ABSTRACT
The brutal killings of James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard in 1998 drew national attention
to gender, sexual, and racial divisions between men in America. Once the details of these
violent crimes were released, many locals, as well as many people throughout the USA, were
horrified, confused, and outraged by their extreme nature. Although racism and homophobia
still permeate our cultural and social relations in the United States, no one expected these
extreme forms of violence. Explanations for these crimes, as well as for racism and homo-
phobia in general, focused on the individual. Some journalists argued that the social back-
grounds and social conditions of the killers may have contributed to their racism or their
homophobia. Few accounts explained how social constructions of race, gender, and sexuality
may have contributed to these crimes as well as to other forms of racial and sexual violence.
