Stories like these break ones heart to know humans have a murderous streak within.

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Jesus Hilzoy that was the most beautiful thing i've ever read on a blog.

I just happen to be reading "She's Not There" by Jennifer Finney Boylan. A beautiful book on transgender. Great story, too. It was recommended in a comment here a week or two ago.
Can't remember who...but thank you.

Why are humans so cruel to others? Fear? Self hate? Sigh!!

Thanks, Hilzoy

"Why are humans so cruel to others? Fear? Self hate? Sigh!"

I'm sure I don't know the answer, but I'd bet it's fear coupled with the need to belong. What better way to prove (to yourself and others) that you're normal than to destroy those who are different? Very, very sad...

It's not that hard to be kind, to let people live their lives as they choose, and to try to help them when you can.

This turns out not to be true. It turns out that many people find it difficult to be kind, and routinely interfere with people who are trying to live their lives as they choose.

It could be argued that our politics is almost entirely about figuring out why this is so, and making it not so. Or at least not so much so.

Unrelated to the post, but WaPo is reporting that the Attorney General has collapsed during a speech, and is in hospital.

Only the best wishes to Michael Mukasey and his family. I cannot help wondering whether the AG's condition might (AGAIN) be threatened further by bedside demands from frenzied administration criminals that he sign off on exculpatory orders while on life support.

Although I don't yet live as a woman full time, I consider myself a transwoman. Currently I live most of the time as a man, a father and a respected member of my profession (and yes, an avid reader of this site.)

On days when I'm able to live in manner that presents my gender as it should be, I'm more than aware that someone might decide that my wearing a skirt and make-up is a crime worthy of death. I read accounts of someone like Latiesha and think "God, that could be me."

Thank you for sharing this story, Hilzoy. And thank you to all of you who've expressed support. It makes me feel just a little less isolated.

Jessica: Thanks for commenting, and all the best to you.

So, in regard to Michael Mukasey and this story: how do you reconcile the advocacy or tolerance of torture on the one hand, and compassion for people whose choices contradict your own, on the other? Isn't it torture to treat another one's differences with violence and disdain as much as it is to physically malign their bodies and minds? While one may express compassion for Mukasey and his family, his behavior and denial of knowledge of torture is beneath contempt. I can only hope that a brush with death, however close or distant, may cause a shift in his consciousness with regard to other human beings. Do you think he would express sympathy and "keep them in his thoughts and prayers" for prisoners in Gitmo, especially if they have not even been charged? Does he pray for those who have died or suffered irreparable mental, physical and emotional injury from their incarceration? Just because he has not been charged with a crime does not seem to absolve him of blame, anymore than those not charged in Gitmo are absolved by this government. Showing compassion for a high ranking government official who is ill does not make sense if, when he is healthy, you charge him with war crimes and condoning torture. If he is actually charged, then falls ill, do you then let him go out of sympathy? If he dies in prison, do you then praise his patriotism just because he died?

If you can suspend your anger and vitriol when the man falls ill, what is to prevent you from doing so when he is well? What if all the world could do that? Withhold judgment and anger by choice and forgive people for their shortcomings?

I ask forgiveness for my negative thoughts about Mukasey.

I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation
peace,
st john

st john,

Take a break from your bout of equivocation to ponder this.

Empathy for physical suffering does not conflict with a desire for justice, the two exist in different spheres. If you insist on conflating them, you're going to lose your moral compass.

It is an extremely easy task to merely bemoan the devaluation of a human life; to ponder the many days and years that might have been, while at the same time cowering behind the inquisitiveness of not knowing why someone would commit such an atrocity when you already know the answer:

They do it because they can; because their is little if any chance of being punished for their crime. They will continue to do it until the risk of punishment outweighs the imagined righteousness of committing the crime.

While it may be easy---and in many ways, just as cowardly---to advocate an equally-brutal method of punishment (it could be extremely satisfying, I believe, to see a few images of the mortal remains of these hatemongers swinging from telephone poles splattered over the front pages of the nation's newspapers and displayed on the nation's television screens), the surest solution to such brutal hate is to merely take the individual who has committed the crime, put them into a small room with no contact to the outside world except for those charged with his incarceration, and tell them:

This is your home until you die. No TV; nothing to read; no visitations, or telephone calls, or mail; no expensive gym equipment; no daily walks in the sunlight---Nothing. You have a sink and a shower; a toilet and a bed; clothing and food. When you die, we will cremate your remains and flush the ashes into the sewer, along with any and all records of your mortal existence. Consider yourself already dead.

This is how you end the hate crimes; by taking away "the boast of martyrdom...."

Steve W, look at what you're suggesting. Solitary confinement for life? That's close to torture. Which is, you seem to have forgotten, morally wrong - as a tool of interrogation and as a punishment.

Latiesha was struck in the chest and died in a pool of her own blood. Poof.

Really bad choice of word.

No, ajay---solitary confinement for life is "not," as you would suggest, a form of torture; it is, instead, the least inhumane method by which we protect our sons and daughters from the hatemongers. It is time---far beyond time, actually---to stop supporting a society in which the innocent must hide behind closed doors and barred windows, ceding the streets and sidewalks to the criminal element of society. You do not defeat the duality of Hate and Fear with a Care-Bear mentality. There are two distinctly-unique options for murder, being (1) permanent imprisonment, and (2) summary execution, with its drawn-out appeals process. I prefer the former, because the latter promotes the irreversible possibility of killing an innocent being.

There does exist a third option that many seem to hide behind---education---but you cannot force that education beyond the classroom door, and the type of hatred that leads to events such as those we are discussing is bred outside of the classroom. It begins on the playgrounds, and in the parks, and at the homes and hangouts frequented by children. It begins in the homes of countless families, passed down from one generation to the next.

thanks for the awesome post, hilzoy.

It's hard to tell, and maybe I'm reading what I want to...

It strikes me it's almost always a man surrendering his machismo that gets them killed.

A woman seizing the strength of a man doesn't threaten in the same way.

The attackers value their own masculinity possibly far more than anything else, men who do not share their priorities adequately offend them personally. It is self-loathing married to narcissism.

Real men don't need to concern themselves with how manly others are.

No, ajay---solitary confinement for life is "not," as you would suggest, a form of torture; it is, instead, the least inhumane method by which we protect our sons and daughters from the hatemongers. It is time---far beyond time, actually---to stop supporting a society in which the innocent must hide behind closed doors and barred windows, ceding the streets and sidewalks to the criminal element of society. You do not defeat the duality of Hate and Fear with a Care-Bear mentality [drivels on]...

Amnesty International describes prolonged solitary confinement - under far less harsh conditions than you suggest in your rant - as "cruel, inhuman and degrading".

AI notes: "The relevant treaty monitoring bodies -- the Human Rights Committee and the Committee against Torture -- have found that prolonged solitary confinement can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." The conditions you describe would likely drive the victim mad. Even with visiting rights, books and so on, prisoners held in solitary for prolonged periods suffer severe psychological damage.

Your description, concluding with the B-movie line "consider yourself already dead" is quite simply the overheated and disgusting fantasy of a twisted coward - a man utterly lacking in either courage or moral sense. Frankly, it's the sort of thing I would expect to read in a discussion of "How We Should Treat Those Terrorist Scum In Guantanamo" on one of the right-wing sites.
You should be ashamed of yourself.

As an aging disability journalist who has suffered the unwitting oppression, for the most part, under state and government programs which are unforgiving, and at times contradictory, and who has had more than some exposure to the gay and lesbian community within disability culture, I am somewhat callous about the ultimate success of a post-Obama society of *tolerance* in the US.

No one deserves to be blown away with shot guns, I have no real understanding of that kind of brutality, but Hilzoy's sentiments knock up against the cyncism of my own experience and observation. There is a good deal of self-hatred in the identity politics game. I've seen it, whether it involves jock crips, like myself, who have disability as a chip on the shoulder because the emotional scar tissue creates the anger, or homosexuals who can *pass* as able-bodied because their conditions aren't apparent to the naked eye, but can engage in vicious back-stabbing when it suits them.

We are, Hilzoy, human animals who exploit each other, and I don't think we we ever truly grow out of that primate behavior, however many medical immutability arguments we pound to the pavement.

Difference can create danger, all you have to do is watch what happens when a stray chimpanzee runs afoul of another chimpanzee troupe. The outsider is usually killed.

PS: that *we we* was a typo for *we will*.

I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned Stu Rasmussen, the transgender mayor of Silverton, Oregon, who served a term as a man, then after a hiatus was elected mayor again as a woman. Small town and all that, everyone knows Stu, and the primary objections seem to come from political rivals who thinks Stu dresses "like a 3-dollar hooker" at city council meetings and profess to embarrassment. Still, it's remarkable in that the locals don't seem to think it that remarkable.

The question of why we hate to the extent of becoming violent is an important one and of course extends to all groups and has existed on many levels forever.

Bullying in Junior High Schools for example is on the rise. I'm sure we've all heard the case wherein the young girl killed herself after being mocked on the internet (by a mother of one of her ex-friends, I believe?).

There is an old book called "Must Men Hate?" that was written during the 1930's that still applies today.

Then there is the issue of bystander apathy, wherein violence increases when folks are banded together--it's as though they lose sense of reality, the notions of right and wrong are much more blurred by those prone to bigotry when they are not alone.

Many other issues and layers to how and why this happens that relate to this...but it's always been a disturbing yet fascinating area of interest of human behavior to me. Thanks for bringing up.

toowearyforoutrage - No, its just as common the other way around. Watch "Boys Don't Cry".

For me, I'm proud that my work accepted my transition with open arms. That my spouse stuck with me, that her family still considers me family.
I am one of the lucky, those with strong support, man friends and family.

But yet I'm still scared too often that people will decide I don't deserve to live. I can't let that fear take hold, in fact it only seems to come up on Days of Remembrance, I hate to say it, but for me Ignorance is Bliss. I live in a city where previous years have listed names on that list. I'm happy that this year we are absent.

Hilzoy:

Belatedly, thank you for this post. In 2007 my husband told me that he is a transwoman, and the year since then has been quite a learning journey. I really appreciate your drawing notice to the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I also picked up "She's Not There" after your recommendation here last week. It is excellent--thanks for that, too.

This conversation reminds me of a passage from an Arthur C. Clark book "The study of pathology tends to create more pathology." I'd agree with that. I think hilzoy is completely right. It's not very complicated. If we were nicer to one another punishments would be easier. You wouldn't need to lock someone in a cell and never let them see daylight again. Cutting them out of access to society's benefits would be more than enough punishment. Like a kid when you threaten to take away their internet.

Our society is pathological because it's built around some of our worst tendencies: greed, avarice, wanton consumption. The more we distance ourselves from those things as a group the more likely we are to enjoy ourselves and raise our collective standard of living.

The last time someone made a serious attempt to move society in that direction though he was quickly rounded up and crucified. Less serious attempts since haven't been met with much more kindness.