Comparing Trans Panic To "Jew Panic"
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/10604/comparing-trans-panic-to-jew-panicAutumn Sandeen
4/24/09
This past couple of weeks here in Greeley, Colorado, folks on "our side" here have had to come up with a verbal shortcut of explaining why the trans panic (also called gay panic) strategy for defending a client, and why in states such as Colorado with transgender status (or gender identity or expression) included in the hate crime statute definitions, this strategy is so heinous.
As most here already know, a trans panic defense is one where a man argues that, after a sexually intimate encounter with a trans woman, he commits violent behavior against a preoperative or nonoperative trans woman because he was shocked he was intimate with a man. The man -- the defendant -- in question states he was so surprised to find out that the
woman MAN(!!!) has male genitalia, that the man flies off in a rage and does violence to the trans woman in question, often killing her. At trial the defendant, through his defense attorney(s), argues that it's at least partially the victim's fault for not disclosing they were really male before the two were intimate.
