Who is Omar Mateen, really?
If we have learned anything this past week, it is that figuring out who Omar Mateen is involves figuring Omar Mateen.
What does it mean to figure Omar Mateen? It means to condense our shared biases and popular imaginaries into words or images that attach themselves to the person, Omar Mateen. This is what Donald Trump does when he describes Mateen as an agent of ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ or what Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick does when he seems to imply Mateen is first an agent of Christian Biblical justice against homosexuals and then among its just victims, because homosexuals 'reap what they sow'. Statements that reduce Mateen to ‘a radical Islamic terrorist’ or ‘an agent of Christian justice’ make Mateen carry complex and often contradictory understandings of things like gender, race, nation, religion and homo/bi/trans*phobias that may or may not correspond to facts.
