Renee Good’s Murder was Misogyny

We cannot ignore the distinctively gendered dynamics of this—and much other—fascist violence

Content warning: misogyny, murder

For days, there has been a question, even as we have grieved. But now it seems clear: Renee Nicole Good’s murder by ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, was an instance of misogyny as well as fascism in action. Video evidence yesterday, from Ross’s phone, show the events from his perspective with sickening, unsurprising, and still morally shocking clarity. “That’s fine, dude,” she said of ICE filming her and taking down her license plates. “I’m not mad at you,” were her last words to him, and her last words simpliciter. She flipped a script that demanded her fear and her anger. Her tone was blithe, with just a hint of gentle mockery: one can imagine her shrugging. She was there—as a white, US citizen—to help her neighbors resist ICE raids in Minneapolis, and she was not going to be intimidated by Ross and his brethren.

She did not take the bait, and remained pointedly friendly. She was a woman who maintained calm equanimity in the face of a male ICE officer’s attempt to wield his authority: an illicit, abusive authority designed to elicit panic and unthinking obedience. And, so, he shot her: three shots in quick succession. “Fucking bitch,” he muttered, as her car careened and crashed when Good—now mortally wounded—quickly lost consciousness.

The scenario is not so far from that deservedly famous line of Margaret Atwood’s: men fear women laughing at them. Women fear men killing them, because she dared to laugh at him. In this case, she cheerfully thwarted his attempts to dominate and intimidate. The case is yet another illustration of a point that is crucial to understand about the rise of fascism in this country: misogyny is not an incidental feature or an optional add-on or comorbidity. Misogyny is the beating heart of a fascism that violently safeguards and shores up white male authority—by punishing any social subordinate who questions the designated authority figures. Good was not only killed in a misogynistic spirit, as we knew already from the gendered slur that escaped her murderer’s lips at the crucial moment, like violent punctuation. Good was most likely murdered because she was a woman who undermined a man whose sole raison d’être in his role as an ICE agent is to mercilessly police vulnerable immigrants along with their allies. This is a role that attracts the worst of the worst of men: men who will punish a woman who crosses them in a heartbeat. And this one had the backing of the state and carried a deadly weapon.

Renee is survived by her wife, Rebecca Good, as well as their three children. As I mourn their incalculable, unforgivable loss, I beg us not to lose sight of the role anti-lesbian animus may well have played in this murder too. Becca Good’s tone in interacting with Ross was just like her late wife’s: calm yet lightly mocking; neither scared nor deferential; and because of that deeply, deeply subversive. “Hey—show your face, big boy,” said Becca, who reads as a butch lesbian, and was holding her own cellphone to film what was transpiring: “We don’t change our plates every morning, just so you know. It will be the same plate when you come talk to us later.” She mentions being a US citizen and then effectively suggests Ross relax, take a breather, thus: “You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.” Then she made to get into the passenger seat of the car while one of the masked ICE agents demanded they exit it. “Get out of the car. Out of the car. Get out of the fucking car. Get out of the car.” “Drive, baby, drive,” were the next words from Becca. These were two women who were not only not intimidated by ICE: they exemplified their independence from heteropatriarchal structures in the very fact of their relationship. What could be more enraging and emasculating to a jumped-up white male authority figure like Ross than two women who neither needed nor feared him?

Renee backed up the car slightly, then made to turn right, just slightly brushing Ross as she does so. The idea that this constituted a reason for Ross to fear for his life, as J.D. Vance alleged, is simply too ludicrous to pass the straight-faced test. The Guardian noted that, when the car began turning, it was “moving so slowly that the officer is able to easily retain his balance. Gunshots then erupt without the officer putting the phone down.” The original video footage shows Ross pulling his gun to shoot Good quite deliberately as soon as she simply tries to drive away. Make no mistake about it; this was murder.

I am not saying that Good would have been safe from ICE had she been a straight white man. We can’t know and I won’t speculate on other scenarios that, while different, could equally have inspired deadly violence. But the question, when it comes to misogyny, on my definition, is not only whether the action was likelier to be perpetrated against a woman than a male counterpart, but also whether it was performed in a distinctively gendered spirit and with the distinctively gendered meanings that I have highlighted in this piece. The particular rage women elicit when they undermine male authority figures, and the way they are then read as bitches who deserve to be shot, is an archetypical example of a distinctively gendered dynamic that we ignore to our peril.

As we mourn Renee Nicole Good, and protest her murder, we must not forget that the fascism that killed her is misogynistic to its core. And men like Ross, who will murder the women who dare not to be afraid of them, have seldom been more empowered, more vengeful, or more dangerous.