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Author Archives: gaby.torres
Posts: 3 (archived below)
Comments: 4
Hannibal the Cannibal
As I mentioned on a response to one of the blogs psycopathy has always been of my interest. Unlike the picture on the left and the Sex Offender Registry for instance, psycopaths don’t wear a tag nor do they list themselves anywhere as such.
According to Psycopathic Behavior, by Charles Montaldo, psychopaths are “generally cunning, manipulative and know the difference between right and wrong but dismiss it as applying to them, [they are also] incapable of normal emotions such as love.” On a more simplistic level psychopaths are characterized as charming, intelligent (at different levels of course), appear to be rational however egocentric, either antisocial or very outgoing, etc.
If there’s one person I automatically think about when I hear the word “psychopath” is Anthony Hopkins in the Hannibal Lecter series, specifically in The Silence of the Lambs. In this brilliant work Anthony Hopkins plays a “cannibalistic serial killer” who is taken into custody to help find another murderer; Buffalo Bill. Lecter is seen as pleasant, courteous, educated, incredibly patient not to mention intelligent, among other traits that are very hard to link with the image we get when we think of a mentally imbalanced person.
As I mentioned Lecter’s purpose is to help find Buffalo Bill. Clarice, an FBI agent that’s assigned to the case, is to get all the information she can from Lecter that would direct her to the murderer. As it turns out Lecter agrees to tell her about Bill if she shares information about her childhood with him, which she does although she’s previosly warned no to do so. Eventually, Clarice gets what she’s looking for thanks to Lecter, goes after the killer and the rest is history.
If you’d like to see Lecter in action Click Here.
**Warning: Brilliant but Bloody**
Nothing New Yokers can’t stomach tho (enter sarcasm here LOL). Enjoy!
Bad Girls
According to this article the number of female offenders seems to be on the rise. What’s interesting about this growing trend is that crimes committed by women tend to be more noticed than those committed by men independently from any other categories such as race, age, crime type, motive, etc.
One of the books mentioned in the article is Good Girls Gone Bad , by Susan Nadler in which the author interviews a few women prisoners and finds out that for the most part the interviewees seem to “fit into one of several categories.” These categories range anywhere from; acting out, snapping, addiction to obsession. But aren’t these the same categories for men? I would think so, however it’s been recorded that female offenders are harshly punished. In some cases even for crimes a lot less violent than those committed by males. Please note that I’m not trying to say they shouldn’t be punished, my opinion is simply that if someone breaks the law the punishment should be THE SAME regardless of the offender’s gender.
Another thing that’s important to understand and which the author of the book doesn’t touch on is, as Katherine Ramsland mentions, some women; in fact many women end up behind bars because they just simply couldn’t take it anymore. Abused wives, moms, girlfriends reach the same breaking point anybody else does after the abuse has gone a little too far. Whether the abuse is physical or not it NEEDS to stop at some point and when nothing else works violence seems to cut it.
Personally it is very bothersome how societies view women criminals. Instead of acting as if the world is ending because a woman is the victimizer, we must learn that purposely hurting another human being, regardless of who did it, it’s still an act of violence that should under no circumstances be tolerated.
Proven Racial Differences?
This piece is rather blunt and controversial but nonetheless interesting. The topic might be touchy for some so just please hang in there.
The book’s written by J. Phillipe Rushton who’s a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario and who argues that racial differences are indeed valid since they do exist and can be genetically proven.
The piece is based on comparisons made between the three major racial groups; Asians, Blacks and Whites, which are apparently supported by numerous amounts of studies performed. While Prof. Rushton touches on various differences among the groups the one that caught my attention the most was brain size (pgs 22-27).
The idea behind brain size is that as races evolved in separate parts of the world each one adopted a different strategy to survive and reproduce. As each method of survival and reproduction focused on different aspects, the brains developed differently; some bigger some smaller.
What’s awfully interesting about the size difference is that according to “a number of methods, including MRI [and IQ tests]” Orientals on average have the largest brains AND higher IQ scores, Blacks the smallest brains AND IQ scores and Whites fall somewhere in the middle for both categories. What’s even more fascinating is that these results are independent of body size!
As you can imagine Prof. Rushton has been heavily criticized for his findings. On one extreme he’s been called a racist, some people argue his references are bogus and have no scientific grounds and some others label his work as political propaganda while on the other end some people revere his work.
Posted in Assignment 1
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