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Posted by Michael Jas. Murray:
Deviant?

   I recently had the opportunity to read Harold Schlechterâs true-crime
   classic Deviant, an account of the crimes and atrocities committed by
   Eddie Gein. For those not in the know, Gein was a resident of
   Plainsfield, Wisconsin who shocked the nation when his grisly misdeeds
   came to light in 1957. Gein was not only responsible for the murders
   of two Plainsfield women, but had looted numerous graves. The awkward
   little manâs intention was not to rob the dead of their possessions,
   but to rob the earth of the dead themselves. Dragging the corpses of
   women from their resting places, Gein put their bodies, and the bodies
   of his two known victims, to quite creative use. Furniture was
   fashioned from their body parts; masks were fabricated from the skins
   of their faces. Gein made a mammary vest from the flesh of one of his
   finds. A shoebox containing nine excised vaginas was found in Geinâs
   home. Gein even made a small drum from the skin of one of his finds, a
   tool he used to provide himself music when he donned his morbid
   costume and danced alone beneath the light of the full moon.
   At first glance, Gein was every bit the deviant the title of
   Schlechterâs book branded him as. However, the story of Ed has given
   me much to think about. If one truly meditates upon the actions that
   made the âGhoul of Plainsfieldâ notorious, one realizes that Ed has
   much to teach about the nature of male heterosexuality.
   Whatever insights Gein can provide regarding the relationship of
   straight men to women has, lamentably, been obscured by the host of
   fictional characters Gein has inspired. The character of Buffalo Bill,
   the villain of Harrisâ Silence of the Lambs, readily springs to mind.
   Buffalo Bill, like Gein, murdered women in order to remove their skins
   and fashion a female costume for himself. However, Buffalo Bill was
   depicted as a homosexual whose attempt to transform himself into a
   women was, essentially, an effort to make himself more appealing to
   men. It is tempting to see Gein in the same light. Gein was raised in
   a religious household with stringent laws regarding proper moral
   conduct. Had Gein been homosexual, he would doubtlessly have harbored
   deep guilt regarding desires his religious mother would have
   considered abominations. This could explain why Gein started pursuing
   his morbid pastime after his motherâs death; with her no longer
   available to supervise him, Gein was able to act out and realize his
   fantasies.
   Itâs a tempting model, especially for heterosexual men who would no
   doubt want to place as much distance between their own desires and
   those of the ghoulish Wisconsin man. After all, Gein admitted to
   fantasizing about becoming a woman long before he became a murderer
   and grave-robber, even as far back as his childhood. Wouldnât this
   make him transsexual and, thus, homosexual?
   A careful look at Geinâs life, however, dismisses any possibility that
   he was gay. In fact, the actions of an Ed Gein could only have been
   committed by a man who found women sexually desirable. It would not be
   wrong to say that Gein was acutely heterosexual, a man whose desire
   for women was feverish and frenzied.
   This may seem to be a wild claim. After all, Gein never had a sexual
   experience in his life, heterosexual or otherwise. The closest thing
   he had to pornography was a collection of âdetective magazines,â
   anthologies of sordid stories about rape and lust murder. Even in his
   forties, Gein was just as awkward and shy around women as a young man
   struggling with the first desires of early adolescence. And yet, this
   is precisely why Gein has so much to teach us about straight male
   sexuality. Gein experienced this terrible and frightening force in its
   rawest, most elemental form.
   For a boy in early adolescence, women are not people so much as
   incarnations of power. These mysteries incarnations of the Eternal
   Feminine have the power to elicit desires that are occult and
   irresistible. For some strange reason, the female form inspires a
   ferocious need and the male body involuntarily reacts with an
   erection. Women have the power to change the male body, to make the
   heart race and the penis harden. These strange creatures put men in
   touch with the very energy that perpetuates the life-cycle and gives
   rise to new generations.
   As ânormalâ men grow into adulthood, they learn the intricacies of
   developing sexual relationships. Women no longer seem quite so strange
   or powerful. True, they call out to the same overwhelming drives and
   inspire the same desires. However, men learn how to âtameâ women.
   Those soft, delicious bodies that men so ardently want pressed against
   their own are not mythic impossibilities, but easily won realities.
   Women lose their magic.
   For men like Eddie Gein, women never lose that magic. Gein was
   staggered by the sheer power women had, in the same manner a mortal
   man shudders in the presence of the sacred. Mortals have no choice but
   to prostrate themselves before the spirits, those instruments of Fate,
   and cower in awe.
   The problem is that human beings have never enjoyed being powerless.
   There is some strange element in the human psyche that rebels against
   servitude and impotence. In that sense, we are not the children of
   God, but rather of his son Lucifer. To be bound, to live by the whim
   of forces beyond our control, maybe be exhilarating, but it is also
   frightening and frustrating. It is in this crucible that the shaman
   and sorcerer are forged. It is the shamanic model, and not that of the
   transsexual, that allows us to grasp the phenomenon of Eddie Gein.
   Consider the uses Ed made of his victims. Gein fashioned masks of
   women, donning the faces of those mysterious beings that attracted him
   so. The ghoul used his craft to make his infamous mammary vest, as
   well as a belt adorned with womenâs nipples. A womanâs breasts are a
   symbol of her femininity, of her softness, of her sexual capacity to
   nurse the lives she brings into this world. A womanâs breasts are a
   symbol of her feminine power. Gein wore these symbols in an attempt to
   appropriate and control the forces they represent, the very forces
   that intrigued and obsessed him.
   The shaman who dons the hide of, say, a bear does not do so to
   permanently transform himself into the animal. Rather, the shaman
   wears the bear-skin to appropriate the power of the bear for himself
   and, having done so, use that power to address the very human concerns
   of himself and his community. When Gein wore the skins of women, he
   was donning the hides of what he considered to be very powerful
   beasts. Gein did not want to be a slave of the sexual forces that
   perplexed and obsessed him, he did not want to grovel and kneel before
   the Eternal Feminine like some slave. Much like our mythic predecessor
   Lucifer, Eddie Gein rebelled and sought to take for himself the power
   of his deity. The only difference is that while Lucifer sought to
   steal the power of the God, Gein wanted to usurp the power of the
   Goddess.
   Gein hinted at such motivations when he spoke to the psychiatrists who
   attempt to diagnose him. Eddie admitted that, had he been allowed to
   marry, he never would have committed his horrible crimes. But Eddie
   wasnât allowed to marry, was he? Women treated Gein with disgust and
   disdain long before he became sick and violent. Isolation trapped Gein
   in a world where women remained as mysterious, and as unapproachably
   powerful, as some distant High God. It was in the confines of his
   isolation that Geinâs madness was forged.
   Isolation is a powerful psychological tool. The shaman goes into
   isolation to receive the visions that grant him power and wisdom.
   Robbing us of all other avenues, loneliness drives the individual
   deeper into himself until he reaches that strange ground of being
   where the Self and the Cosmos meet. The World Tree is a common
   shamanic image that is used to symbolize the communion of Self and
   World, of flesh and spirit. Locked into isolation, without recourse to
   the perspectives of Others, the shaman follows his own bloodline back
   to the heart of the cosmos, like a wanderer following roots back to
   some great Tree. Having reached the Tree, the shaman is free to ascend
   into the Heavens or, in some cases, descend into the Land of the Dead.
   After appropriating power from the land of spirit, the shaman returns
   to his community.
   Unfortunately for Gein, he was never allowed to return. His isolation
   was not the self-imposed variety of the shaman. Rejected by the very
   women he desired so passionately, there was no possibility of ascent
   for Gein. Chillingly enough, the little man experienced visions during
   his isolation that hinted at his spiritual and sexual damnation.
   Wandering in the forest, Gein once glimpsed faces leering at him from
   a pile of leaves. In another vision, Gein saw a host of trees with
   their peaks cut off. Roosting in the branches were vultures as black
   as midnight. The meaning of these visions is clear enough. The Land of
   the Dead was the only realm accessible to Gein, providing the only
   means Gein had to try and understand his powerful sexual drives. The
   faces watching from the leaves, like corpses peaking up from the
   Underground, were the only human visages Gein was allowed to commune
   with. These alone could serve as his sexual reality. Any heavenward
   ascent up the World Tree was not a possibility for Gein. The tops of
   the trees in his vision were destroyed, and the heavens were
   barricaded by the vultures, those emblems of death. If Gein wanted
   sexual fulfillment, he would have to satisfy himself with carrion.
   Is it really any wonder that Gein became the pervert he was? Is it any
   wonder he grew tired of his sexual frustration and humiliation, and
   tried to seize the power that women lorded over him? Were there
   moments, during his crazed masquerades and solitary midnight dances,
   when he found hints of peace? Maybe there were brief occasions when he
   looked up at Mother Luna, that eternal symbol of capricious
   femininity, and saw not an adversary but an ally. Perhaps Eddie Gein
   reconciled himself to the Goddess as he played upon his morbid drum
   and danced beneath the light of the moon.
   To deny a man the possibility of expressing his sexuality is to
   humiliate him, to shackle him and to burden him with all the wrath
   such humiliation inspires. To be treated with disgust and disdain by
   women is a type of hell, and a man who suffers such treatment will
   inevitably grow sick. Denied the hope of experiencing the intricacies
   of Life, is it any wonder that men such as Eddie Gein commend
   themselves to the Dead?