The murder victim in this case did not deserve to be murdered.
The murder victim in this case did not deserve to be murdered.
The murder victim in this case did not deserve to be murdered.
OK, are we clear on this?
Now -
Is it possible to say that the murder victim in this case did act in a dishonest way? It is beyond the bounds of possibility (in my opinion) to think s/he believed that the three guys s/he blew in the course of the evening wouldn’t care that s/he was genetically and physically a guy.
Now please go back and reread the first three lines of this post. I will wait.
OK - now what is the moral difference between putting on a dress and using a woman’s name in order to get guys to allow you to do them, and some frat boy getting a seventeen-year-old girl drunk before putting the moves on her?
In both cases, you are manipulating circumstances to get someone to do something that you strongly suspect they wouldn’t do if consent were fully informed and freely given.
The murder victim of the OP can play whatever games s/he likes with him/herself to say “No matter what my genitalia might be, no matter what my DNA says, I am a woman (for tonight).” It is when s/he starts playing the games on other people without their permission that the trouble begins.
It’s no good saying that the murder victim died because s/he was honest about his/her sexuality. S/he died because s/he wasn’t honest enough. There is more information that people will want to share besides “No, I am HIV negative” before you drop your pants. Making a habit of hiding that information is going to turn out badly in the long run.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - I meant what I said in the opening of my post. If this is going to be another threadful of “You said it was OK to kill someone just because of their sexual identity”, then the hell with it.
…raises some serious questions about people’s understanding of transvestism, transsexuality, and gender dysphoria, and I’d like to submit that the Pit is not the place to deal with them.
Would you, and someone with some background on transsexual issues and the calmness to post them without hostility against those who don’t see the issues from that focus, be willing to start a GD thread on the question?
Because I think there’s something important behind all this besides “raising our consciousness” on the question at hand, and that exploring this issue may lead to something more important as well.
No. To Hell with you. I am literally so mad right now my hands are shaking, you pompous, holier-than-thou, ignorant asshole.
She did not die because she wasn’t honest. She died because the four knuckle-dragging troglydytes felt their honor had been besmirched and their fragile egos needed redemption. Furthermore, it seems a whole house full of asswipes with an additude like yours did nothing to stop it. I can hear them clucking along with you that “It’s the consequence of her actions. She brought it upon herself.”
You can preface your comments with all the lying fucking disclaimers that you want, but when you end it with what I’ve quoted above, your true thoughts show through. And they tar you as an asshole of the highest order.
No, you dare not say she deserved to die, but you make it clear that it was her own fault.
There is a difference between pleading ‘justification’ which is an affirmative defense to homicide, and pleading that you killed in the ‘heat of passion’ which is a defense to 1st degree murder, but not to 2nd degree murder. I could see the facts being that the defendants were at the party, found out that the victim was not who they thought she was, became enraged, and killed her. This would not be 1st degree murder, at least in most jurisdictions. It might be similar to walking in on your spouse having sex with another person, and killing the interloper.
To say you are ‘justified’ is to say that what you did was not wrong. Self-defense is a ‘justification’ defense. If a killing is justified it is not murder of any degree. Why would it be against the law to do what is justified?
See Homebrew’s post for reasons why I think such a thread might go better in GD than the Pit.
I can’t make myself any clearer. I do not think the murder victim in the OP deserved to be murdered, and yet it is as if I linked to the Fred Phelps home page.
Homebrew -
I am sorry you are upset, but if you can’t hear what I say, there is nothing I can do about it.
Shodan, like most people, I’ve found that people sometimes conceal things about themselves in order to secure friendship, sex, or other validation from people that they find attractive.
Yes, it can be hurtful, but it’s a virtually universal human behaviour. I think that it’s worst when the person misrepresents themselves in a long-term relationship, and the truth only outs when things have progressed quite a bit. “Oh, despite everything you’ve said, you’re actually a bigoted idiot? And I find out now, when we’re living together? Great.” Or “Wow… You’re actually twenty years older than you’ve said?”
Lida’s attackers clearly weren’t interested in her beyond whether or not she’d provide some immediate sexual gratification. Which she did. If they weren’t such dickheads, they might have been a bit more curious, or at least more observant. I’m pretty sure they didn’t request a detailed biography.
Um, maybe because getting someone drunk at the very least impairs their judgement, and often their ability to remove themselves from a situation or defend themselves against rape? Whereas Lida simply presented herself as willing to have sex with them. If making yourself as attractive as possible to the people you’re attracted to when you’re looking for sex is horribly dishonest, then everybody’s guilty.
Feh. People who don’t take some time to get to know someone before they have sex with them are going to have sex with people with whom they might not if they knew more about them. That’s their problem. Any anger that results from their lack of judgement would properly be placed with themselves. Photos of Eddie/Lida appear to me to show a very pretty young boy dressed in women’s clothing. Whaddya want, Shodan? Should black people make a habit of asking potential sexual partners if they are aware of their skin-colour, to make sure that they’re not a violent racist who may kill them when it occurs to them that may have had sex with one of the “mud people”?
Elsewhere in the news, Newark police Lt. Tom Milner has said that they are, indeed, looking into the possibility of more charges against house-guests who stood by and allowed this killing to take place.
[size=1]Correction: Earlier in this thread I mistakenly stated that Fred Phelps was dead. I was confusing him with that other cretin, William Pierce. Wishful thinking, I guess. It is Fred Phelps who has announced his intention to picket Araujo’s funeral. Asshole.
I think this is a gross simplification of Gwen’s life and the difficulties she had to deal with. She didn’t just decide from time to time that she felt like being a girl. While I don’t understand the why’s or how’s of transgenderism I do believe they face great emotional and social difficulties and I’m willing to cut them a little slack. Yes, I think it was wrong of Gwen to have sex with people who weren’t aware of her status. On the other hand those men should be more careful of who they decide to have sex with.
I think this quote really illustrates why it is not wrong to allow others to assume what they want. It may be suicidal and not very considerate either, but it isin’t wrong.
Shodan I think your problem is that you simply aren’t on the same page with everybody else on this due to your ignorance. If you claimed that homosexuality was the same thing as pedophilia you would get much of the same response. You might not believe that she deserved to die, but it is not a stretch to think you believe that if you equate her actions with rape.
And some people, despite what is written irrevocably into every cell of their bodies, despite the fact that their genitalia are male, insist that they are “really” female - once in a while, when they feel like putting on a dress so they can go out and blow strangers.
If I am the one who is ignorant, then please enlighten me. In what sense was this person female? Because s/he had a sexual orientation that included males? That is not being female, it is being gay. Because s/he was genetically female? Nope. Because s/he had ovaries? Nope. Because s/he thought like a female? All females think alike? What remains - because s/he can’t parallel park?
There are cases of people being born with ambiguous genitalia. This wasn’t one of them. There are cases of people being born with genetic anomalies that confuse gender identity. This wasn’t one of them. This was a case of a dumb teen-ager presenting as a woman so s/he can find sexual partners.
S/he was dishonest. S/he lied.
NO - THIS DOES NOT JUSTIFY MURDER.
Dishonesty about sex, dishonesty by gays, dishonesty by straights, dishonesty about AIDS, dishonesty about gender identity, it’s all the same thing. Dishonesty is wrong.
Well, at least with me you can tell up front. And putting on a dress wouldn’t change anything.
First, Marc, I think this was right on target, honestly and bravely said, given what you’ve dealt with in this thread:
I don’t pretend to understand transsexualism or gender dysphoria one little bit, but I can see that Shodan’s comment here:
…is far from accurate.
This is not a case of a man deciding he wants to give blowjobs with other guys and so impersonating a woman in order to deceive them; it’s, by the evidence of the background story, a boy (biologically) with serious confusion as to whether he truly feels like a boy or a girl, inside, who has tentatively, after some confusion and switching back and forth, dressed as a girl, presently identifying as a girl, and kept the fact that he had male genitalia from the guys who accepted him as a girl, until they found out that he was biologically male.
Shodan, I’ve known you to be a thoughtful and insightful poster before, and I can accept your idea that gay male X should not cross-dress in an effort to deceive other men who might not want to have sex with another man into thinking that he is really a girl in order to have sex with them. But there is a large difference between that concept and what is going on inside this young person – and I deleted both “boy” and “girl” before settling on “young person” as the object of that preposition – because it’s clear that that person is unsure of which to identify as.
Are you seriously suggesting that we should refer to Eve or Kelly as men, despite their clear identification as women?
And, just for the record, my suggestion was that this discussion should go in GD:
Though, in view of the reportage on Gwen/Eddie Araujo’s psychology that you seem to be disregarding in favor of an apparent view that he/she merely crossdressed on an occasion in search of illicit sex, I shouldn’t be surprised that you misunderstood me as well.
I’ve had a lot of respect for your stance on many issues in the past, and for the friendship you’ve shown me. And I hope that our disagreement here and my disappointment at your apparent lack of compassion for Gwen/Eddie will not have a serious impact on that relationship.
I don’t think you meant it this way, but to term this behavior as “suicidal” means that there is some sense that someone engaging is this behavior may be putting themself at risk. This is not to justify violence toward someone in this situation, just that there may be risk.
I said suicidal precisely because people doing that are putting themselves at great risk.
I noticed you made many assertions Shodan. Care to prove them all? Try proving one of them.
All children are born with female brains, and those brains only become male if they get enough testosterone at about 2 weeks after pregnancy has started. There are basic differences in between female and male brains. Besides she could have had ovaries or have been genetically female. Neither of those automatically translate into looking physically female.
Do I think that being deceived as to the gender of your sexual partner gives you the justification to kill him/her? No. God damn it, NO, and I would ask of those who are accusing me of saying so, or thinking so, or condoning it, or anything of that nature, that they at least grant the possibility that I meant what I said.
Or is the question, how should I regard someone who is obviously screwed up about his/her sexual identity? Or what should be my attitude towards cross-gender persons, or transvestite gays, or pre-operative transsexuals, or whatever the politically correct term might be? Well, exactly what the hell makes this any of my business? People can go underwater and fuck fish for all of me. It’s none of my concern - until it starts to impact other people, and against their will.
And when this young person decided to present him/herself as a woman, and use that image to attract sexual partners, it started to impact other people. To say the least.
And they reacted. Far worse than they had any right to do, and in a manner in no way justified by the circumstances, but also in a way that showed that they had in some sense the same sort of objections to his/her conduct as most people would.
What they did was wrong. And so, to a far lesser degree, was it wrong for Eddie/Gwen/whatever to lie about gender.
Lots of people have lots of problems, and some of those problems are sexual. Sometimes they don’t even agree with me that what I think is a problem really is a problem. Sometimes, they are even right about it.
But even if this poor dim teen-ager was actually perfectly justified in oscillating back and forth between being Eddie and being Gwen, I hardly think “Why don’t you put on a dress and blow strange men at a party” is going to be good advice. Not simply because some men express homophobia with violence, but because nobody deserves to be deceived. Even if you are doing it because you can’t decide whether to be Glen or Glenda.
Being gay, or being gender confused, does not change the moral issue. Sex obtained thru deception is the moral issue, and it is wrong. For anyone, or everyone.
And also for the record, I was agreeing with you, or trying to.
Maybe that is the issue. I don’t see the moral relevance of the distinction.
If it helps, I am perfectly willing to stipulate that Eddie/Gwen was not just looking for kicks. His/her cross-dressing was certainly, as far as I can tell, an expression of gender confusion. This was obviously a messed-up teenager. No duh.
Doesn’t help. The deception then becomes presenting yourself as a woman, instead of whatever you call whatever Eddie/Gwen was. A cross-dresser pretending to be a woman to score blowjobs is no better than a gay male, or even a straight guy, pretending to be something he is fundamentally not, in order to get sex. And doing so in full knowledge that if deception were not involved, you wouldn’t get want you want.
It is still wrong.
If Gwen sidled up to someone at a party and said, “I’m ambi-sexual. How about a hummer?” and they said yes, the moral stigma of deception falls away. If you consent to sex with someone who is up front about being whatever they significantly are, you have no reason to object after the fact. But if they lied to you about their gender, or being married, or their HIV status, or that they are only doing it to get back at their pathologically jealous, gun-collecting boyfriend, you have been lied to, and that is wrong.
Of course not.
And I hope I don’t have to type that a half-dozen times before it sinks in.
So does that mean there is a difference between that situation and one in which someone is targeted for their sexual identity only?
Motivation one: I don’t like gay/black/female people. I will beat/drag/shoot this random gay/black/female person to death.
Motivation two: I wouldn’t have had sex with that person had I known the truth. I am angry at the situation and will punish the particular person involved in it.
Neither is a defense for murder but they are different situations.
** For one, you should realize that they shouldn’t be lumped together into a single group as you have just done.
**
At first, I thought you were equating Gwen’s behavior with fucking fish. Then, I reread and realized you only meant to say that Gwen’s behavior was aberrant and wrong.
Did I miss a link? Where did you obtain the fact that Gwen was the initiator? The only information I have is that sexual contact occured. On what facts do you base your portrayal of Gwen as a siren luring unknowing men?
Minor Nitpick-Why does every one keep assuming it was oral sex? Spoiler-Haven't any of you seen M Butterfly??