The Lust to Kill: A Feminist Investigation of Sexual Murder

The Yorkshire Ripper, the Boston Strangler, "Beasts", "Monsters" and "Fiends"...these are popular labels for men who commit a particular kind of violence and murder the objects of their sexual desire. This is a systematic, critical analysis of sexual murder and its relation to the question of gender. The authors examine a wide range of literature which deals with sexual murder - from criminology and the sociology of deviance to popular journalism and lurid paperbacks. They argue that these accounts fail to address the question of gender: the absence of women in the ranks of sex-killers is both taken for granted and obscured. They argue that this ignorance of gender cannot be dismissed as a trivial oversight. An account of sexual murder which does not address gender is not merely incomplete but systematically misleading. This book attempts to transform the popular fascination with sexual murder into a powerful analysis of how the construction of sexuality in the West has eroticized violence, power and death. It is intended for university students in criminology, sociology, women's studies and cultural studies, as well as a general readership interested in feminism and sexual violence.