There is something ancient, almost liturgical, in the way our public rituals of blame unfold after a tragedy. First, the headlines gasp in unison. Next, the suspect’s identity is dissected with almost voyeuristic relish. And when the perpetrator’s gender expression or sexual identity does not align with convention, the machinery of scapegoating begins to hum. In the recent mass shooting in British Columbia, the swift public and political fixation on the shooter’s trans identity reveals more than a need for explanation — it reveals a hunger for moral simplification, an appetite that feeds on the bodies of the marginalized and distracts from systemic rot.
This is no isolated phenomenon. Scapegoating, particularly of gender-nonconforming or queer individuals, is part of a long cultural tradition of moral panic — a way of flinging complexity out the window and inviting fear to play king. In blaming the presence of trans identity, we perform a sleight of hand worthy of any stage magician: the state’s failures in gun control, mental health access, and social cohesion are made to disappear beneath the manufactured outrage at a singular, “othered” identity. The conversation shifts from structural causality to personal pathology, a reflex that serves power far better than truth.
Historical memory should remind us of the costs of such moral misdirection. When queer men were blamed for the HIV crisis, when Muslim youth were scapegoated post-9/11, when Black bodies were pathologized during crises of violence — in each case, the rush to moral clarity left behind a trail of policy inhumanity. What we are witnessing now is not just a public reaction to tragedy; it is the reanimation of an old ghost, draped in modern fixations on gender, still whispering the same tired scripts of blame and exclusion. The moral failure is not in our grief, but in the cruel comfort some seek in channeling it toward the already-vulnerable.
What would it mean, instead, to speak with empathy and precision? To hold space for mourning without weaponizing identity? To demand accountability from policy and policing systems instead of contorting pain into prejudice? These are not rhetorical questions — they are democratic imperatives. When media and politicians choose the lazy narrative, they do not merely inform; they indoctrinate. And in that act, our collective ability to make meaning — to distinguish between cause and coincidence — deteriorates further.
We must, now more than ever, resist the seduction of the scapegoat. True justice does not reside in easy villains or viral outrage, but in the difficult work of naming who holds power, what systems fail us, and how care — radical, unglamorous care — might become a political principle rather than a sentimental afterthought. To scapegoat is to abdicate the moral responsibility of analysis. And surely in mourning’s aftermath, we owe each other more than that.
