What Aiden did was a heinous and horrible outcome, but I can’t get over the deadnaming and pronoun misuse, regardless their actions and motivations. Not defending their actions, killing is bad m’kay? They had a lot of built up hatred, and combined with poor mental health, not surprising if it was instigated by the Convenant School whilst they attended. Overall, however, it looks like they were confused and broken.
This is one of those great moments where everyone involved is shitty. What Aiden did was shitty, the abusive religious school that was attacked is shitty, what the Star is doing by releasing these manuscripts is shitty, and just the general state of Tennessee is pretty shitty.
I tried to explain this near the time of the event, back when I was on reddit. For this I received mass downvoting, and a universal consensus that misgendering is perfectly appropriate as long as the target has done something evil. Even from trans people. “We don’t claim her!”
It would be one thing if these same people also misgendered any given cis person who did wrong. But they don’t, and that double standard is transphobia. “Of course I would never misgender Hitler. He was AMAB. He earned it. You’re not AMAB? Then your right to be a man is contingent on your behavior. I’ll decide if you’ve been good enough to deserve it.”
We’ve got a long way to go culturally before people recognize that there is literally one and only one valid criterion for entitlement to a certain gender identity: claiming it.
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