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A review by ehmannky
American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men by David McConnell
challenging
informative
sad
3.0
This book reads like an anthology of toxic masculinity, particularly when that mindset is turned towards gay men and abetted by internalized homophobia. It makes a few really good points about our culture's tendencies to infantilize violent white men and how nothing in these people's pasts justifies or even truly explains their horrendous actions.
But I found the in-depth recreations of the murder with little to no commentary voyeuristic and a little off-putting. It might be because I am not particularly enthralled with true crime, but I just didn't find it necessary to recreate the steps of each murder in such detail. And I also dislike how the centering of the perpetrator of homophobic violence often seems to work to create a sense of empathy with that perpetrator, even as McConnell is acknowledging that they have done awful things in the name of their masculinity.
But I found the in-depth recreations of the murder with little to no commentary voyeuristic and a little off-putting. It might be because I am not particularly enthralled with true crime, but I just didn't find it necessary to recreate the steps of each murder in such detail. And I also dislike how the centering of the perpetrator of homophobic violence often seems to work to create a sense of empathy with that perpetrator, even as McConnell is acknowledging that they have done awful things in the name of their masculinity.