Essay on Aileen Wuornos Childhood

‘Victimism’ is the theory that sustains the point that female killers only act out because they are the victim of something else. Battered women syndrome, PTSD, and other psychological conditions can all be related to a woman committing homicide. “Victimism, in turn, relies on the depiction of women as powerless and oppressed, which can function to deny their responsibility, culpability, and even rationality.” (Mayr, Machin, 2012, p. 118). This can best be defined by looking at the example of the Mary Winkler case. Winkler, a Tennessee woman shot and killed her husband in 2006 after years of physical abuse. “83.5% of articles about this case managed to frame her as a victim” (PeoplePill, 2019). The media also portrayed Winkler as someone who didn’t have the required state of mind to be able to “commit premeditated first-degree murder… rather than a cold-blooded killer” (Esteal et al, 2015, p.33). They followed this up by stating “As a result, she was seen as blameless because she is mentally incapable of making rational decisions” (Esteal et al, 2015, p. 33). Here, we can see Winkler is taken and portrayed as something other than a killer. This is a perfect example of where a woman killer has been taken for a victim in an attempt to make the act explainable and conceal the harsh reality that women can rationally take the life of another.

Lizzie Seal, in her compelling piece ‘Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill’ (2010) offers her thoughts, from a feminist criminological approach on women killers by theorizing ‘five gender representations of women who kill’ (Seal, 2010). Seal felt it important to focus her attention on unusual female murderers. She summarises that every woman who has killed under these unusual kinds of circumstances, be it for financial gain, other women, or strangers will fall under one of her theorized gender representations, albeit covering her own back by stating the list isn’t completely exhaustive. (Seal, 2010). Her gender representations of women who have killed are as follows; ‘the masculine women’, ‘the muse’ or ‘mastermind dichotomy’; ‘the damaged personality’; ‘the respectable women’; and ‘the witch’. In this, she develops her typology of these five discourses by reviewing different cases of well-known and well-reported cases where a woman has been accused or committed of murder. Her point is that every woman killer (who has killed under unusual circumstances) is portrayed as one of these gender representations and that this is a result of society’s portrayal of what the role of a woman should be. Chan (2001) is in agreeance with Seal in that the gender representation of women is largely different from the gender representation of men about violence. Chan affirms that “men and women may be said to live in two different cultures, each with its own ‘subculture of violence.” (Chan, 2001, p.3).

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From a feminist perspective, the case of Aileen Wuornos is referred to often as it offers a direct interpretation of the way female killers are understood by society. This is arguably because of the nature of her upbringing, her life story, and her violent streak that deduced her to murder seven males between 1989 and 1990 (Whyte, 2010). Wuornos undoubtedly had a rocky existence right from the start. Born in 1956, Wuornos was abandoned by her mother and left in the care of her grandparents. From a young age, Wuornos was sexually abused by her Grandfather and when she reached the early age of fourteen, she fell pregnant with her Grandfather’s baby. Consequently, straight after she gave birth, the baby was taken away and given up for adoption. To earn money, and gain shelter from the cold Michigan nights, Wuornos became a prostitute before moving to the sunnier climate in Florida where she entered into a brief marriage that ended abruptly and with her ex-husband taking out a restraining order. Wuornos went back to the streets once more and now lived under several aliases and had obtained a handful of offenses. Around 1986 she met her lover Tyria Moore. After this, there were a couple of other offenses before she was found guilty of the seven murders and was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection which took place in 2002. (Rodgers, p.59, 60). This case shot to fame and became of high interest to the public, media, and feminists alike. In the press she faced headlines such as “’ Highway Hooker’ Serial Killer Wins the Right to be Executed” (Usborne, 2001). Feminism theorists also put her on a pedestal by claiming that “if we fail to develop a feminist analysis of abuse by women we are handing over this issue to the professionals and the media.” (Kelly, Radford, 1996). Wournos herself is a product of a damaged social structure where her femininity is doubted and exploited only to play into the hands of gender perceptions and social constructs. “The linkage of power, violence, and sexuality has been one of the foundations of feminist analyses” (Kelly, Radford, 1996) This is followed up when Kelly and Radford refer to the feminist approach by stating “a feminism which begins from understanding gender as a social construct, which recognizes the variability with which gendered selves and individual biography combine, can locate women’s use of violence within its existing framework.” (Kelly, Radford, 1996). Morrissey also uses Wournos to develop her ‘Feminist Legal Theory’ (Morrissey, 2003 p.40). Morrissey argues that women are ‘universally objectified’ under the heteropatriarchy society (previously discussed above (page 3)). (Morrissey, 2003, p. 41). As a result of this patriarchy, Morrissey argues that Wuornos is “unable to articulate her feminine experience without the filter of her subordination” (Morrissey, 2003, p.41). This means that Wuornos could never tell her story as it happened, because she had no idea of what it might be like to be a woman without the oppression of patriarchy. (Morrissey, 2003). Morrissey concludes that Wournos’ only hope “is to do as the media have already claimed she has done, and become effectively a man” (Morrissey, 2003, p.41). Therefore, we can see that by using the high-profile case of Aileen Wuornos, feminists can approach and unpick society's gender representations of women who kill.

Furthermore, Helen Birch looks further into the representation of women who kill from a feminist perspective. Birch’s literature piece ‘Moving Targets: Women, Culture and Representation’ (1994) focuses its cause on how women killers are represented in the media as a direct result of the culture that surrounds us. Birch is quick to her point by starting her piece by stating “Glancing through the British press over the last couple of years, a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that something very strange had happened to the female of the species.” (Birch, 1994, p.1) What she is referring to here is a sudden increase of interest for women killers in the media. The main aim of her literature is to figure out why this is. The way that women killers are portrayed in films and TV programs aids the view society has on them, however, this view is not accurate argues Birch. “The rampaging female has become a new cliché of Hollywood cinema, stabbing and shooting her way to notoriety in a range of popular films.” (Birch, 1994, p.1). That the “real-life dramas of women who kill rarely resemble those of their celluloid contemporaries is a moot point” (Birch, 1994, p.2). This point is furthered by the argument that today’s media now needs to encapsulate its readers by grabbing them with harsh headlines, shocking images, reality, and representation, which now is all so blurred the reader can never be sure of what is completely true and what is just there for the reader's amusement. Further on in the piece Birch calls for the help of Candice Skrapec to further her points on women killers. Skrapec makes similar points as Birch by stating “Violent criminality has been marked out as an essentially male province by the criminal justice system, criminological researchers, and the media. Homicide, in particular, is viewed as a predominantly male crime.” (Skrapec, 1994, p.242). Women who kill, especially when it is multiple murders, is not something familiar, this is arguably down to our perceptions of the social construction of gender roles. A woman who kills is a woman who is not conforming to her perceived role. This is hard for society to comprehend because it should not be within a woman’s nature to act out in such a way. “The notion so violates the idea of femaleness, tied to her traditional nurturing role, that a woman is denied her identity as a multiple murderer.” (Skrapec, 1994, p.243). Therefore, we can see here that Birch and Skrapec are similar in their thoughts and in proving an undoubting link between women who kill and how they are represented through gender roles and social constructs.