Is it really murder if you didn't believe the victim was even human?

I can't quote the citation, but I remember reading a major historian in graduate school who argued that--by German law--the Nazis actually committed no crime by executing genocide against the Jews, because their legal structure (and culture) had reached the point where Jews were no longer considered human beings.

Sort of like the same legal logic used in the Dredd Scott decision in 1856--that the slave Dredd Scott could not be freed by the US Supreme Court, because as property and therefore legally not a person he lacked standing to bring suit in the courts.

Or like killing a transgendered human being.

From Feministe:

A man named Steve McMillian apparently stabbed Sanesha Stewart to death on Saturday morning. Who was she? She lived in the Bronx. She was tall and femme and well-liked by her neighbors. She was a client at the law project where I volunteer, but I never met her myself. Some of my colleagues helped her get her name legally changed more than a year ago. None of the above mattered at all to the news media, which handled this tragedy with the appropriate combination of sensitivity, respect for the victim, and a very cold eye for the man who the police dragged from her apartment, covered in her blood.

Oh no… wait one second and back up. There was no respect and no cold eye, none at all. I must be imagining some completely different universe where young trans women of color aren’t automatically treated like human trash. Where we all live, business as usual is to make a lot of comments about what the murder victim dressed like and looked like, reveal what her name was before she changed it, automatically assume she’s getting paid for sex, and to make excuses for the alleged killer.

And please note: “Cops: Ex-con slays Bronx transsexual ‘hooker’” is not the original headline of this NY Daily News article. The original one was “Fooled john stabbed Bronx tranny,” until pressure from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation got them to change it.

Questioning Transphobia has a succinct analysis of the relevant issues:

Sanesha Stewart was a woman of color, so naturally the press portrays her as a prostitute (even if her neighbors do not). Naturally the press portrays her as a “man who dressed like a woman” (even though she’s not a man). Naturally, the press focuses on her height and the specific kinds of clothes she chose to wore (because she supposedly didn’t look like a woman, even though she was one, because her appearance is somehow relevant to the fact that she was stabbed to death). Naturally, the press gives her birth name because that’s totally relevant to the fact that she was murdered. And, naturally, the press implies that she was asking for it for daring to be trans and tricking a man into having sex with her - because, of course, no one would choose to have sex with a trans woman voluntarily, right? Because no one in the history of ever has knowingly had sex with a trans woman, killed her, and then used the deception excuse to get a lighter sentence, because people are stupid enough to believe that it’s okay to murder someone for violating gender boundaries?

On this one, a Libertarian has got to be a feminist, I believe.

If your body is your own property, then so is your gender identity.

If your body is your own property, then terms under which you decide to have sex are your own goddamn business.

Stabbing people to death because you're (a) disappointed, (b) upset, or (c) embarrassed about discovering that you're about to have (or already had) sex with another person whose full sexual pedigree you don't approve of is murder.

It doesn't make it one iota less murder that the victim's vagina was constructed after birth, rather than before.

However, just to make the point that I'm in the minority on this one, let's check out some of the answers to the question "How Did You React to the News of Sanesha Stewart?" at All HipHop.com.

There's this one:

Naw ako mane thats not true. they SHOULD have to tell someone who is thinking they are about to fuck a woman that they are not a natural born woman. its not right mane

if im about to lay down with a woman im thinking im laying down with a dang woman and if that woman turns out to be a dang man imma be mad. because if i wanted a man i would have went and got a damn man.

that is a trick. not to say they are the same but if you have hiv do you not need to tell the person you are with that you have it... even if you are going to use protection. if you know there is something you have..or something you are not that other person deserves the right to make a choice. and with you not telling them you are not giving them that choice. its not fair to the other person.

And this one:

aw hell naw they called that faggot a beautiful black woman...don't care what body parts u substitute a man will never be a woman and vice versa...but to answer the question...my reaction was nothin ...any man tryin to mock a woman in order to have sex with straight men deserves the consequences

Or this one:

I'll have to go with chi-town on this one. and to end all confusion, i really don't assign a gender to those things. can't call them a man, because no real man would do that, and can't call them a woman, because that's more or less an insult to the real beautiful women out here. so yea call them "it's" or "things" That way it saves alot of confusion

And my personal favorite:

it's not rape when you agree to do it for a price--your price was to maintain your freedom. If anything it was an act of solicitation of prostitution and not a rape. You madam were a hooker not a rape victim.

Since you asked so nicely I shall, People have been killed for far less than what this nigga got killed for. He's out there playing around with his gender and going after men that are straight. He should be fully aware that society in general is not accepting of homosexuals much less those that are representing themselves as a different gender than what they're born. He should have known the risks that were involved when you play with someone in such a manner and his death isn't tragic, it was a deserved slaying. He can now obtain fame being the transgendered peoples martyr. He's the crossdressing version of Matthew Shephard.

I don't think I have anything left to add here.