Remembering the victims of Dahmer because they matter

Connecting with political allies is harder than people admit—especially when your foundation is not hate, not outrage for sport, but a clear, grounded sense of humanity. Because you start to notice things.

You can stand beside someone and agree:

A wealthy man should not be allowed to destroy scrub jay habitat to build himself a mansion.
That matters. That should be challenged.

And then you read a comment.

Not a fringe comment. Not buried.
Upvoted. Agreed with. Repeated.

Someone says killing those birds would be a greater crime than what Jeffrey Dahmer did. Harms against gay males. Human beings. 

STOP. Halt. Pause there.

I’m a die-hard animal lover too. I was raised that way, and it is just running in the family now.

But the lives of human beings matters. Right?  

This is what the process looks like when people start losing the weight of human life.

And many women-especially Black and Indigenous women—know this pattern too well.
We have lived inside systems that already decided:

• our pain was negotiable
• our bodies were expendable
• our suffering could be ranked lower for someone else’s comfort, profit, or ideology

So when we see harm being mis-measured, we recognize it fast.

Let’s say it plainly.

A man who:

• hunted human beings
• drugged them
• violated them
• dismembered them
• ate their bodies
• …did not commit a lesser harm than environmental destruction.

Do not collapse that.
Do not play with that scale.

Because when people start flattening harm like that, somebody always ends up beneath the scale.

And history shows who that “somebody” tends to be.

What’s actually happening in these spaces:

1. A single issue becomes a moral identity

Environmental protection becomes the highest visible good

Everything else is filtered through that lens

Human suffering starts getting downgraded if it doesn’t fit the narrative

That’s not expanded awareness.
That’s tunnel vision dressed up as virtue.

2. There is distance from human violence

It is easier to advocate for animals than to sit with human brutality

Especially brutality that involves power, sex, domination, and cruelty

Some people would rather escalate their language about animals
than confront what human beings do to each other.

Them: If the wealthy man gets to build on that land and erase the scrub jays “it would be worse than what Jeffrey Dahmer did.”

REALITY:

• Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 male human beings between 1978 and 1991

• His victims were boys and young men, generally between ages 14 and early 30s

• Many were Black, some were Latino or Asian

• Several were gay, bisexual, and part of the gay community

• Others were vulnerable in different ways—young, isolated, or without strong protection around them

One of the most painful realities people point to:

• He often targeted men who were already marginalized

• There were missed opportunities where intervention might have happened

• In at least one case, a young victim escaped and was returned to him despite visible distress

He got away with his crimes largely because of dismissive attitudes towards gay males who were Black, Asian, and Latino.

Not because of the “go to and packaged” excuse we use when certain people get away with killing people for years:

“He was smart. He was a genius. He was charming. He was handsome.”

People are ignored. Warnings are ignored. People’s safety is dismissed. People’s concerns are cast aside.

Women are slandered and slurred rather than heard.

Neighbors (including one very alert and determined Black woman, Glenda Cleveland) tried to warn law enforcement. Save lives perhaps. But….

To get to Glenda Cleveland’s warning: 10:20

Glenda Cleveland tried to stop Jeffrey Dahmer. What happened to her and the cops who ignored her

3. Extremity becomes a performance

“This is worse than any human crime”

“Nothing compares to this”

That is not moral clarity.
That is signaling.

And signaling gets louder when understanding gets thinner.

4. Agreement is being mistaken for alignment

You can agree on one issue:

• protect the land
• stop exploitation
• challenge wealth and destruction

And still be standing next to someone whose understanding of harm is completely miscalibrated.

That matters.

Because when pressure comes,
when real decisions have to be made,
when someone has to be protected—

their scale will show.

Here is the truth, without decoration:

Protecting ecosystems matters

Stopping powerful people from destroying the environment matters

But human torture, violation, and murder carry a weight that cannot be reduced, compared away, or treated like a side note

If someone can casually place bird death above human slaughter,
they are not thinking clearly about harm.

And that lack of clarity is not harmless. It is harmful.

A womanist lens does not flatten suffering.

It holds complexity.

It knows:

the land matters

the animals matter

and human beings—especially the most targeted, the most violated, the most erased—matter in a way that must never be trivialized

So yes, stand for the scrub jays.

But do not stand beside thinking that quietly suggests
human beings can be moved lower on the scale
depending on the conversation.

“If your compassion can be stretched to protect everything except human dignity, it is not compassion. It is distortion.”

Note: And when people point it out-that a human life has value-people who were once “allies” no longer choose to be. Even more, they choose to align with people who despise your very existence……too.