Bad Criminal

There are many types of sexual disorders from dendrophilia (literally translating to “love of trees”),  objectophilia (emotional desire towards specific inanimate objects, oculolinctus (licking the eyeballs), vampirism (attraction to or involving blood), and even necrophilia (attraction to corpses). You can literally look up lists of all the strange things that people are sexually attracted to.  Bonnie and Clyde, the epic duo, even have a syndrome or sexual paraphilia named after them. Hybrisophilia, defined by sexologist Professor John Money is described as “the sexual arousal and pleasure from having a sexual partner who is known to have ‘committed an outrage or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery’” (Griffths). People with this disorder often focus their attention on someone who has been imprisoned and in most cases they urge the object of their affection to commit crimes. 

Bonnie and Clyde

Have you ever wondered how those creepy serial killers who are imprisoned get a fan club and have all these women throwing themselves at them (even though these women are well aware of the fact that these men kill)? In some cases of hybrisophilia, the person with this disorder will contact someone already in prison who they do not know but may have only seen in the media. 

“High profile murders and serial killers that are known to have received sexual fan mail include Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramierez, and Ted Bundy” (Griffths).

Unlike most other paraphilias, hybrisophilia is more common in women than it is in men but it also varies in “disposition and degree” (Griffths). The women with passive hybrisophilia are the women who fed the prison fan mail services, they have a desire to be with someone who has committed crime but not actual commit crime themselves. They put themselves in “positions to be seduced, manipulated and lied to by the people they fall for” (Love Arthistory).  Their counterparts, the aggressive hybrisophilia, the ones who help their mates commit crimes (the actual Bonnie and Clyde). The only thing that is common between both passive and agressive hybrisophiliacs are that they both tend to be in abusive or unhealthy relationships. 

It’s not really known as to why this sexual paraphilia even exists or how it came about. An evolutionary reasoning could be that these men’s children would have a higher survival rate than others. They could also be “narcissist enablers who are attracted by power” (Love Arthistory). Though these women can be seen as victims of their own circumstances it must be understood that these women are not victims at all but instead want to subject themselves to this criminal behavior with violent tendencies.