Mother kills her son because his penis was too small

[davidthegnome]

37. Is it?

A story about mental illness, I think, would include a list of symptoms, a history of some form of suffering, trauma. Perhaps I'm oversensitive on this subject, but it bugs the hell out of me when people immediately link monstrous criminal to mental illness. Is it possible, perhaps even likely that the criminal is mentally ill? Perhaps. It is also entirely possible that they are not. It is entirely possible that they are simply monstrous at heart, full of malice, cruelty, anger and hatred.

It seems to me that there is this sort of struggle to explain criminal behavior, or bizarre behavior, as being absolutely the result of mental illness. This simply isn't the case. There isn't any evidence in this story to suggest the criminal in question is anything more than a terribly cruel, terribly shallow person. Perhaps that's a cold take on it, but in my experience, human beings are perfectly capable of being cruel and terrible without the necessity of mental illness.