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Ted Bundy: The First Incel
The infamous serial killer tells us a lot about toxic masculinity today.
One of Ted Bundy’s own defense attorneys described him as “the very definition of heartless evil.” But let’s be honest. Bundy wasn’t just evil. He was evil towards women.
All of his victims were women.
The misogynist roots of Bundy’s crimes probably explain the backlash to the 2019 film about Bundy, starring Zac Efron. People expressed concern, even disdain, for the way it portrayed Bundy as a misunderstood anti-hero along the lines of Dexter or Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and downplaying his monstrosity.
A Netflix series began streaming around the same time last year, titled “The Ted Bundy Tapes,” a documentary based on recordings of interviews that nobody’s heard before. Here, he goes into disturbing depth about what drove him to kill at least 30 women, most of them college girls.
