ABSTRACT
Lesbians and gay men in Australia have been subjected to a vast array of discrimination and oppression at the hands of majority culture, including legal culture. Expressions of hatred, such as discrimination and violence against lesbians and gay men, remain endemic despite relatively recent reforms such as State-based anti-discrimination legislation. This chapter discusses the cultural fantasies/distortions/reconstructions of lesbians who have killed. It looks at Tracey Wigginton and Aileen Wuomos, both of whom were self-identified lesbians who were tried in the early 1990s for killing men to whom they were strangers, in Australia and America respectively. Films, books and magazine articles representing the murderous lesbian are justified as '"true". Misrepresentation and a certain lip-smacking enjoyment is not something particular to representation of crimes involving lesbians, but there are elements which are specific. Animal imagery and connections of lesbian sexuality with bestiality are extremely common, both within this genre and without it.
