Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey defended the trans community, saying those who direct hate toward trans people have “lost their sense of common humanity.” The shooter has been identified as 23-year-old Robin Westman. FBI Director Kash Patel identified them as a male. Documents from Westman requesting a name change say they identify as female.
Human dignity does not apply to someone who targets and kills innocent people. Who cares what this person is called. They are a deranged murderer and don’t deserve to be called anything else.
Its not about the shooter.
Intentionally misgendering and using hate speech to refer to them is about creating a permission structure to increase the level of threats and violence that other trans people face.
Using more dehumanizing language to refer to this killer will increase the level of violence this community is subject to and trans people are already one of the most murdered groups in society.
I’m fine with super dehumanizing language for school shooters, but it doesn’t need to be offensive to anyone else. How about everyone come together and refer to school shooters as sub human trash? Whatever marginalized group sub human trash belongs to otherwise is/should be far less a part of their identity once they start shooting kids.
You could just say, “she was a piece of shit” and have the same effect. You’re going out of your way to specifically not use the gender they identified as. It’s less words and effort to just say “she”. Whether intentional or not, your intentional omission of this person’s gender is an insult to trans people and normalizes this kind of rhetoric as an attack.
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So you would whip out all the ethnic slurs if they were not white? What the fuck man. The point is you can call them a piece of shit, just leave out the other stuff that’s painful for others to hear.
You have a blast radius when you use that shit.
I literally said we can attack their humanity and leave gender out of it.
The world runs on a level of nuance that is more complex than that.
Attacking a person’s identity as a trans person legitimizes attacking others for being trans. Criticize her for what she did, not for the unrelated matter of her gender
Right, so can we all agree to just refer to the sub human trash as sub human trash? We can leave gender identity out of the matter altogether, since it’s an unimportant aspect.
It’s not an unimportant aspect to the people trying to use this to attack trans people as a whole, so no. Imagine if the same thing were happening with another mass-shooter, and people were dehumanizing the shooter for being black. Would you be standing here saying “let them attack the fact that he’s black, because mass-shooters don’t deserve dignity; calling him the n-word is fine”? No, you’d probably be saying “stop using this as an excuse to be racist”.
The fact you’re trying to excuse this is really disturbing.
What does sub human trash have to do with the trans community? That’s not a slur against trans people, but a slur against someone who has given up their human identity.
“What does sub human trash have to do with the black community? Calling him the n-word isn’t a slur against black people, but a slur against someone who has given up their human identity.”
Yes, so don’t call him the n word, call him sub human trash.
That’s just not how dehumanizing language works. It always acts as a call to violence against the whole group. You can wish it weren’t so, but it is.
Would telling JK Rowling to go back to the kitchen and make you a sandwich be a good idea? Or do you think that women in general might take offense to something like that? It’s not about respect for bad people, just respect for the marginalized groups that they’re in.
How do you feel about calling Osama bin Laden a ‘towelhead’? Do you think people other than bin Laden might have a problem with that?
Treating name and gender changes as the correct way to refer to someone is not about respect for the murderer. If you say those things only apply if the person is in good ethical standing (in your eyes), you’re validating the ability for others to use that excuse to misgender based on their determination of ethical standing and telling all trans people that the validity of their identity is a privilege rather than a right.
That’s actually a slur people use? It sounds so cringey. It would be like if I called Colonel Sanders a chickenbutt.
It’s a bit dated, but was among the lighter slurs for Arabic people during the Gulf Wars.
Try rereading the statement. It was about trans people as a whole, not the shooter.
Just out of curiosity, how much does it have to be before it officially crosses the line and becomes too much for human dignity? One murder? Two murders? Insurance fraud?
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Intentionally murdering innocent kids is across the line. It’s across the line when you know you are killing innocents and in fact that’s why you did it. This isn’t in any kind of gray area, and all parts of society should condemn it because it is an attack on society itself.