nonmurderersbut a host of phone
calls to police by women who fear the killer is their husband,father, or
brother.Caputi deduces, "What these parallel phenomena indicate is an
abiding fear and violence at the core of a multitude of quintessentially
'normal'relationships"(p. 114). She insists that when we tally not only the
thousandsof victims (mostly women) of serial sexual murderbut the non-
serialsexual murdersof women, those killed by husbandsor boyfriends,and
the physical and sexual assaultson women, then we might agree "thatwe
live in the midstof a periodof intensifiedgynocide, equivalentin destruction
to the Europeanwitchcraze"(p. 117).
This violence, Caputiargues,serves to keep women's lives fearful and
restricted.Moreover,in modernpatriarchy,"the sexual violence of women,
although nominally despised and tabooed, is secretly desired, approved,
institutionalized,and ultimatelymandated.Thatsecrecy is key" (p. 120). In
the final two chaptersof herbook, Caputiexaminesthe depictionsof this sex
crimeideology andthe violence againstwomen in a wide rangeof institutions
in modernpatriarchy,including Freudianpsychology, sexual surgery,and
films such as Jaws. She discusses the relationshipbetween sex crime and
other contemporaryparadigmssuch as the camera,pornography,and even
nuclearweapons. In each case, she triesto forge links in termsof patriarchal
power and the eroticizationof violence. Unfortunately,few of these argu-
ments are pursuedin enough depthto make them convincing.
The Lust to Kill, by Cameronand Frazer,explores essentially the same
topic, but presentsa moresophisticatedand convincing analysis.They take
as problematicsome of the issues Caputiregardsas given or simply ignores.
For example, ratherthan acceptingmale violence in patriarchalsociety as
fact, they remainedpuzzled by its brutalityand apparentirrationality.Why,
specifically,the repeatedconnectionbetweensex andviolence? LikeCaputi,
they recognize this connection as a modem phenomenon, with Jack the
Rippermarkingthe period of transition.(Despite his repeatedmurderand
mutilation of prostitutes,Jack the Ripper's crimes were not universally
regardedas sex crimes at the time.)CameronandFrazeranalyzenotjust sex-
ual murderbut how modernWesternsociety thinksaboutthisphenomenon-
the various discourses that explain and shape it for us. Like Caputi, they
recognize that sexual murderersare men, never women, but they question
why some men find killing erotic. They claim that we need "an approach
 REVIEW ESSAY 575

that would recognize that althoughthe murdereris by no means typical, he

is a productof his social order"(p. 33). Although few men could commit
these crimes, Cameronand Frazerinsist thatmany men sharesome of these
desires.
The central focus of their book is an analysis of the discourses through
which these murdersare typically explained.Cameronand Frazerexamine
the treatmentof the murdereras heroic- as a sub- or superhumanhero who
inspires fear and horrifiedfascination;they also examine his treatmentas
deviantand abnormal.The first discourseis exploredin monthlymagazines
devoted to "truecrime,"where the evil fiend is condemnedand punished,as
well as in the Gothic tales of terror,where the rebel flouts society and finds
erotic pleasurein cruelty.
The second discourseis foundprimarilyin the scientific discussionof sex
murder.Cameronand Frazerregardthis discourseas thoroughlyindividual-
istic and ultimatelyunableto explainthe phenomenon.Psychologicalexpla-
nations, for example, frequently fall prey to a problem they refer to as
"relentlesscircularity:psychopathsare defined as the kind of people who
commit horrifyingandsadisticcrimesandthe reasonwhy they commit those
crimes is because they are psychopaths"(p. 87). Sociological explanations
also resort to individualisticdiscussions of abnormality.Essentially, these
two frameworks(either"sinful"or "sick")serve the same purpose- they set
the murdererapartfrom ordinarymen and preventfurtheranalysis. Gender
and power are steadfastlyignoredin these explanations.
After examining specific cases of sexual murderin terms of these two
models (hero and deviant),Cameronand Frazerattempta feministexplana-
tion of these murders.They note thatfor feminists, violence againstwomen
is not only broadlydefined (rangingfrom serious violence such as rape to
obscene phone calls) but also politically motivated. This clustering and
political analysis is justified by the fact that all these phenomena reveal
similar assumptionsabout male power and entitlementto sexual access to
women, despite resistance; they also collectively serve to limit women's
autonomyand underminetheir self-respect.
Cameron and Frazer see sexual murderas an extreme of such male
violence, but they maintainthat it is notjust misogynistic.They have taken
seriously the fact that some serial sexual murdererschoose male victims.
John Wayne Gacy, for example, admitted in 1978 not only killing but
torturingand mutilating 32 boys and burying them in his basement in
suburbanChicago. Cameronand Frazerinitiallyconsideredthatsuch killers
might fall into an entirely differentcategory,but they did not find this to be
so-indeed, they found them strikinglysimilar to the sexual murderersof
576 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 1989

women. Whatis constant,however,is the genderof the killer.ThusCameron

and Frazerbelieve thatthe explanationof these events lies not in misogyny
but in the social constructionof masculinityas transcendenceover others.
Tracing the themes of misogyny, transcendence,and sadistic sexuality in
masculinity,they claim thattranscendencehas "come to be seen both as the
projectof the masculine and the sign of masculinity"(p. 169). They argue
that the connection between sex and violence is partof a historicalprocess
that transformedsexual desire, eroticizing cruelty and even death. This
connection,they maintain,is not confinedto a few deviantmen,butpervades
our cultureand contributesto
a taken-for-granted
stereotype of masculinesexualityas intrinsically
sadistic,
desiringto taketheotherby force.Ina culturethatthusconflates
intrinsically
sex, poweranddeath,thesexualkilleris hardlyanexile.(p. 68)
Cameron and Frazer conclude by discussing the possibility of changing
Westernculture'ssexual practices.
Although neither Caputi's nor Cameron and Frazer's explanationsof
sexual murder are wholly satisfying, they break new ground and make
importantadvances.Together,they educateus to the horrorof sexual murder
in a way thatis not communicatedin the media,where one story emergesat
a time, or in morescientificaccountsthattendto frametheseevents as wholly
pathological.We are remindednot only of the depth of humancrueltybut
how often this crueltyoccursat the handsof men andis aimedat women. By
providing a political analysis of sexual murder,focusing on gender, these
scholarsalertus to thepossible rootsof thisphenomenonandthe vastcultural
changes needed to preventit.
Caputi asks us to consider sexual murderas misogyny, linked with the
gynocidal ritualsof othertimes andplaces. In some respects,she makesthe
case, but her work tends to be polemical, and assertionstake the place of
careful argumentation.She will persuade very few who are not already
among the convertedand, as with many ideological endeavors,thereare no
surprises in terms of her analysis. The book is nonetheless informative
regardingthe facts of sexual murder.Cameronand Frazer'sbook is more
closely argued.In consideringmale victims, they providethe opportunityfor
and, indeed, deliver a more complex analysis of the topic.
Caputi tends to give us a flat if not essentialist portrayalof men as
women-hatingand women as helpless victims. One feels by the end of the
book-not a call to action-but depleted, almost hopeless regardingthe
possibilityof change. Ironically,Caputiends herbook with a sincereplea for
just such social change. (And feminists have indeed effectively confronted
 REVIEW ESSAY 577

male violence in a variety of ways, including the creation of shelters for

batteredwives, Take-Back-the-Nightmarches,anti-rapehotlines,andso on.)
Although both of these books are to be commended for establishing
genderas a categoryof analysisregardingsexual murder,genderis privileged
in both accounts,while raceandclass arevirtuallyignored.Thereis no sense
of how materialconditionsor racismmight interactwith or exacerbatesuch
male violence. More specificity is needed to account for these atrocities.
Likewise, if we are being asked to connect "normal"men and "normal"
masculinitywith these crimes,we need an analysisthatestablishesthese links
more thoroughly.The extreme horrorof such cases throwsus off the track.
Both books indicatethe directionsthatfutureanalysismighttake,as the links
to pornography,film, and literatureare more carefullyexplored.
Caputi and Cameron and Frazer have addressed a rather astounding
omission in contemporaryscholarship- the failureto analyzesexual murder
in termsof gender.In so doing they have made a markon feminist scholar-
ship, demonstratingonce again the centrality of gender as a category of
analysis; they have registeredan importantcritique of criminology's mis-
placed individualismin termsof these murders;andfinally,they send a vital
political message regardingthe links between patriarchalcultureand brutal
sexual murder.

EILEENB. LEONARD
VassarCollege