Wuornos was not a female Ted Bundy, but she was a female Gary Ridgway
Similar mentality, similar (low) intelligence, similar delusional denial of culpability for their actions. She did not kill because of any uncontrollable compulsion or fascination with death, but she killed because of a total lack of conscience, for basic material needs (ie. theft) and for the same reason most serial killers keep on killing, a feeling of power over their victims.
This was a fictionalised film (in terms of facts and characters) that attempted to humanise, sympathise and even excuse Wuornos' murders. The director, Patty Jenkins, is almost certainly a man-hating feminist who saw a golden opportunity to make an apologist film for a woman who killed men. There's no other explanation for it. This would be an unthinkable thing to do for any other serial killer, and frankly makes victims of the victim's families all over again and piss on a few graves. It's hard to believe they went there.
The real Wuornos was a remorseless psycho, a confessed female SERIAL KILLER who still had the gall to try on the the holy grail of female murderer excuses, "self defence", to avoid justice for her crime. This is reflective of the way a lot of feminists look at the world though. There are no individuals, what one man does, all others are somehow responsible for. If a guy treated you bad in high school, that justifies you trashing other men for the rest of your life (well, the ugly ones anyway).
Because the guys she killed were (in most cases) guys who used prostitutes, most simply lonely but some were rough (par for the course for that line of work, fact of life) many people (usually women) automatically assume that they were "unworthy victims" who didn't matter, that their deaths were no big deal.
This is the same attitude that the Green River Killer (Ridgeway) had about the prostitutes he killed. That he was doing society a favour because these were bad, worthless people. Disease spreaders, marriage wreckers, scum of the earth. Sure, he killed a lot more because he evaded capture for a long time and was able to do so in the pre-DNA era.
Some may have even have bought into this fictionalised movie that they provoked her in some way (probably from the "porn/prostitution is rape" school of feminist "logic"). That she was a poor battered woman, a tortured soul who was just pushed too far. It's *beep* though. The fact is most male serial killers, even Ted Bundy, were spurned or hurt in some way, by women or family members or whoever. All of them have some kind of mental issues. Doesn't give them license to kill people.