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Being a serial killer requires taking risks. Women, in comparison to men, are more risk-averse.
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Suicide attempts are between two and four times more frequent among females. Researchers have partly attributed the difference between suicide and attempted suicide among the sexes to males using more lethal means to end their lives.
How are you suppose to succeed in killing others when you can't even kill yourself?
(semi-unserious answer) women listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, thus know what pitfalls caused other serial killers to be discovered and know how to avoid that.
Women just don't seem to gravitate towards the career path.
That sounds like inequality! We should create programs to help introduce them into this male dominated field. /S
I frequently see the statistic that men commit something like 90% of homicides, but then you'll notice that the clearance rate for homicide in this country is below 50%. makes you wonder
Maybe this means we need more female detectives.
Not a scientist by any means, but this article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3767421/) says men have a 3:1 difference in the rate of Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Another: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3920596/
There is compelling evidence from behavioral genetic research that heritable influences are of importance in the development of antisocial behavior; approximately 50% of the total variance in antisocial behavior is explained by genetic influences. Yet, there is also evidence of a large environmental effect, both shared and non-shared environmental influences have been found to explain the remaining half of the variance.
Obviously I don't mean to suggest that everyone with ASPD is a serial killer, it presents in a number of ways, but it's hard to imagine a serial killer without some sort of disregard for the value of life. This is probably one of many factors that tilt the scale toward violence being much more associated with men.
I'd also say the very nature of physically overpowering a person, and/or subduing them to possibly move them to a more convenient location lends itself more to men. I dont think many women can physically overpower another person in a life and death struggle, my spitballed guess is that female serial killer personality types tend to use more indirect or subtle means.
Angels of death come to mind as a more commonly female killer variety.
This is true for serial killers in general though. Murders tend to be premeditated. If you are planning a murder you'll look for ways to maximize your success and minimize the chance of getting caught. In modern times you don't have to rely on pure strength; there's a plethora of workarounds from drugs to guns. The actual desire to end a human life (usual enabled by some form of psychopathy) is the limiting factor. A serial killer personality type doesn't throw the towel just because they are physically weak.
Guess what I'm saying is: there isn't a large contingent of women out there that would suddenly turn serial killers if they were to physically become stronger.
Unfortunately in our society women don't get enough opportunities. If we truly care about equality we should be supporting women who want to become serial killers, help them break through that glass ceiling.
Click here to donate to Girls in STEM (Serial Torture, Execution, Murder)
Sorry to be pedantic but its actually STEAM now that Arson is considered hot girl shit.
Lucy Letby, Beverley Allitt, Heather Pressdee, Reta Mays, Kimberly Saenz.
Female serial killers are more likely to be nurses, I guess.
Are you watching to much ID tv?
That makes sense. Men are more likely to have the ability to overpower their victims, so nursing would give women a leg up in that regard.
Dr Harold Shipman, The Grindr Killer.
Jeffrey Dahmer was so overwhelmingly strong and manly, I firmly believe a woman would not be physically able to do what he did. /s
This is not just modern age, this is how it has been for as long as our knowledge reach back. Women are less prone to violence than men.
Some say testosterone makes men more aggressive, but the problem is that the difference in aggressive behavior can be observed before sexual hormones kick in.
Another possibility could be social structures.
This article says there are 2 theories:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/roots-aggression
One being male competition for reproduction, and the other social.
Problem is IMO, that it doesn't swing with behavioral studies of children, that to me seem to exclude both as the fundamental course for higher male aggression and tendency towards violence.
Seems to me it goes deeper, yes we do have competition for reproduction, but so do women, and women can be quite competitive and aggressive about it too, but generally in a less violent way.
A third more likely possibility IMO, is that in a society where mankind consisted of small nomadic groups, the men had a role of protecting the group, while women protected the children.
This role for the male, needs the male to be less prone to fear of consequences of violence, giving the ability to confront danger, where women protecting the children were probably more prone to evade danger.
So yes you could say it's based on a social role, but that role is not just learned, it's a genetically encoded social role, that is then reinforced by social structure and hormones. Obviously women have the ability to take the role if needed, because we are sentient beings with ability to learn traits.
Now there is a curiosity in that women have actually become relatively MORE prone to violence for the past 50 years. And the above hypothesis does not explain that.
As I see it, there must be new factors playing a role that did not exist previously. I suspect it could be an increase of man made hormone like chemicals in the environment, that influence our behavior.
Not refuting this at all, or claiming to be schooled on the topic, but also consider success rate. It could also be that women are less successful at physically destroying another human
Being that several statistics show higher rates of assaults in all women's prisons then men's, it would fit. Men are physically able to kill each other easier, but women do start physical altercations more than we like to admit.
In your third option, why would the men protect the group and the woman protect the children?
Women were functionally disabled by having children, spending a significant amount of time either pregnant, or breastfeeding. This makes them the natural parent to focus on raising children. Also, in nature, losing 1 parent has a relatively minor drop in survival chances compared to losing 2.
This ends up with men being more "disposable" than women. If 1 group needs to flee with the children, while the other holds off an attack, it's most sensible for the men to defend. The women would provide a final line of defence.
I would like to add that it is beneficial for us as a species to lose men over women. Losing all but a few woman can mean the death of that society, whereas that's not true for men, as men have a much higher capacity to generate multiple offspring. I.E. If you have 50 men and 2 women the capacity to bulk the population is greatly limited, if it were 50 women and 2 men, you could effectively double the population within a year. This means it makes way more sense to let men die off over women from a species survival standpoint.
This also massively effects the risk/reward balance. Ultimately, a woman's ability to have children is limited by her biology. The limit on men is FAR higher.
For women, once they hit the resource requirements to support 2 dozen children, there was relatively little real gain. A successful man could (in theory) have hundreds of children. Genghis khan being the most egregious example. Taking large risks for large gains makes sense for men, in a way that just doesn't for women.
Good question.
It's a thing that evolved among humans over millions of years. Men evolved bigger stronger muscles, because women are more vulnerable during pregnancy, and infants need their mother to survive.
Making men more available for the more dangerous task of protection and hunting.
So by the numbers, we evolved those roles, because it improved chances of survival for the group.
Males are more aggressive, because it actually help the group to survive short term attacks and hunting for food, and women are on average more cautious because that helps infants and the group survive long term.
It all boils down to survival of our ancestors.
If they are vulnerable during pregnancy, why wouldn't the woman evolve stronger muscles? Then they could also make the men care for infants. I guess suckling would still be a woman thing but that doesn't take the whole day right.
Being pregnant takes lots of caloric energy, and is an inherently vulnerable time.
Not saying women are less, just saying calories are being spent, energy is being focused. Many pregnant women have accomplished insane thing and overcome incredible hardship during their term.
Pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding. The bonds formed during these times would mean mothers to be more likely to safeguard the child than assault an aggressor with reckless abandon.
Wouldn't safeguarding mean they still need to attack an aggressor?
I don't really buy any of the hunter gatherer stuff, but in this idea a man can't breatfeed a child, so given a threat the man should go out, and the mother stay with the child. Either could do the defending, but only one can do the mothering.
You are 100% right, the downvote must be some creationist.
Yes obviously there are women serial killers too, I never claimed there isn't, I just claimed women are less prone to violence, which is a damned hard statistical fact.
Well, truth is that nobody knows.
There's just not enough information available for anyone to have a reliable predictor of what will make someone become a serial. There are definitely the common things among serials, but they aren't always present, and aren't present in every serial. You know, the whole animal torture/killing thing, escalating lesser crimes, etc.
So it's impossible to know why more serials are men since we don't even know why anyone goes serial in the first place. There's not even definitive proof that the percentage of women serial killing represents all of them, or just the ones that got caught. For all we know, the numbers could be the same, and women are just better at getting away with it.
So, there's not really an answer to the question, though there are theories.
The two theories I ran across that were the most convincing are that "triggering" whatever it is that makes people become serials is more likely to occur with men; and that there may be some linkage to the differences in hormones and brain development that go back to the womb. There's also the idea that it's both of those in conjunction, which seems more likely that it being only one of them.
it’s impossible to know why more serials are men
I disagree, it's part of a pattern where men are generally more violent than women.
For all we know, the numbers could be the same, and women are just better at getting away with it.
No this is not likely, since serial killers are generally caught, it's very difficult to hide multiple killings.
No this is NOT a possibility, since serial killers are generally caught.
As far as we know / hope. I bet a lot more get away with it than we'd think, though probably less than ever with modern tech / surveillance etc.
The thing with serial killing, is that it is very difficult to hide.
Some of the hardest cases can be for instance a nurse at a hospital killing in a way that appear natural.
But even that gets detected quicker than you would think, because while 1 killing can be a fluke death, already at 2 killings, it can throw off the statistics and cause an investigation. With 3 it's almost impossible the incidents can't be tracked back to the person who did it.
An other situation can be a woman who kill their husband for inheritance, and then does it a second time. That second time is usually enough for alarm bells to sound for families of the deceased. Resulting in more thorough police investigations.
Obviously it can happen they get away with it, but I'm confident, that by far the most serial killers are caught, because it's insanely difficult to hide multiple killings.
because it’s insanely difficult to hide multiple killings.
Which is why serial killers have tended to pick on the lowest members of society. Gay men and prostitutes just going off of Dahlmer and Jack the Ripper come to mind, but it's a common theme. Less common is something like BTK going after whole families and he nearly got away with it but for a stupid mistake, I think, with metadata on a floppy disk. But we're in agreement that it's hard to pull off I just think the numbers would be larger than we'd expect etc etc.
This is just survivorship bias right? The ones that get caught are hard to hide. That's part of why they got caught.