Can gender be faked? Or ethnic identity? If we understand gender as essentially culturally constructed, then ethnicity is even more so.
In 1993, a young man named Brandon Teena in Nebraska was brutally raped and then murdered two days later. His buddies John L. Lotter and Marvin “Tom” Nissen, with whom Brandon had drunk and also talked about women – “men’s talk” – found out that Brandon wasn’t a man, at least not like them. So they wanted to teach him a lesson. They overpowered him, pulled down his trousers and raped him – from the front: You are only a woman. Two days later, they shot dead their victim, who dared to report them after the rape.