Sunday, December 09, 2007
Girls and bad boys
Many a nerd has despaired that girls, and women, are drawn to the bad boys. This seems like a particularly extreme, and asinine, case of bad-boy love syndrome:
Romina Deeken is a classic beauty – long and lithe, cascading blond hair, green eyes set in alabaster – not the type of woman who needs to solicit attention from men.
But last year, the 24-year-old German reached out to a convicted killer on Texas' death row. Her motives were altruistic, she said, not romantic. In time, after more than 50 letters posted back and forth across the Atlantic, Ms. Deeken said, mutual feelings grew.
"I have a connection with him," she explained recently, shaking slightly, tears running down her cheek. "Everyone in life has a vision, has dreams, has fears, is searching for something. He is the person I can talk deeply with about these things."
Ms. Deeken's story is coffee shop talk in this small southeast Texas town, home of the maximum-security Polunsky Unit and death row.
Each month, dozens of travel-weary, love-struck European women arrive in Livingston for visits with condemned inmates, a pair of four-hour chats through Plexiglas. There is no touching.
Imagine how hard it is to be a European man, pining away with unrequited love for a women who is obsessed with some child rapist locked up in a Texas clink. Even I feel sorry for that guy.
13 Comments:
By 
Fire, at
Sun Dec 09, 09:40:00 AM:
Therein lies the irony that beauty doesn't always equate to intelligence.
By 
, at
Sun Dec 09, 10:04:00 AM:
Millions of lonely, intelligent, kind, considerate, law-abiding men in the world who would treat her like a queen...and SHE falls for an evil, sociopathic loser.
Is it any wonder that so many regular guys are growing ever more cynical about relationships and marriage?
By , at
Sun Dec 09, 12:30:00 PM:
Here in Virginia we have the usual coterie of weepers who hold candlelight vigils every time some piece of human scum goes to the chair. They arrived for the execution of the Briley's a few years ago...a band of brothers who left a trail of death and maimings across the state, then escaped from prison and did it again. The response from mainstram Richmonders? We all turned our lights out at the stroke of midnight so there would be ample power to fry the SOB's.
By , at
Sun Dec 09, 12:39:00 PM:
By , at
Sun Dec 09, 01:46:00 PM:
I'm a little amused that the article specified European women. Is that what they've been reduced to doing in order to find suitable collections of testosterone, fishing Texan prisons?
By Gary Rosen, at
Sun Dec 09, 02:38:00 PM:
This is undoubtedly related to the "Why do they hate us?" response to 9-11.
By , at
Sun Dec 09, 03:35:00 PM:
I don't think this is a European versus American phenomenon. I work in a job where I deal with American women who are victims of domestic violence, which in a way is worse than striking up a relationship with a prison-bound man, because these women are actually getting hurt by their partners.
Despite all the counseling, aid, and services we offer these women, it's disappointing how many of them remain fiercely loyal to these men, continue to have children with them, and combat efforts to punish the men for their crimes. A lot of time, effort, and resources are wasted trying to help these women.
I've often had the same thought that so many good, 'nice' men have problems attracting women and maintaining relationships, yet here are women who fight hard for men who hurt them. These men are rewarded by women for being bad. Yeah, I'm cynical.
By , at
Sun Dec 09, 06:20:00 PM:
This is a phenomenon that I have never understood. Abused women go searching for the next abuser. Apparently, these Euroqueens want a real live murderer as their next boyfriend. God help us!
By , at
Sun Dec 09, 06:24:00 PM:
Think about all the women who end up with outright murderers, including their own: Laci Peterson, Stacy Peterson, Amber Frye, OJ's various girlfriends after Nicole, the blonde girl murdered in Aruba.
Women are hard-wired to be strongly attracted to the most testosterone laden men, with the most aggressiveness and macho behavior.
Feminists often accuse ordinary men of wanting to restrict the sexuality of women, and women's choices. Duh. Unless that is done, women will ALWAYS choose the most high-testosterone man. The general improvement of women's freedom and income parallels the explicit winners and losers in mating.
Guys like the Petersons, various others (that Cop in Ohio who murdered his mistress with whom he had two kids, had a wife and ANOTHER mistress on the side) win and those who exemplify qualities such as loyalty, compassion, dependability lose. A few winners and a lot of losers. Women of course WILL SHARE high-testosterone men.
What is the result? IMHO fairly ugly. Women can and should expect a lot of misogyny particularly politically in scope as candidates and parties pick up on that. Already men in East Germany (as reported in Der Spiegel) have few women available as women flee to the West for jobs as secretaries and such. Women who are halfway pretty can always find employment. So naturally the men join the Neo Nazis.
Men who have no women in their lives can simply express their anger politically. What, women will continue not to date them? That's the downside? Ha.
Women of course have their freedom to do as they wish, but with that freedom comes consequences which will be ugly. I expect political measures aimed squarely at women to benefit the single men.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sun Dec 09, 07:40:00 PM:
Women are like an alien species. I can't figure them out.
By , at
Mon Dec 10, 08:56:00 AM:
Is it just women?
Who can forget the man-love between Norman Mailer and Jack Abbott?
There is a part of each of us that wants to be overwhelmed by the "ubermensch", using that term, with all that it connotes.
With some of us, it's very small and controlled by our intelligence, with others, very large; and some individuals see themselves as "ubermensch".
And it doesn't help when some kind of pseudo-moral superiority is attached to compassion for sociopaths.
-David
By Cardinalpark, at
Mon Dec 10, 11:13:00 AM:
Maybe this is a strategy to gain US citizenship without ever having to sleep with the guy....
By Buce, at
Mon Dec 10, 02:41:00 PM:
A sensible woman wants a pugnacious sociopath to father her children--so she will have strong suns able to protect her. And a diaper-changing homebody to help raise them.
One advantage of dating a guy on death row: you know where he is on Saturday night. Not a trivial consideration for many women.
