…breaks into her home, murders her, and takes off with her car and credit cards while bragging about it on the phone to his girlfriend?

And apparently does all this while in one of the stealthiest uncontrollable rages ever.

But taking Greg H’s point into account, it’s sick that the implausibility of his claim is even worth discussion.

Hammer, meet nail. That’s it precisely. Existing as trans counts as provocation. It counts as deserving it. The murderer is the “real” victim, and he’s the one who’s been hurt worse, according to a lot of people.

GringaSalsera’s mention of victim status being linked to Ms. Zapata’s womanhood is germane, too. Because when you remove the trans part of the narrative, it goes like this:

A thirtysomething gang member with a girlfriend and a criminal record trolls online dating sites and finds an 18-year-old girl who’s by-and-large considered wholesome and kind, with a supportive, stable family, who he then seduces. He learns that she’s in a vulnerable social position while he’s setting up a date. Shortly after they fool around together, he lets himself into her house, waits for her to get home, and then sexually assaults her, beats her to death, and steals her credit cards and car as well as some of her possessions, some of which he gives as gifts to his girlfriend after dumping the murder weapon by the highway, which is later found with physical evidence of the crime intact. He admits on the phone that the victim needed to die and that he took his sweet time with beating her to death. His confession of the murder and robbery are recorded and admissible evidence.

When you leave out the “trans” part, that’s cut-and-dried for just about any jury in the country. 30ish guy meets a vulnerable 18-year-old girl, gets her to sleep with him, and then breaks into her home, murders her, and takes off with her car and credit cards while bragging about it on the phone to his girlfriend? That narrative, supported by physical evidence and a recorded, admissible confession, is called an open-and-shut case, and the public and jury sympathy for the pretty, sweet, murdered 18-year-old girl in question is basically ironclad.

Unless she’s trans. And then suddenly Andrade is sympathetic, and she’s the real criminal here, because “things” like her deserve to die, and just existing counts as an assault that cries out for a “self-defense” retaliation. Whammo. The case is a different kind of open-and-shut, all of a sudden.

Angie was killed because she was a woman. The problem Andrade had was that he didn’t understand that for a person to be a woman, they didn’t have to fit into his narrow and cisgendered socially imposed definition.

Also, though the violence against Angie is not necessarily the focus of this post (the defense of her attacker is), shouldn’t it still get the tag of “violence against women and girls” since it is associated?