Joan Marcus comes to terms with her childhood crush on Caligula, the Roman emperor famed for his cruelty:
In childhood I was conditioned early to empathize with suffering, and Caligula certainly suffered, but he was also dangerous; I suppose that combination was the real source of his seductive power over me. Volatility without pathos wouldn’t have moved me. A man who dominated without showing some vulnerability would have been repulsive, and a gentle soul who got crushed to a pulp would have been pathetic. It was the wounded man simmering with barely-contained energy that fascinated me — passion or violence, it all felt the same.
This is the same quality, I imagine, that draws some women to incarcerated killers — that they smolder, chastened by the system and in need of sympathy.
Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez both had flocks of groupies. As of this writing, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dhokhar Tsarnaev has thousands of fans on social media sites, many of them young women, many thoroughly smitten. Behind bars these men are immobile love objects, captives suffering bravely under the weight of justice.
Perhaps their fans imagine them wrongly accused, or remorseful, or working through the trauma of childhood. Perhaps, in some strange way, they believe them to be empathetic. These are men who know suffering intimately and would relate to our own. They hate the power structures that hurt them but could share a deep bond with an insightful woman if only they had the chance. News outlets provide plenty of images to feed this fantasy. That aerial shot of nineteen-year-old Tsarnaev shortly after his capture, the one where he’s on the ground face up with his arms locked behind and his abdomen exposed, that’s wounded man porn right there, grist for all those girls who confuse pity with love and violence with passion.
The Dish 