40 years ago, Jane Caputi wrote a brilliant book about serial sex killers - The Age of Sex Crime - which is as relevant today as it was in 1987. In the book, Jane analyzes the histories of well-known, individual serial sex killers, from Jack The Ripper to The Boston Strangler to Son of Sam to Ted Bundy and many more - and answers fundamental questions about how and why they came to be - and how they fit into our cultural narratives. Jane argues that far from being monstrous aberrations, serial sex murderers occupy a role in our patriarchal culture that is both accommodated and endorsed. In this hour Elle talks with Jane about all aspects of serial sex killing; the folk hero appeal of serial sex killers, how sexual terror is used to preserve male power, how the serial killers, police and media co-create “monster genius mastermind" narratives and how these narratives fit hand in glove with a common collective male fantasy of hurting women. We also talk about the real silencing of victims and how women everywhere are invited to identify with the serial killer’s victims, both in the real-life cases, then in the true crime media that retells the gruesome details, and then finally in the fictional movies, books and television that serves up an endless buffet of dead women, bloody sacrifices to male power. subjecttopower.com/bloody-sa…

New must-listen💥episode up. Abuse and systematic cruelty against women and children is common across the world, but the term torture is still reserved mostly for men - think political prisoners, prisoners of war, victims of evil regimes.But guests on today’s episode, retired-community-nurses-turned-global-human-rights-activists Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald has a 60-year plan - a plan to broaden our understanding of torture to include women and children, and to get non-state torture recognized as a crime everywhere. Jeanne and Linda spent their whole working lives as public health nurses in Nova Scotia, Canada, providing womb-to-tomb care throughout their province. As nurses they came into contact with a lot of family violence and abuse of women and children - and advocating for and counseling victims were an essential part of their job and their personal mission.But in 1993, Linda and Jeanne had a fateful encounter with a woman who reported being a victim of life-long systematic torture, and they soon realized that they were dealing with a very different category of harm - and this set their careers and their lives in a whole new direction. The story of how Jeanne and Linda helped and cared for this torture victim, what they discovered about organized torture networks and perpetrators, how they created the model for understanding non-state torture as a phenomenon and as a crime - and how they became global activists in the process - is chronicled in their book Women Unsilenced. In this hour Elle talks with Linda and Jeanne about their story, their decades of research and founding the organization Persons Against Non-State Torture - and how they used nursing science and an unshakable ethic of care to help victims break out of silence, to tell of their victimization, to escape, and to heal from their traumas. subjecttopower.com/category-…

How is women's equality connected to the health of a nation? Author of @doublexeconomy Linda Scott talks with Elle @J42doc about all the ways that sex inequality is a recipe for disaster, and how empowering women is always going to result in a more stable, prosperous economy. More truth bombs at link in bio.

We know there is an effort afoot in the US to force women back into the domestic sphere, but do the proponents of this plan grasp what they're wishing for? Expert on women's economy and author of @doublexeconomy Linda Scott doesn't think so. Find our conversation at link in bio.