Tag Archives: sexism

Invisible Women, Fairy Tale Death: How Stories of Public Murder Minimize Terror at Home

Repeated true-crime narratives tend to deflect serious examination of the misogynistic attitudes, abuse, and/or fatal violence that too frequently precede a public massacre. A reconsideration of surviving writings by Charles Whitman, the 1966 UT Austin sniper, alongside newly-discovered letters of his wife and second victim, Kathy Leissner, reveals how inflexible gender attitudes and judgments took a profoundly toxic and eventually fatal toll in private, long before Whitman’s display of hyper-masculine force from atop a landmark tower. 

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