Interesting how often these “discoveries” are made after the guy(s) get’s his cookies, so to speak.
It doesn’t really make any difference, though. These four men, over a long period of time, tortured and killed Ms Araujo (17 yrs old, btw). And they did it because she had a penis. They did it because they hated her.
Besides the gender/sex issues that have been discussed, I’m going to ask a question that may take us off on a tangent.
Why would one murder be deemed a “hate crime” and another not? Both end the life of a human. Is there some quirk of the law that allows for no parole or mandantory capital punishment for “hate crimes?”
I’m not wanting to debate it, I just want an easily understood factual answer. Links to previous threads would be fine.
I’m sorry I fell asleep and missed all the fun in this thread. Again, I feel I learned something. The world is a big place, and I readily admit to ignorance on many subjects.
First off, Araujo couldn’t be an “it” because she was a human being. A coffee cup is an “it”.
As for the rest of your reply, it seems you didn’t bother to read any of the cited material, or any of the other posts. I’ll condense part of it for you. Ms Araujo was not a homosexual, She was a juvenile transexual. And she was the victim. The four adult men were not.
Hermann, Mothchuncks, Airman, I’m curious–if you met a woman and had a relationship with her and found out that she’d had sex-reassigment surgery, oh, 5 years ago, would you feel you’d been “fooled?” Would you feel compelled to sock her in the jaw or beat her with a shovel? Or just boot her out the door and call her “he/she/it” before washing the cooties off yourself?
[ . . . and people ask me why I don’t date anymore . . . ]
And why did you lump me in with people who approve of this? I didn’t approve, I just said that I see where the OP is coming from, but I still think it’s wrong. So thanks, Eve, for once again making me feel like an ass for no reason in particular.
Hermann, there are at least two members of this board who “present as” women both here and IRL, and have the outward primary and secondary sex characteristics associated with women (and remarkably good looking ones, too, in the case of the one I’ve seen pictures of). Unfortunately, by your “the genes define it” definition, they’re to be counted as men, because they have the XY set (I presume). They became phenotypic women because: (a) they “knew”* inside from a young age that they were “really”* girls despite the fact that their bodies showed them to be boys in the eyes of the casual observer (presuming the casual observer to be looking at naked boys, kind of offensive in itself); (b) they went through a course of psychotherapy with the double function of [1] ensuring that this “gender dysphoria” was a real and deep-set condition, not a casual whim, and [2] assisting them in dealing with the realities of what their bodies said if it were not true gender dysphoria; © lived and presented themselves to the world as women for at least a minimum of a year – IIRC a few years is standard; (d) began hormonal treatments to suppress male secondary characteristics and enhance female ones; (e) underwent gender reassignment surgery to remove their male genitalia and construct an external female set.
Now, the kicker question: Where in this process did they “stop being men and become women”? Why that step and not another one? And what gives you the right to officially categorize them as one and not the other, contrary to what they themselves feel themselves to be?
And, to complete this discussion, apply it to Ms. Araujo, who happened to “be”* a girl who still had a penis, and now is a corpse because four putatively human scum evidenly decided that a person who would feel like that didn’t deserve to live.
I can actually grasp that they might feel anger at being “deceived” – though some stuff I read on this case suggests that they knew who she was ahead of time, and that this was not even a “gay panic” sort of crime, but simply a hate crime perpetrated on her because she dared to be something they couldn’t grasp the idea of. (And no, I don’t have a cite foir that at this late date – I report it in a hearsay fashion only, from memory of when this story first broke.)
But nonetheless, nothing justifies someone, or a group of someones, taking it on themselves to take the life of another. I don’t care if she had six-foot tentacles in place of genitalia when they got her underwear off – it’s a hideous crime, and attempting to put any of the blame on Gwen Araujo is flat out wrong.
- (quotes for attribution to their mental processes, not as a pejorative)
You don’t get out much do you MEBuckner? Just because someone is homosexual, that doesn’t mean they don’t find women sexually attractive.
Um, i think it’s Tristan that you’re trying to abuse here.
Araujo is a rapist? You’re kidding, right?
OK, let’s say i accept your assertion about homosexuality being genetic (i don’t, but i’ll play along for a minute). You contend that, if it is, then Araujo is guilty of rape because he “knowingly attempted to have sex with a heterosexual male.” Firstly, as MEBuckner says, “cite”? Even the link i gave in my last post only has the word of one of the accused that there had been any sexual contact between Araujo and any of the accused. This CBS story makes no mention of any sexual contact, saying only:
Secondly, your analogy is totally flawed. You say that if you tried to have sex with a women, knowing she didn’t want to have sex with you, that would be rape. That’s true, but it’s not the same as what you say Araujo did. Even if we imagine (again, a totally unsubstantiated assumption) that he tried to trick straight men into having sex with him by concealing his biological sex, this is not rape. Lying to someone to get them into bed, while not exactly admirable, is not, as far as i know, equivalent to rape. The closest analogy i can think of is if you said to a woman that you were a movie producer so she would sleep with you, but you were actually a plumber. Under your definition, if that woman would not have slept with you had she known you were a plumber, this would be rape.
And regarding what the DA has to prove, i think you are wrong. To get a conviction for murder, all s/he has to do is prove that they committed the crime. The motive is unimportant. The “hate crime” aspect, according to one of the articles i linked to in my last post, is simply an
The DA doesn’t have to prove the “hate crime” aspect in order to prove murder.
And, regarding your last paragraph, exactly what is modern society? You sound quite disappointed that people who would commit a crime like this might actually end up getting punished for it.
My apologies. Thanks for the redirection. I definitely wouldn’t want my snide comment to hit an unintended target 
Well, I look at it this way, to avoid being confused: it’s like the soul of a woman, born into the body of a male.
Remember Freaky Friday? With Jodie Foster? It would be like your soul/mind/essence/personality/whatever, being transferred into someone else’s body.
So, the spirit of a woman is living in the body of a man. Or vice versa. It may not be totally accurate, but it just helps me understand.
Gwen’s only “crime”, if you will, was being a naive, stupid teenager to get herself into a dangerous situation. She was what-16? Okay, then she was flirting with disaster. I’d say the same thing about a biologically born female. However, that does NOT mean she deserves to be murdered or harmed.
Just like a woman who gets drunk off her ass and passes out does not deserve to be raped.
Once again making you feel like an ass, Airman? Have I been making a habit of it? Certainly didn’t mean to. Just asking an honest question of the three posters on this thread who have shown themselves to be the least knowledgeable of, or sympathatic to, the transgendered. I know you well enough to know you’re not a shovel-murderer.
And I wanted (though dreaded) honest answers, not polite p.c. ones . . .
This is assuming a lot. The cause of homosexuality seems irrelevant to this case so I’ll ignore that issue, but you are assuming not only that deception = rape, but that Ms. Arujo was in fact being deceptive, that she attempted to have sex with a man (even if sex did or nearly did occur, it may well have been the other person who was doing the “attempting”), that the man she attempted to have sex with was in fact heterosexual, and that she knew he was heterosexual.
Sorry. Recently I’ve felt like I have a big target on my forehead and people have just been blazing away at it. Some of it I’ve done to myself, admittedly, but the rest is the PC Police coming after me. And you know that I’m more blunt than PC.
I’m certainly sympathetic, though. How could I not be? Murder is murder, and given the circumstances laid out in the OP it definitely qualifies as a hate crime. My lack of knowledge about transgendered people and nomenclature doesn’t change that one bit.
Hermann, I’d like to describe a real situation I found myself in a couple of years ago and get your response (and, of course anyone else who wants to chime in). A couple of years ago at what was basically a weekend-long party held by a group I belong to, I met a fellow. He was fun, he was nice, and I wound up in his arms at midnight doing bad Boris and Natasha accents from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. I was somewhat smitten and regretted having to leave before I could give him my phone number. A few months later, at another party given by the same group in a different city, I met him again. He was definitely smitten, calling me beautiful, telling me how much he loved me, holding my hand, etc. (OK, not that much “etc.”). I was interested in him and attracted to him, but being somewhat cautious, I asked around to find out if there was anything I should know about him. The answer is yes, he was married. I’d wager my own moral code is as strictly against adultery as anyone else’s is against homosexuality. To make matters worse and my position even more adamantly against adultery, a family friend was trying to cope with her husband of over 30 years leaving her after an adulterous affair. The man I mentioned deceiced me by acting like he had no attachments. I’m reasonably sure that if I’d expressed an interest, he would have had sex with me. When I told him I was no longer interested in him after finding out about his marital status, he did everything he could to get me to change my mind.
My question for you, Hermann, is would I have been within my rights beating him to a pulp and/or killing him? My take is the situations were analogous – Person A indicates attraction to Person B and indicates sexual favours are available without disclosing vital information which would mean that for them to have sex, Person B would be comitting in his or her view an immoral act. If the situations aren’t analogous, why?
Respectfully,
CJ
This was obviously bait-and-switch. They should’ve just sued. (Sorry if that was inappropriate).
My view is: Were they 100% wrong in doing this? YES. They should get the death penalty. Was it a HATE crime? I’m not sure. I don’t think it was clear enough as to what actually happened. Did they just happen to see a bulge in his pants while playing checkers and go, “F*ck, you’re a man, that is disgusting! We hate freaks like you, you’re dead” or were they decieved while participating in acts of sex? If it is the latter, I would say it was not a hate crime. You don’t have to have a particular grudge against the transgendered to kill them IFF they decieved them. In that case, I can see someone being violated, disgusted, offended, embarassed, traumatized and these sudden emotions coming out and putting you in a rage. There is no doubt that if you were engaging in sexual relations with a woman and saw she had a penis you’d be incredibly furious and offended. I can’t see someone nodding it off, going “Oh, you have a penis. I’m not really into that, sorry.” Some people have trouble controlling their anger.
So my conclusion is if they were decieved into sex, no it is not a hate crime. Otherwise, yes it was. And I hope they fry either way.
Not to answer for Hermann, but based on my read of this thread, I suspect he would agree they are analogous, and that if you did kill him, it would not be a hate crime, just as he suggests that the real killing is not a hate crime.
Has Hermann said the killers were justified? I may have missed that.
Where did all this “bar” and “had sex” and “got out of the car” stuff come from?
To answer the OP,
Lieutenant Milner said investigators believe that Mr. Araujo was killed “because of his sexual orientation and gender,” which under state law, would qualify as a hate crime.
Hello all.
To clear a few things up, my original post was meant to call attention to the way the article about the killing of Mr. Eddie Araujo was written, and also question how “hate crime” statutes came into play in his murder.
The way the article was written seemed to me to minimalize Mr. Araujos sex, and try to convey the notion that he was a female, and not a male. He was refered to as “she” several times in the article, and also refered to as a “transgendered” youth, when he was in reality a homosexual male.
That was my first beef, and the main thing which got my attention when I first read about the case a couple of weeks ago. I just chalked it up to liberal journalism.
The second thing in my original post was the “hate crime” statutes that the defendants are being charged under. Now, I dont care for “hate crime” statutes, for several reasons that I won’t go into here, but it seems to me that in the case of the two defendants whom Mr. Araujo fooled into having sex, that the “hate crime” statutes do not apply.
You see, there is no evidence that the two defendants that Mr Araujo fooled into having sex with him, attacked him strictly because of his homosexuality and his cross dressing. Those two defendants were angry at Mr. Araujo because Mr. Araujo had tricked them into having homosexual sex with him.
Now, the other two defendants who did not have sex with Mr. Araujo and yet still assaulted him, should probably be charged under “hate crime” statutes, if it can be proved that they acted out of a mere hatred of Mr. Araujos homosexuality. Once again, I do not approve of “hate crime” laws, but if they are on the books, then they should be prosecuted fairly.
And I would just like to repeat, for the second time, that I do not agree with Mr. Araujo being beat to death. It was wrong and those who did it should be punished.
Oh, some are saying that they did not see in the article that Mr. Araujo had sex with 2 of the defendants. Here it is:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/states/california/counties/alameda_county/5257287.htm
Although Nabors said he always had doubts about Araujo’s gender, he said his friends became suspicious only after comparing stories of their sexual escapades with the teen. Both Merel and Magidson engaged in anal sex with Araujo, and they started to question Araujo’s reasons for only allowing that type of intimacy.
I find a marked difference between neglecting to mention that you’re married and neglecting to mention that you have a dick. Nobody is saying that what they did was right; but neither is Araujo blameless. I’m sure she could anticipate that some men would have a bad reaction to that kind of surprise.