Handbook on Sexual Violence (71 page)

In her examination of law and masculinity Smart wrote that they are both

‘constituted in discourse and there are significant overlaps in these’. Consequently, ‘law is not a free-floating entity, it is grounded in patriarchy. .. ’:

This is not a simple reductive statement akin to ‘all law is man-made’, rather it is intended to draw upon an understanding of how the constitution of law and the constitution of masculinity may overlap and share mutual resonances.

(1989: 86)

Smart elaborates her analysis by applying the concept of phallocentrism, a term utilised to denote the way in which ‘the political-legal-cultural structure of modern societies is based on
masculine imaginary
’ (Hudson 2002: 34, original emphasis):

The term ‘phallocentrism’ invokes the unconscious and raises profound questions on the part that the psyche and subjectivity play in reproducing patriarchal relations. Phallocentrism attempts to give some insight into how patriarchy is part of women’s (as well as men’s) unconscious, rather than a superficial system imposed from outside and kept in place by social institutions, threats or force. It attempts to address the problem of the construction of gendered identities and subjectivities.

(Smart 1995: 78)

Meanwhile, in his definition of the concept ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as the dominant cultural form of masculinity, Connell noted that ‘despite the varieties of gendered performances available to social actors, in western society masculinity has a hegemonic quality that cuts across other social structures’, and as such, hegemonic masculinity ‘exerts its influence on all men in a society’:

At its core, hegemonic masculinity is based upon the legitimation of gender definitions that require the subordination of women to men and the subordination of non-hegemonic masculinities (for example, ‘sissies’ or ‘punks’) to the dominant form. For men, these definitions shape larger gender performances by enforcing a set of acceptable scripts through which they can establish and ‘prove’ their masculinity. Men constantly face the need to reinforce their masculine status as it is constantly policed by their peers.

(Connell in Mullins 2006: 9)

Within the context of Smart’s identification of ‘phallocentrism’ and ‘overlap’ between the law and masculinity, and Connell’s identification of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as the dominant form of behaviour to which men are under pressure to adhere, the fratriarchy between sexual murderers such as Peter

Sutcliffe and ‘ordinary’ men can now be explained. For example, in relation to the rape trial, Smart notes that ‘from the judge to the convicted rapist there is a common understanding’ about female sexuality (Smart 1989: 31). Put another way, regardless of which side of the law the men in the courtroom stand on, they all share the site of hegemonic masculinity, and from this site, ‘women’s bodies are sexualised terrain’ (Smart 1989: 38).

In applying this theoretical framework not only to individual men who engage in sexual murder, but also to police officers (as one aspect of Smart’s concept of law) working on the Sutcliffe case, and the wider male public including football fans, they can all be understood as sharing – albeit in various degrees – the same ideological and cultural terrain – that of hegemonic masculinity. In turn, this helps to explain why football fans were able to celebrate the Ripper’s ‘victory’, as well as why police officers made the same distinction between ‘innocent’ victims and those of ‘loose morals’ as Sutcliffe himself did:

How on earth, given their own attitudes on women and female sexuality, did the police expect to be able to recognise the killer if they came face to face with him? If, as they believed, the man was disgusted by prostitutes

– well, so were they. If he expressed disapproval of married women going to pubs without their husbands, or said he couldn’t stand women who drank too much, or remarked that women who went out alone late at night were no better than whores, would they really think something was wrong about this one and arrest him? Or would they dismiss him as an average bloke, the kind who can be found leaning on the bar in the local pub – not to mention the police pub – any night of the week?

(Smith 1989: 128)

In sum, when theorising sexual murder, the inclusion of Smart’s ‘overlap’ between law and masculinity, and the application of Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, exposes – indeed underlines – the normality and acceptance of male violence and misogyny. In turn, this reveals a wider context ‘which society tries to avoid thinking about’ – that ‘brutal killings such as Sutcliffe’s’ are merely one aspect of a widespread misogyny and culture ‘which encourages and supports a male sexuality based on violence and aggression towards women’ (Bland 1992: 252).

Asking for it: woman-blaming explanations of sexual murder

Not content with sins of omission in failing to ask why sex-killers are men, many writers go one step further and attempt to erase men altogether. Inevitably then, they focus on women: what do women do to get themselves murdered? How do we provoke the lust to kill?

(Cameron and Frazer 1987: 31)

The feminist claim that the crimes of sexual killers cannot be considered aberrant, but instead represent an extension of ‘normal’ masculinity, hence

such murderers bear a remarkable resemblance to the ‘ordinary bloke’, has not been embraced by phallocentric ‘expert’ knowledge. In this
section I therefore elaborate upon the theme of woman-blaming explanations – the ways in which either the murder victims themselves, or other women closely associated with the sexual murderer, are held responsible for these crimes within a culture where misogyny is taken as a given.

Woman-blaming explanations are not only proposed as part of the commonsensical framework frequently adopted within the genre of ‘true- crime’, they also feature as standard fare within legal expert knowledge. Thus, there are echoes of Smart’s overlap between law and masculinity in Bland’s analysis of the Sutcliffe case when she explores the various woman-blaming explanations put forward for his crimes during his trial:

For the prosecution, Sutcliffe was responsible for his actions in the sense of having
rationally
responded to the behaviour of certain women. These were: a prostitute who ‘cheated’ him of £5, his wife Sonia and... his mother. The fact that these women had acted to precipitate his behaviour, however, effectively
removed
his responsibility. For the defence, Sutcliffe was not responsible for his actions because he was acting under the delusion of experiencing a ‘divine mission.’ To the psychiatrists, this mission was ‘understandable’ in terms of the behaviour of certain women (again the cheating ‘prostitute,’ Sonia and his mother). In effect, these women were pointed to as the precipitators if not the cause of the Ripper’s actions.

(Bland 1992: 245, original emphasis)

Here Bland not only supported Smart’s overlap between law and masculinity

– it mattered not whether legal experts spoke on behalf of the defence or prosecution, they were united around the hegemonic belief that the women around Sutcliffe were at the root of his murderous behaviour – she also identified an additional overlap, that between law and psychiatry. Thus, within a phallocentric culture where hegemonic masculinity is the dominant form of masculinity to which men are expected to lend their support, it made perfect sense to medical experts that Sutcliffe considered himself to be on a mission to ‘clean the streets’ of prostitutes:
9

... in the case of Sutcliffe, as in many other cases of male violence against women, the language of law and psychiatry met in a common ‘understanding’ of Sutcliffe’s acts, in terms of
female precipitation
.

(Bland 1992: 244, original emphasis)

This common understanding is illustrated first, by medical evidence on behalf of the prosecution in relation to the incident of the ‘cheating prostitute’ which stated that it was a ‘ ‘‘perfectly sensible reason for harbouring a grudge against prostitutes’’ . . . providing ‘‘a perfectly common-sense motive . . . ’’ and second, by the legal opinion that this was ‘a classic case of provocation’. Killing prostitutes therefore:

was a reaction which . . . was not altogether surprising, the reaction of a man who had been fleeced and humiliated ... the sort of loss of control which you don’t have to be mad for a moment to suffer.

(Sir Michael Havers in Bland 1992: 246)

In short, legal and medical experts as well as Sutcliffe himself ‘– supported by the media and the police – all shared a common morality that killing prostitutes ‘‘made sense’’ ’ (Bland 1992: 246). This was particularly true in relation to the ‘cheating prostitute’ who had ‘humiliated’ him by short- changing him by five pounds, thus propelling him into killing 13 women and attacking another seven. As Bland notes, by that logic, ‘the ‘‘provocation’’ of a shopkeeper short-changing a man’ should prompt him to hate and kill all shopkeepers (1992: 246).

These various experts also agreed that Sutcliffe’s wife Sonia was a ‘key precipitator in the killings’ (Bland 1992: 246). This was due to her ‘difficult’ and ‘highly-strung’ personality, the symptoms of which included an insistence on the removal of outdoor footwear when entering the house and turning the TV off before serving dinner – behaviour patterns which ensured Sutcliffe was regarded as a ‘henpecked’ husband (Bland 1992: 247). This woman-blaming interpretation of Sonia’s behaviour confirms Kennedy’s observation that ‘nagging is seen as the female equivalent to violence’, hence violent male retaliation in response to it is understandable within phallocentric law, indicating that ‘the willingness to recognise the male experience is a reflection of the male nature of our courts’ (1993: 206, 205).

Finally, the stereotypical mother-hating explanation of sexual murder was also evident in this case, as when his mother’s ‘clinginess’ and over-reliance on her son were identified as being partly responsible for his murderous acts. As Caputi notes, this explanation fails to ‘wonder why little girls – overwhelmingly the actual victims of abuse by fathers and father figures – do not grow up to enact wholesale slaughters against men’ (1988: 86). Thus, far from explaining what makes sexual killers commit murder, such woman- blaming explanations reflect the wider culture within which this reasoning makes sense and seems plausible. ‘If they did not, they would make no sense, either to the murderer or to those he seeks to convince’ (Cameron and Frazer 1992: 365). A case in point, the discourse of the dominating/demanding mother as an explanation for sexual murder only ‘entered popular awareness in the 1950s and 1960s’ (
ibid
.: 364) via films such as
Psycho
. Since then it has been increasingly applied, regardless of whether it bears any resemblance to reality.
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It is therefore not surprising that sexual murderers like Sutcliffe employ such cliche´d explanations of their crimes, since they, like the rest of the population, have learned to utilise them ‘to justify their behaviour and ‘‘negotiate a non-deviant identity’’ for themselves’ (Cameron and Frazer 1992: 365). That these victim-blaming explanations take the particular form of holding the women responsible who are closely associated with the sexual murderer – including his victims – is no coincidence, for this is a crime ‘rooted in a system of male supremacy in the same way that lynching is based in white supremacy’ (Caputi in Cluff
et al
. 1997: 293). As such, they serve to

detract from the wider sexual politics of a culture within which expressions of sexual violence have become normalised and ‘the sexual criminal has become the epitome of masculinity, embodying the ideal of a patriarchal structure’ which is inherently misogynistic (Cluff
et al
. 1997: 300).

It is also an explanation which excludes the agency of sexual murderers.

However, as noted earlier in relation to women involved in sexual murder,
both
human agency
and
wider social factors within a heteropatriarchal culture are crucial components within analysis. This is because human beings
act
:

Human behaviour . . . is not determined by laws analogous to those of physics. It is not deterministically ‘caused’. It needs to be explained ... by interpretation of what it means and elucidation of the beliefs or understandings that make it possible and intelligible.

(Cameron and Frazer 1992: 368)

Thus, the arguments made so far have focused on a number of key themes regarding sexual murder identified in early feminist writing, including the history and normalisation of the sexualisation of violence which led to the recognition that the behaviour of men who engage in sexual murder is not an aberration from normal masculinity, but an exaggeration of it; hence the chapter has also highlighted the way in which sexual killers frequently share the same terrain of hegemonic masculinity with ‘ordinary’ men – including those who staff the criminal justice system and the media. In turn, these insights have led to a substantial feminist critique of woman-blaming explanations of serial murder, as well as of expert knowledge more broadly, by arguing that such explanations reflect – and only make sense within – an already deeply misogynistic culture. Focusing on the case of Steve Wright, who was found guilty of murdering five sex workers in 2008, I now explore what – if anything – has changed, in relation to these themes, since this pioneering feminist work was produced.

‘Misogyny is the theory, paying for sex the practice’:
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Ipswich 2006

Thirty years after the Yorkshire Ripper murders, it seems there is still no shortage of men who hate women.

(Smith 2008)

Twenty-seven years after the conviction of Peter Sutcliffe, Steve Wright was found guilty of the murders of five women whose remains were found within the Ipswich area in the autumn of 2006. All had worked as prostitutes to finance their drug dependency, and it was in this capacity that Wright had met the women. He was arrested only weeks after the bodies of the victims were found, suggesting an improvement in police efficiency compared with the bungled investigation of Peter Sutcliffe, who had been interviewed nine times by police before being arrested. Nor did investigating officers in the Ipswich case engage in crude distinctions or comparisons between sex workers and ‘respectable’ women. Indeed, when media headlines announced that ‘five