post 6] Successful presentation ?

Our presentation which was completed by two group members went well. We included a home made film clip which showed how one of the Yorkshire Ripper's victims felt. We enjoyed making this short film clip, it was a new experience. However on the day of the presentation the volume was low and the audience could not really hear what was being said. The positive point is that we created an illusion of fog and as the clip played the picture became blurry.

We also showed a psychological profile of two seven year old boys, one who would grow up to be a serial killer, the other not a serial killer. Bed wetting, an obsession with fire and animal cruelty were some of the things that the serial killer was involved with at that age, he also had a difficult relationship with his parents. The boy who was not going to grow up to be a serial killer was interested in cars, growing up to be like his father, playing competitive sports with his friends and he loved his mother. This was a good way of showing the audience how different the thinking between the two boys would be and it gave the audience an insight into the thoughts and feelings of both children.

We asked the audience set questions through the presentation and handed out treats to engage the audience and make the presentation fun. I discussed misogyny across cultures and the psychology behind the serial killer. My other group member discussed the affects of the Ripper and the Psyche of a serial killer. We covered a broad range of the topic.

The only thing that I would like to have improved on was being critical on the theories of the psychology of the serial killer. However I did give a critical evaluation of Muslim Misogyny.

Ripper Roaring Presentation

The presentation that was carried out by myself and another group member went well. I looked at Ripperology in regards to aspects of the ripper, social responses to the ripper in the present day and the mental pshyche of serial killers. The bulk of my segment looked at the ripper through a looking glass perspective. I dealt with the speculations surrounding the 'who' of the ripper. I also challenged the reason for the ripper's choice of victims. I looked critically at the choice of victims and offered questions and ideas as to why these victims were chosen and identified the one victim that was not like the rest. I also questioned why the last victim was the one that did not fit the mould. The other member looked at the more technical issues surrounding serial killers psyche by analysing the different types of serial killers; and how they function. She also looked at misogyny across cultures with special attention paid to Muslim women. This was done to illustate the different forms that misogyny takes, and to show that misogyny takes place all around the world with different consequences.We did experience technical difficulties to a small degree with regards to the volume control when showing our short film, however, we beleive that the essence of what we were trying to convey was illustrated. We worked well together and enjoyed the topic we chose. To make the presentation more interractive questions were asked and a chocolate treat handed out to the person with the correct answer. Both of us compared the ripper with other well known serial killers, Ted Bundy, The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe) and the Suffolk Strangler (Steve Wright).

Over all the presentation was good, we covered all the areas we needed to in order to convey that misogyny is still prevalent in today's society and that the Ripper will be forever immortalised in many different ways; the reason for this is because we have no answers to the main questions, so we make up our own conclusion.

At the end of the presentation during the question and answer session I believe that there may have been a little confusion with regards how the ripper tied in with misogyny of Muslin women. My group member answered but just to clarify, the presentation was not just about Jack the Ripper and his brand of misogyny. In my first blog entry I introduced the idea that misogyny takes various forms. The other participant illustrated misogyny from her cultural back ground to confirm that point. I would also like to clarify a point in respect of organised serial killers and the question regarding Hannibal. Although this was also addressed, Hannibal would be considered an organised serial killer as he fits the profile, his intelligence is obvious. The disorganised serial killer is the one whose intelligence is questioned as minimal. As this is a fictional character, he does not have to follow the profile to precision.

Misogyny Through The Years

The legacy of Jack the Ripper has gone through the dimension time. The story has been told numerous times and in various ways. There are bands that immortalise the ripper in song, there are several movies that reference him and many killers that worship at his alter. According to Judith Walkowitz "The fact that most of the murders were accompanied by acts of sexual mutilation also contributed to the grisly notoriety of the crimes..." The ripper is the poster boy for many serial killers or those who want to be.



J. R. Walkowitz, 'City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London', Virago Press Ltd, London, 1992



The Zodiac killer is one of the great unsolved killer mysteries of all times, second to the ripper. He murdered atleast seven people from 1968 t0 1972. The zodiac killer was profiled as a sexual sadist, meaning he could not achieve sexual fulfilment in any other way than through torture and ultimately the killing of another person. Like the ripper, the zodiac killer was known for his gruesome attacks. His first victim was slashed across the chest area three times, once in the back, seven times across the throat and neck wounds so brutally administered that they nearly decapitated her. Her larynx and caroited artery were severed. She had also been choked, beaten and slashed across the face. How many ways can one person be killed? How much delight did the zodiac killer take in the act of this murder. He taunted the police and newspapers by sending them letters about his crimes and the victims. He even sent a letter to one of the victim's fathers. Since we do not know his identity he has been immortalised by Hollywood as well with his own movie, titled, Zodiac.


http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/zodiac/river_1.html


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article1770038.ece



The modern day ripper is Steve Wright who murdered five prostitutes in Ipswich, Suffolk between October and December in 2006. Two of the victims were asphyxiated and the cause of death for the other three could not be determined. All the victims had drug problems. Wright admitted to having sex with the victims but not the murders. There was speculation from the police that he may have had an accomplice. This leads to me wonder if the ripper was not caught for the same reason, did he have someone watching out for him or helping him with his crimes. Steve Wright terrorised Suffolk to such an extent that he was nicknamed the Ipswich Ripper and the Suffolk Strangler. He was also compared with Peter Sutcliffe, The Yorkshire Ripper.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3410456.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1579409/Ipswich-killer-Steve-Wright-deserves-to-die.html

These are the faces of Wright's victims. Most of the times the serial killer is the one that is mentioned frequenlty, unless it is a child that has been killed; or like the ripper the murderer is never caught and the murders are horrendous. The killers should not be the ones who are immotalised, so why are they? Human nature will explain that, some will live vicariously through these murders, others will try and find out what has gone through the mind of the killer in an effort to make sense of the crime. For many it is sheer entertainment.

Judith Walkowitz states that "The social context of the ripper's exploits have not disappeared from the twentieth century representation, although they too have undergone a mythic revision." This is correct, the ripper has been cast as a mythical figure to explain the heinousness of his crimes, as no mere mortal could commit these crimes; the problem is a mere mortal did.



J.R. Walkowitz, 'City of Dreadful Delight: Narrative of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian London', Virago Press Ltd: London, 1992

What Does a Serial Killing Misogynist Look Like? Bundy vs Jack

How many times have we walked passed someone that for whatever reason sends a chill down our spine and causes us to act a bit more cautiously than usual? This has happened to me a few times. But how many of these times has the person been someone attractive and charismatic? The method to my madness is caused by a little research into the serial killer Ted Bundy. He is suggested to be "the most frightening of serial killers." Bundy was handsome, well eduacted and had a future in politics. He made himself seem harmless and vulnerable to women by faking a broken arm and having it in a sling. This leads me to question the physical characteristics of the ripper. Did he make these prostitutes feel at ease with him? Was he handsome? Did they let down their guard because he seemed harmless enough?

Like jack the ripper, Bundy was known for mutilating the bodies of his victims. His acts were so gruesome it made you wonder if he may be the reincarnation of the ripper. Bundy hit the women on the head with a blunt object, raped and sodomized them. He even admitted the keeping a body for necrophilia.

There are many similarities between Jack and Bundy when it comes to their disregard for female human life. It is obvious that they enjoy the brutal act of killing and more to the point hurting their victims. Their killings do not resemble killings that are based on power or superiority, they are based on the act of the kill. They get their thrill from the act of killing.

The main point I am trying to make is that predators are out there and we need to be more aware as women. Serial killers are not going to make themselves conspicuous or approach us and say "Hi i'm here to kill you." There are many serial killers like the ripper out there that have never been caught and are living amoung us. They may never be caught. After Bundy was caught his live in girlfriend and mother of his daughter was still convinced of his innocence. Was there someone in a similar capacity in Jack's life? We will never know.


http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/bundy/2.html

http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/tedbundy2.htm

http://journals.lww.com/advancesinnursingscience/Citation/1981/01000/Misogyny_and_Homicide_of_Women.7.aspx

The Who and Why of Serial Killers

It can be argued that serial killers and mass murderers have gradually increased in the last few decades, if we were to theorise like Sohail Khalit, the author of Myth of the Chosen One: The Psychology of Serial Killers. Theoretically, and I am inclined to agree that serial killers and mass murderers kill innocent strangers. Lunde, the psychiatrist featured in the above reference states that " the most important single contrast between mass murderers and murders of a single person is their relationship to the victims, the former killing strangers, the latter killing intimates." But what is the root cause for a serial killer to start killing. Khalit beleives that there are two groups of serial killers. If this is true then I beleive it is fair to think that there are potentially two types of triggers.

The first group of serial killers may have been adopted or grew up institutions or were brought up and abused by their parents. Henry Lee Lucas from Texas, who confessed to killing 300 people says that he grew up watching his mother doing sexual acts. She intentionally went into the room he was in and made sure he was watching her. Lucas states, "I got to hate it." The Boston Strangler, Albert De Salvo, was abused by his father. De Salvo and his mother were regularly beaten by his father.


The second group of serial killers grow up in loving, supportive families who are usually spoilt and over-indulged in their life. They are generally successful in school and have high values and ideals. The down fall comes when these ideals and values are shattered. This causes anger, resentment and revengeful people. Thus a serial killer is born.

Many consider serial killers to be mad. Mental Health professionals agrue that serial killers





generally do not show symptoms of mental illness, however, they suffer from Psychopathic Personality Disorder. There seems to be a link between murder, misogyny and masculinity. There is deep fascination with the jack the ripper imagery in popular culture. Serial murder serves to highlight the undesirability of any behavour for example, promiscuity, hemosexuality, abuse etc. Simply speaking serial killers tend to kill those who they think personify values they hate.



Which family structure was Jack the Ripper a part of? It is well documented that the police
suspected Jack was a medical man because of how he mutilated the bodies. Does this mean that Jack was a privilaged child from the second group? But why did he hate prostitutes? Could it be

that like many of his victims, his mother or the matriarchal figure in his life was cast out of the family and ended working on the streets? This could explain why he mainly killed prostitutes of a certain age and with certain physical characteristics. Food for thought.













http://books.google.co.uk/bookshl=en&lr=&id=rqlq1DGgJVQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=jack+the+ripper,+mysogyny&ots=vbQx_bCZ3f&sig=y8SoMuO3jrwzsOqP4EQj4-1U_Z4#v=onepage&q=&f=false



Khalid,S. (2002) Myth of the Chosen One: The Psychology of Serial Killers, White Knight Publications inc.

post 5]

http://http://www.feministing.com/archives/013734.html

According to this sourcePornagraphic and sexy images of women could be argued as one trigger that results in women's objectification. But the hand behind that trigger is what should really be questioned. It's not what's found in men's heads, because we all come into the world as a clean slate, but what's being ingrained into them. This is a very intersting argument because we learn about the world through images and language. The images of women in a pornagraphic setting are negative and that is one reason why men assume women are an erotic object of desire. The source did a research task where the brains of men were scanned. The findings were an interesting piece of information. It proves that there is a link between men who have seen pornagraphic images of women and how they view women as objects. In conclusion this then can lead to misogynistic violence towards women, however not all men who view pornagraphic images will result in being violent towards women.

Where Does Entertainment End and Misogyny Begin?

For many Misogyny is placed in a neat and tidy bow and tucked away. Whether it is labelled as religion, cultural beliefs or simply an expected way of life, is it something that should be accepted as a norm? Many people don't realise that a woman does not have to be killed, raped or beaten to feel a misogynistic blow. Turn on the television and watch the music videos and movies and even some adult cartoons (Family Guy). Many times women are degraded, in very skimpy clothes, gyrating to explicit lyrics. These lyrics are not always of a sexual nature, they at times refer to physical harm of women or should I say hoes and bitches.
http://www.progressiveu.org/misogyny_hiphop
http://feministblogs.org/tag/misogyny/




A prime example is Eminem's rap called Kim (his ex-wife) where he vividly goes through stages of violence against her culminating in her death. This sexist and misogynistic way of thinking and acting may reflect the values in our present society. Woman are seen as bitches, whores, sluts, tricks
etc. It can be argued that these lyrics are not meant to be taken literally. If that is so, why are these degrading labels used so frequently? Are these lyrics indicative of things that men would like to do to women?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-kat/eminem-mysogyny-and-the-s_b_211677.html







Why did the ripper clearly not follow the norms of society and hide away his hatred of women? Or like the more creative among us do, write a screenplay or a rap. Not because one thinks something means they have to act on it, what was his trigger? As there is no knowledge of who he really was, there is no profile into his family structure. We clearly can't start pointing the finger at his mother, who knows, she may have died in child birth. My point being, we can speculate all we want about the 'why'. I noticed that apart from all his victims being prostitues, all but his last victim had similar physical characteristics, around the same height and age, similar stature and and dark hair. Mary Kelly is the only one with blonde hair and blue eyes

and she was younger than the rest. What was it about her that caught Jack's eye?
Unlike the entertainment factory that we have these days that tells us exactly why these serial killers kill, we have no idea what made Jack tick besides his obvious distaste for whores. For publicised serial killers, where does the entertainment factor they produce end and their misogyny begin, is it one in the same? Meaning, are we all to some extent misogynists because we find these killers so facinating? Of course not, but that's something to think about.

post 4]

Alice, in Blackmail, is regarded as the first of Hitchcock's aberrant women, an idea more famously explored in later films such as Psycho(1960), Under Capricorn(1949) and The Birds(1963). Sylvia in Sabotage also fits into this mould
http://http://www.britishfilm.org.uk/article.php?art=hitchcock&page=4

'Misogyny and Sexual violence' towards women is a deep rooted issue. It is a psychological issue. Sexual violence towards women does not always stem from a man having had a negative relationship with his mother, even though that is usually the first assumption people come up with. For example the late film director Alfred Hitchcock was very misogynistic towards women and that is a prevalent motif in many of his films. As well as perverse relationships. There is evidence of this in films such as Psycho, Vertigo, Frenzy, Marnie. Often the woman is punished for being sexually deviant. A good example of this is when Marion is brutally murdered in the famous shower scene in Psycho. The reason for this is because she is often filmed naked in a bra and she has an affair with a married man, this is the first scene where we see Marion, therefore it could be argued that the spectator can never take Marion seriously because from the first scene we meet her she is a 'whore'.

post 3] meeting for next week 10

Unfortunately we are a member down as one of our members is in Hospital. However we have decided on a topic and we are very much looking forward to it. We will be involving Alfred Hitchcock and his work because he is known to be Misogynistic towards women and we hope to compare that with Jack the Ripper as the first ever known serial killer who was famous, even though his-her identity was never revealed. We as a group feel that there is a deep and disturbing reason why some men are misogynistic and some men attack women who are seen to be sexual deviants. There is a great deal of hatred for women in the Muslim world, apparently it is a woman's fault for being desirable, therefore she must hide behind the veil, inside the home or behind her husband. Many women are not allowed to travel without a husband or other male relative in some Muslim countries. If a daughter is born to a Muslim family the mother is blamed, even though we know it is the male who decides the sex of the unborn child. The reason why the female child is such a burden in many Muslim families is because they have to protect her virginity. If a Muslim woman is not a virgin then this stigma prevents her from being married. An unmarried Muslim woman is unthinkable in the Muslim world. There are plenty of other examples of sexism against women through the world, sexual violence against women stems from the negativity towards women around the world.http://http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/2004/12/muslims-misogyny-parenting/

post 2] Meet thursday 19th November at 12noon.

We need to meet to get started with the presentation work.

We have decided that it is best if we do the group presentation on Misogyny and sexual violence against women. This topic interests me the most and I think Jack the Ripper set the notion of the famous serial killer for others such as Peter Sutcliff who was named the Yorkshire Ripper, because he killed Prostitutes as well. There is a great deal to say about this topic and I think we will have a successful presentation. I'm hoping to involve the audience by asking them questions, the more the audience is involved I think the better.http://http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/arpornography/arpornography.html

This source argues that Critics of pornography do not argue that pornography is ever the sole direct agent in sexual violence. Instead, the discussion should be about the ways in which pornography might be implicated in sexual violence in this culture. This is at the heart of this debate, culture can play a huge part in how we percieve morality and what is right and what is wrong. We live in a free society where it is culturally acceptable to indulge in pornography and in one night stands. This is where some men get confused, in some popular cultural texts and films, the woman is seen to be saying 'NO' but her no means 'YES'. This is a real cause for concern because in a rape situation a woman could be saying 'NO' as a complete stop it now, however the man could assume that she is simply playing hard to get. There have to be clearer boundries and that way the confusion can come to an end.

We understand that pornography alone doesn't make men do it, but that pornography is part of a world in which men do it, and therefore the production, content, and use of pornography are important to understand in the quest to eliminate sexual violence.
The Industry

post 1]

We should do something on the Jack the Ripper films, however a lot has already been covered in the lectures. Therefore we will need to come up with something more detailed or fresh. Maybe we could make a short film as part of our presentation. We have now decided not to do anything directly about the Ripper films, although we will be discussing Alfred Hitchcock and his portrayal of women in his films. Hitchcock also made the film 'The Lodger'. This is one of Hitchcock's earlier films and it has many of the Ripper traits. For example the smoke in London, the cloak, the bag, the hat, and indeed the wrong man being accused, this has become a phenomenon because nobody actually knows the real identity of the Ripper and that is one of the reasons why the Ripper has lasted so long as an icon.http://http://www.charliebeckett.org/?p=30

Muslim misogyny and the media is a difficult subject to sum up because the mainstream media do not understand Islam and it causes many contradictions and therefore furthers the cultural gap. This then results in Muslim misogyny being let loose and the problems not being dealt with.

What Question Should We Do?

Our group started out with the aim of doing the film scenario, then we flitted toward doing the suspects question. In the end after much consideration we decided that it would be very interesting to do 'Down on Whores'. There is a broad framwork of where could go with the presentation. To be honest we can take the feminist view or look at it from a mysogynistic view point. It should be fun what ever we decide to do.