Gender, "deception" and the law, pt. 1

http://polyperversity.blogspot.com/2009/04/gender-deception-and-law-pt-1_28.html
4/26/09

Last week, a Colorado jury sentenced Allen Andrade to life in prison for the brutal murder of 18-year-old Angie Zapata. The jury rejected Andrade's attempt to mitigate his crime by arguing he was provoked into a crime of passion following the discovery that Zapata, with whom he'd had a sexual encounter, was a transgender woman. Queer and transgender blogs covered the story of the trial quite thoroughly (I've mentioned it previously too), and I won't recount all that here. Suffice to say that whatever my usual qualms about our criminal justice system, the Zapata verdict was reassuring in its rejection of the desperate but nonetheless vile victim-blaming defense strategy. Still, a number of commentators have predictably placed the blame on Zapata for her own gruesome death by condemning her supposed "deception" about her gender history.