During my battle with COVID, the only thing I want to do is binge-watch Netflix shows. I’m a true-crime fan and any documentary about murderers usually catches my eye. Mr. Fox thinks I’m weird for watching these things, but it’s really about self-preservation. My theory is that being killed by a serial killer is one of the worst ways to die, so if at all possible, I want to learn how to identify one before falling victim to him. The problem is, it’s always the quiet nice guy next door that no one suspects, or in the case of “The Ripper,” everyone suspected him as a joke! I keep thinking there must be a common thread that links these psychos that can be discernable to the hapless victims, but, alas, I still haven’t cracked the code.
The Ripper is currently trending at number two on Netflix’s most popular shows list so I gave it a go. I had never heard of the Yorkshire Ripper and thought I was going to be watching a documentary on the original ripper, Jack. But it turns out there was a vicious copycat terrorizing Yorkshire women in the seventies.
The Ripper details the maddeningly long hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, who brutally murdered thirteen women between 1975 and 1980. The murders were gruesome, including disembowelments, multiple stabbings, and bludgeonings. Sutcliffe began his crime spree with four assaults. The second victim said she wished she had died in the attack rather than live through the awful trauma of being bludgeoned with a ball-peen hammer and slashed with a knife. After these assaults, Sutcliffe moved on to murder.
What follows is an almost comical manhunt by the Yorkshire police force. The description “poorly-handled” doesn’t even begin to capture the outright buffoonery of the police in this case. Because of their ineptitude, they were always looking for the wrong guy, having believed a fake tipster for years instead of following actual leads. Because it was the seventies, and the women’s lib movement was peaking, the feminists got rightly angry about the poor job the police were doing. They began to march in opposition all over the area demanding the right to walk safely at night.
Feminism means well in instances like these. At the time there was a madman prowling the streets looking for women out alone at night to butcher and the police were offering very little protection in the way of finding the culprit and instead were chasing down dead ends. The police were singularly focused on their belief that the killer was only after prostitutes. But several of the victims were not prostitutes and yet the police classified them as such because they were single mothers or were known to enjoy the nightlife. These misogynistic views about the victims led to much of the pushback from feminists, as it should have. Those police mistakes ruined their investigation and allowed Sutcliffe to kill without interference.
But the utopian scenario feminists were pushing made no sense at all: “There was a dark atmosphere at the university. You weren’t supposed to go out on your own, you had to carry an alarm, you had to watch where you were going, you had to watch what you were wearing. It felt like you were in prison to a certain extent.” The women felt they were being punished for the actions of the killer without recognizing that until he was caught, going out alone was like a death wish. The protesters shouted that women should be able to do anything they want, including walking alone at 2 a.m., drunk, without fear. I agree that would be nice, but it isn’t reality. Predators exist and in this case, there was one among them targeting lone women late at night!
Jeffrey Dahmer exclusively stalked males in gay clubs in Wisconsin and Chicago. If you fit the profile of the favorite prey of a local serial killer, precautions should be taken. Common sense would tell a person (not infected with feminism) to stay home or walk in groups until the threat had passed if you’re a target. A better idea would have been to train the women to pack heat and rid the streets of the Ripper for good. But feminists are never in favor of advocating for the great equalizer made by Smith & Wesson. In episode 3, “Take Back the Night,” protests popped up for a woman’s “right to walk the streets at night without fear.” “Men are confidently walking the streets of Leeds alone,” said one protester. “They can do so but women can’t. Why should women be asked to stay at home?”
Their concerns were valid, but instead of blaming the proper cause of their inability to walk safely alone, England’s anti-gun laws, they focused the blame on the claim that Suttcliffe would not have done what he did if not for the culture of “misogyny.” That’s a big assumption. Even the FBI doesn’t know what creates a serial killer but most of them share an inability to feel empathy and have a background of abuse, vanity, and a desire to create a sensation in the press, among other things. Misogyny may play a part, but there is no consensus on what makes a serial killer. Each one is different, and while sharing some traits, there is a wide array of motivations and influences that differ from killer to killer.
An interesting surprise was that many of the women in the protests blamed pornography. Today’s feminists are pro-porn. You would not find the kind of anti-porn signs and attitudes that the Yorkshire women held. The documentary skipped over that angle pretty quickly. FBI research about sexually-motivated killers says the majority of them “erotized violence during development. For them, violence and sexual gratification are inexplicably intertwined in their psyche.” Many sexually-motivated killers have had porn problems. Ted Bundy was one of them: “I’ve lived in prison a long time now. I’ve met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception, deeply influenced and consumed by addiction to pornography,” he said. Today’s feminists could stand to regain some of the skepticism their foremothers had about the effects of porn on women. It is far more harmful than any of them are willing to admit now.
The feminist chant of freedom at any cost actually led one proponent straight into the Ripper’s arms. (My one complaint about this documentary is that the director did a poor job of identifying the women speaking, so I must describe them instead of naming them.) Deeply influenced by the feminists’ demands for liberty, a blonde college student decided not to live in fear and walked home after a night out at the bar with friends. “I suddenly felt this absolute fear and then I heard his footsteps behind me and as I ran, the quicker the footsteps were, quicker and quicker behind me and all I felt was this massive blow to the head and the pavement coming up towards me,” she said. “I remember waking up in a hospital bed. [He] broke my jaw, fractured my skull cracked my eyebrow, [I had] puncture wounds to the back of the head, lots of cuts and bruises, massive swelling and bruising—it was really quite hideous.”
I’m sure at that moment she did not value the”right to walk the streets alone” over an intact body.
It would be wonderful if people everywhere were safe from murder and violence, but that isn’t the reality in which we live. Feminism led to that particular woman’s assault, not misogyny. It was the idiotic suggestion that women ignore safety precautions and act as if the right to walk alone, without taking the proper steps of arming yourself with a firearm, is so important that they would risk their very skulls for it. It’s simply dangerous for women to believe these things. Feminist ideas are not anchored in reality.
Another student interviewed on campus brought up self-defense classes that she knew were worthless against the Ripper. “We go to self-defense classes that teach you to kick…it’s no good against the Ripper, but there’s a lot of weird people around,” she explained.
What an unforgivable solution! Whoever offered self-defense classes for these women should be whipped if it gave any of the women a sense of security against a man like Peter Sutcliffe. No self-defense class prepares you for a fight with a hammer wielded by a psychopath. Only several bullets will stop a guy like that. But these women weren’t offered that solution and never demanded it. Perhaps that’s a cultural issue in England, but it’s one they should rethink. Instead, they focused their protests on societal misogyny, which does seem to have contributed to the failed investigation but would do nothing to keep them safer on the street.
The only kind of assurance a woman alone on a dark street at 2 a.m. can have is the kind that sits heavy in your pocket with the power to drop any man in his tracks. Even so, I still wouldn’t recommend walking alone in the witching hours unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. “Nothing good happens after midnight” is a motto my grandmother and mother passed down to me. Part of having liberty is utilizing wisdom regarding the proper time to exercise it. Restraint is a necessary and highly overlooked virtue for all successful human beings. When there’s a serial killer prowling your streets in the wee hours, that’s the time to stay in and lock the doors.
But modern feminism is anti-restraint in all areas of female behavior, including social and sexual. It leads to all kinds of problems for women who believe the fantasy of female empowerment through unrestrained impulses. Equality between men and women can never be achieved without the equalization of force potential. And even then, you might still have a battle on your hands. Women are not physically equal to men and never shall be. Recognizing that and dealing with it at the local gun shop is what separates feminists from conservative women. Women who value their lives and property recognize their physical limitations and invest in firearms. They also don’t go out at 2 a.m. unaccompanied or inebriated because they know that predators prey on the weakest members of the herd. Don’t be the slow gazelle who falls behind the pack. I wrote a book that addresses some of these issues for young ladies that should be required reading for all high school and college students. Here’s an excerpt:
Camille Paglia, my favorite feminist had this to say on the subject,”Misled by the naive optimism and ‘You go, girl!’ boosterism of their upbringing, young women do not see the animal eyes glowing at them in the dark. They assume that bared flesh and sexy clothes are just a fashion statement containing no messages that might be misread and twisted by a psychotic. They do not understand the fragility of civilization and the constant nearness of savage nature.”
Be smart, ladies. Don’t listen to feminists. They’ll get you killed.
