Why Women?

[Guest]

I have been briefly searching through articles and different pages on this site and am having a hard time finding why Jack killed who he did. I was just curious as to WHY it was women and WHY it was prostitutes. Help?

[lynn cates]

quickies

Hello Biz. 2 quick reasons.

First, men are often physically stronger and hence more challenging than women.

Second, prostitutes were more likely to go along with a man to a dark area. They really needed quick money.

I put psychological reasons (Freudian items) in brackets.

The best.
LC

[babybird67]

why indeed?

why does anyone kill anyone else? We can't ask 'Jack' so we can only surmise. It seems that whoever Jack was he found a sexual thrill in murder...he targets women, for sexual reasons, i would imagine...i definitely see the killer as a heterosexual male, for this reason. He cuts away or mutilates their sexual organs...the very aspects of their bodies which make them female...was there a furious conflict within his pyschology of desire for women and yet simultaneously a deep-seated hatred of them? I would conjecture so, myself.

Why prostitutes? My own view is that they were available...they were the women who would be out on their own, vulnerable, easy to approach and to 'solicit', since they were no doubt 'soliciting' customers of their own. Simply, they were a less risky target than other women. Perhaps, also, it was easier in his warped mind to hate such 'immoral' women? Who really knows, when it comes to motivation and choice of victim...i personally think choice usually becomes reduced to opportunity...that a killer may set out seeking a certain type, but if the opportunity presents itself in a form he or she had not intended, i doubt they would turn it down.

It is tragic to me that so many people seem to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and there really is no more explanation of their murder other than those terribly sad facts. When i think of this, the random nature of some of the murders i have looked it, it really troubles and disturbs, and, yes, frightens me.

Man* has a dark side indeed, that doesn't bear too close an inspection at times.

What do you think, yourself?

Jen

* Man = humanity...not being sexist, but the rhythm of my sentence would have changed with any other word!

[lynn cates]

wise

Hello Babybird. Your dictum:

"Man* has a dark side indeed, that doesn't bear too close an inspection at times."

is quite wise. It is worth the price of admission.

Cheers.
LC

[babybird67]

thanks Lynn

it's not often i get called 'wise' so thanks for your kind comment!

Jen

[Cap'n Jack]

Personally I find it highly irritating that many folks appear locked in a box on this subject, and because of intense conditioning and learnt inclination are unable to peer beyond the accepted 'norm' of classifying the Whitechapel Murderer as some kind of 'sexual' monster with an entirely 'sexual' motive, when there is not even a damp patch anyway to suggest that he was.
Well I have an inclination to believe that the Whitechapel Murderer would not have restricted himself entirely to women, especially as 'sexual' objects, and especially with some kind of obscure 'sexual' motive.
I think here on the train that arrived late at night at Aldgate Station in 1888 and the guard on checking the carriages found a man quite dead with his throat slit from ear to ear. The dead man had entered the carriage at the previous station and the journey had taken less than four minutes. He was apparently alone in the carriage.
The authorities assumed it must have been suicide.
Just as the 'authorities' today assume that the Whitechapel Murderer exclusively targeted prostitutes because he was a 'sexual serial killer'.
Pants I say, and I'd like to know who's wearing em.

[babybird67]

AP

AP

Making a simplistic connection between any murder with a slit throat and Jack the Ripper whilst ignoring the wealth of evidence the killer himself left behind, along with the views of the doctors and Police officials, both at that time, and since, which clearly suggests that his motives were indeed sexual, demonstrates just how frail the grasp is that you have on the case.

[perrymason]

I believe that AP may well have something there. My answer for this question is that we can only say for certain that it was important that at least ONE canonical was a woman ......based on the ONLY female gender organ taken complete.

No signs of "connection", no signs of solitary pleasuring, no signs that he took any great interest in the female body exposed......and thats saying something considering we are talking the Victorian period and ankle length everything....even the tables had skirts

There is a strength and ability to resist factor that is present in the Canonicals, but only if he was a serial killer of women.

In one Ripper letter I believe he intimates he will kill a boy near Bradford,...and during these crimes a young boy was indeed killed in Bradford, cut in half, and stuffed into a barrel, with his boots facing his chest.

If we stop looking for a serial killer of the five women mentioned in the Canonical Group and instead look for like minded killings of people.....who knows what we might find.

All the best

[Mascara & Paranoia]

I'm with BB67 on this one; I think the Ripper was a heterosexual man who got some kind of sexual gratification out of what he did. Just because there wasn't any traces of semen at any of the crime scenes doesn't mean that he wasn't aroused at the time. That said, given the amount of time and privacy he had, I would've thought that there would have been bodily fluids found in the room in Millers Court if the Ripper got off on mutilating. Then again, we have no idea how he alleviated himself in that way or what his sexual preferences were, so he may have still been sexually high without having masturbated at the crime scene.

[Nell Lance]

I agree with perrymason If I were to look outside the C5 for Jack victims, I would also look at those unfortunates who were outside, sleeping in doorways and "street urchins" who'd nobody would miss and even the odd old gran or pop sleeping in their bed with a window open


Nell Lance

[Cap'n Jack]

Thank you Nell & Michael
if we just take one side of the argument from those who would have Jack as a sexual serial killer, that being he preyed on women/prostitutes because they were weak and vulnerable targets.... then hang on a minute, for Catherine Eddowes had just finished working the hop season down in Kent, hard and exhausting manual labour, and then walked the eighty miles back to London. And what about Mary Kelly, a fit and feisty young minx who I reckon would have given any man a good slapping in the pub any day.
But no, they were weak and vulnerable victims of a sexual serial killer.
Tosh.

[caz]

Well, Cap'n, you make one of my points for me. I don't actually think the reason Jack didn't kill men in Whitechapel had anything to do with them being physically bigger and stronger than women. The suggestion (made by someone else) that lady killers would do the same to men if only they could, only holds up if all the men who target men are great strapping specimens, which I don't think is the case at all. Nilsen, for one, always looked to me like a fresh breeze would have knocked him over. The element of surprise is probably all that was needed.

Personally I find it highly irritating that many folks appear locked in a box on this subject, and because of intense conditioning and learnt inclination are unable to peer beyond the accepted 'norm'...

But if the killer was also hampered with a poor, confused and deeply irrational mind, then he too may have been locked in his own box on the subject of men being required to overpower women - quite unable to peer beyond the accepted 'norm' of a woman's place in Victorian society. That said, I can see such confusion extending to the children in that society too, expected to be seen but not heard, in which case he may finally have got up the courage to go for that poor boy in Bradford. But if so, I’d say Jack was also sexually confused and resentful as hell, and very possibly with bi-sexual leanings.

There are far too many examples of men who killed only women (Christie, Cummins, Sutcliffe, Bundy, West, Wright - I could go on), or men who killed only men (Nilsen, Dahmer, Ireland, Papazian), for me to conclude that Jack wasn’t choosy about gender when he went out with his knife. If he killed the boy, it was because he had a mind to kill a boy at that time, when previously he had only thought of picking on a woman each time.

There are many very obviously sexual cases, but just as it's a mistake to presume they are all about sex, it may equally be a mistake to dismiss sex completely from a series of male-on-female crimes like this one. It was still a likely biological by-product, especially if a power kick was involved, even if it played no conscious part in the killer's motivation. In fact, if Jack got a very unwelcome stiffy when attacking his first unfortunate, it may have confused and disgusted him so much that he took it out on another and another. He could have presumed it must be sexual when it could have been a purely physical reaction to how he felt with life and death in his hands.

Love,

Caz
X

[FrankO]

Personally I find it highly irritating that many folks appear locked in a box on this subject, and because of intense conditioning and learnt inclination are unable to peer beyond the accepted 'norm' of classifying the Whitechapel Murderer as some kind of 'sexual' monster with an entirely 'sexual' motive, when there is not even a damp patch anyway to suggest that he was.

Why, AP, should there be any damp patch anywhere? Even though the Ripper may not have been interested in performing any sexual act with the women he slaughtered, his act may very well have been against prostitutes or women in general, which still makes it sexual.

However, the fact remains that he very likely attacked 3 women in the streets, lifted their skirts and spread their legs to focus what he found there, and that nearly every feminine part of the only woman who was killed indoors was attacked.

To counter that, there’s no male victim who ever received the same sort of treatment, or even anything close to it. Or at least, none that we know about today, which really boils down to the same.

But perhaps his motive was ‘revenge on the opposite sex’ rather than purely sexual.

Kind regards,
Frank

[ghoulstonstreet]

Not A Mystery

why does anyone kill anyone else? We can't ask 'Jack' so we can only surmise. It seems that whoever Jack was he found a sexual thrill in murder...he targets women, for sexual reasons, i would imagine...i definitely see the killer as a heterosexual male, for this reason. He cuts away or mutilates their sexual organs...the very aspects of their bodies which make them female...was there a furious conflict within his pyschology of desire for women and yet simultaneously a deep-seated hatred of them? I would conjecture so, myself.

Why prostitutes? My own view is that they were available...they were the women who would be out on their own, vulnerable, easy to approach and to 'solicit', since they were no doubt 'soliciting' customers of their own. Simply, they were a less risky target than other women. Perhaps, also, it was easier in his warped mind to hate such 'immoral' women? Who really knows, when it comes to motivation and choice of victim...i personally think choice usually becomes reduced to opportunity...that a killer may set out seeking a certain type, but if the opportunity presents itself in a form he or she had not intended, i doubt they would turn it down.

It is tragic to me that so many people seem to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and there really is no more explanation of their murder other than those terribly sad facts. When i think of this, the random nature of some of the murders i have looked it, it really troubles and disturbs, and, yes, frightens me.

Man* has a dark side indeed, that doesn't bear too close an inspection at times.

What do you think, yourself?

Jen

* Man = humanity...not being sexist, but the rhythm of my sentence would have changed with any other word!

99% of serial killers' victims are women and Jack started it by becoming a media darling. This type of murder is fallout from that part of the male mind which melds sex with killing. We know this happens but we don't know how or why it happens. It seems to be associated with aggression, which all animal mammals need to force intercourse on the female of the species. The human mammal seems to sometimes confuse the issue by melding aggression, sex and blood lust.

[caz]

That's very well put, ghoulish.

One word from me: testosterone.

(And I don't mean the triangular shaped Swiss chocolate.)

Love,

Caz
X