Several months ago, Dirge Magazine published a piece I wrote on the Tumblr communities of women who are sexually obsessed with violent killers. Falling into the topic was a harrowing and challenging experience, but many readers took the new information and demanded more. The desire to understand the things that make us uncomfortable is understandable, if a bit unsettling, when that desire may be what sparks this particular paraphilia in the first place.
Last week the Aurora, Colorado theater shooter, James Holmes, was found guilty to the surprise of no one. It seemed like a good time to revisit the Tumblr communities and reach beyond to other communities that had “fallen for” Holmes and supported him and his mother throughout the trial. Imagine my surprise when Slate published an article about the “Holmies” – and imagine my disappointment when the article’s author relied on sexist stereotypes and then spoke with authority using what appeared to be the effort of five minutes searching Google for a topic she’d never researched before.
From the first, Hess subtitled her piece, “What happens when James Holmes fangirls grow up,” which is immediately dismissive and infantilizing. What she calls, “a couple dozen women and a few men who convene on Tumblr (which skews younger), and Facebook (where there’s a more maternal vibe)…” is actually a sprawling community that is present on all popular social media websites – and includes women of all ages.
Rather than read the posts to get a feel for it, she instead classifies the women into two groups: silly school girls and mother-types. The mother-types are never spoken of again. That particular sexist trope isn’t lurid enough for Slate’s brand of half-assed clickbait “journalism.” Instead, she focuses on making all the hybristophiliacs sound like tittering preteens who just need time to “grow up.”
Hess uses phrases like “offensive crush” to describe the fandoms, and sorts the hybristos into yet another two groups: fly-by-nighters who become obsessed with “any white boy with a haircut” and immediately move on or disappear, and the stoic advocates that “grew up inside” the Holmes fandom.
She claims that there are no Tumblr communities for Jaylen Fryberg (a Native American school shooter) or Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho. Fryberg’s press was overwhelmed with arguments about feminism, misogyny, and racism (after Native children started getting threats). There are some mentions of him in the hybristophilia community, but they are relatively few.
Seung-Hui Cho, on the other hand, has an easily-searched tag that overflows. There is fan art, defenses of his mental state, photos of flowers on his grave, a woman wondering how big his dick was, and quotes from his poetry. His name and picture appear on multiple lists of “favorite” mass/spree killers. Images of him with guns and a tough attitude are idolized much like “the king of sass,” TJ Lane.
If Hess had done the research she claims – reading up on the Lanza fans, Laneatics, and Dylann Roof fangirls, she would have seen his name and photo over and over again. Even the more old-fashioned Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer fangirls seem fond of him.
Despite the white boys getting a hell of a lot more press, the hybristophiliacs latched onto Cho and didn’t let go. The reason? These women are attracted to a body count – not a haircut, not a race, not a physical type. They crave violence. That’s why Cho got attention, that’s why Dzhokar Tsarnaev got attention. Even Osama Bin Laden has a sexy meme floating around Tumblr. Whatever Hess was reaching for with the “only white boys” angle, she fell short.
She combines true crime fanatics with hybristophiliacs, making her claim that these communities seem to spontaneously erupt whenever a man perpetrates a mass killing seem true. The problem is, the true crime communities and the hybristophilia communities are not the same. Though some hybristophiliacs also call themselves fans of true crime, the true crime communities actively reject them and resent being associated with them.
Just because a criminal’s name is used as a tag, it does not mean the person using it is obsessed, or attracted to that criminal. Mass murderers and serial killers make the news; people on social media discuss the news.
There are hardcore fans of every major serial killer and mass murderer from Dahmer to the Boston Bombers. Because hybristophilia is sexual in nature, the women in these communities do obsess over any new guy with a high body count, but they don’t leave their old flames behind when they do. While many of the “Holmies” have focused on saving Holmes – campaigning for an insanity ruling and wanting him to have, “the help he needs,” the community around them is much more blatant.
In my first piece on hybristophilia I shared memes and images from the hybristophilia hashtag that have things on them I won’t repeat out loud (and I work here, so think about that).
Perhaps the most glaring sign Hess didn’t do much research beyond a casual googling is her interpretation of the Columbine fans. She writes:
“Columbiners, who converged into a sizable fandom more than a decade after the event, are responding more to the mythology than to the killing itself: The widespread media panic stigmatized every teenager who wore black or listened to Marilyn Manson, so modern outcasts are now finding points of identification with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.”
This is based on a single interview with a girl who turned in a couple of kids who were planning a school attack. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the Tumblr #hybristophilia tag has stumbled on Sex and Crime All The Time – a blog that focuses on graphically violent and sexual confessions from hybristophiliacs.
Not only do these women show a clear understanding that the mythology was manufactured, they’ve read the journals of Klebold and Harris and likely know more about them than anyone in the media. As for identifying with them as outcasts – sure. But they also write things like this:
This:
And this:
I made the same mistake as Hess when I started reading about hybristophilia. I assumed that the women obsessed with violent men were only obsessed with the dead ones – the men whose violence came before their time – the safe ones. The “mythology.”
These confessions tell a different story – one that doesn’t mesh with Hess’s image of giggling school girls or “maternal” women. Hybristophilia isn’t a passing fancy; it’s a real, intense paraphilia that often leads to sexual dysfunction. You can read about women who have to fantasize about fucking a mass murderer or being raped by a serial killer to have an orgasm during sex – or don’t even bother with sex because their masturbation fantasies of blood and gore get them off – but sex won’t.
Her portrayal of Holmies shutting down their blogs and “growing up” is a misleading one as well. The day he was found guilty, I was on Tumblr, following his tag. There may have been some women who closed up shop or “snapped out of it” upon hearing he was guilty, but the vast majority were sad but stalwart in support of Holmes and his mother. Several bloggers addressed letters of support to Arlene Holmes, sending “virtual hugs,” “prayers,” “support,” and assuring her that someone was paying attention to the truth. The Holmies who consider themselves activists believe there is more work to be done in keeping Holmes from the death penalty.
The Holmies who consider themselves activists aren’t the only Holmies, though. The following confessions don’t sound like teenage girls with sympathy for mental health issues who fell for big blue eyes:
Hess’s dismissal of the community as silly girls who “decorate their blogs in Swastikas but have nothing to say about Hitler” (regarding Dylann Roof, who, despite her claims, doesn’t have the kind of popularity in hybristophilia communities that other, non-racist killers have) isn’t just sloppy journalism, it’s dangerous.
By painting the women with this particular paraphilia as emotional girls or maternal mother-figures we dismiss the true cost. As I mentioned above, for many women, hybristophilia robs them of the ability to have normal romantic relationships and makes satisfying sex difficult. For other women, the obsession is deeper. Known as “Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome,” one form of hybristophilia is characterized by a desire to be a part of the violent behavior – this desire is illustrated throughout the hybristophilia tags.
The community has been made insular by necessity. After so many people have attacked and abused them, unable to contain their disgust at this phenomenon, the hybristophiliacs don’t talk to journalists or answer questions from outside the community. They rely on one another for support, answers to questions, and an idea of what is “normal” for women with this paraphilia. Continued misunderstanding of what they are about – painting them as disgusting or childish – will not pull these women into the open. It won’t make them “grow up.”
Further alienation and insulation will only ensure that the women with the darkest desires only interact with others who encourage their urges (whether on purpose or otherwise) and keep our understanding of this phenomenon sparse.
