Lady Killers

These are not names calculated to keep us up at night; they’re punch lines to the great overarching joke that is female aggression.

One stat that does get confirmed again and again in various studies is that the majority of serial killers, both male and female, are white.

Psychologists have theorized that we love separating ourselves from “evil” because it makes us feel good about ourselves: “Locating evil within selected individuals or groups carries with it the ‘social virtue’ of taking society ‘off the hook’ as blameworthy.”

We could ask ourselves, “Why do women kill?” But I think we might as well ask, “Why does anyone kill?”

Today, we remember the killer Erzsébet Báthory as a sexy vampire who bathed in virgin blood, which isn’t at all true, but it makes her less human, more myth—and in turn excuses us from asking uncomfortable questions like: if men are supposed to be the aggressors, why do Erzsébets exist?

It’s not that society doesn’t recognize the existence of evil in women, because women have been portrayed as conniving and malevolent and the bringers of the apocalypse since Eve ate the apple. But we seem to prefer evil women ensconced in our fiction.

This hatred of what is human; still more, of what is animal; still more, of what is material; this horror of the senses, of reason itself; this fear of happiness and beauty; this longing away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, desire, longing itself—all this implies (let us dare to comprehend it!) a will to the Nothing, a horror of life, an insurrection against the most fundamental presuppositions of life; nevertheless, it is and remains a will!”

—NIETZSCHE, A Genealogy of Morals

“Let no one think me a weak one.”

—EURIPIDES, Medea

“One must not suppose them like others, and they are sooner compared to the most evil men.”

“One must not suppose them like others, and they are sooner compared to the most evil men.”

One must not suppose them like others, and they are sooner compared to the most evil men.”