“Afraid for His Life” Is the Oldest Alibi in Male Violence

There is a sentence that appears with chilling reliability whenever a man with a gun kills someone who did not need to die.

“I was afraid for my life.”

It arrives quickly, confidently, and with an expectation of obedience. It is meant to end the conversation before it really begins. To redirect our attention away from the body on the ground and toward the feelings of the person who caused it.

That sentence is being used again now, after the killing of Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a thirty seven year old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026.

According to federal officials, the agent acted in self defense. They claimed Renée Good weaponized her vehicle. But video footage of the incident has raised serious doubts about that narrative, and the mayor of Minneapolis has publicly stated that the Department of Homeland Security’s account does not align with what the footage shows.

Once again, a woman is dead, and the focus has shifted almost immediately to protecting the emotional credibility of the man who killed her.

This is how it always happens.

Fear, when expressed by armed men, is treated as sacred. As proof of innocence. As something that overrides all other facts. Fear becomes not just an emotion but a moral shield.

But this is not fear as women understand it.

Women live with fear as a constant backdrop to daily life. It is present when we walk alone at night, when a stranger stands too close, when a man will not take no for an answer, when someone’s tone changes and we feel the temperature in the room shift. It is fear that shapes our routines, our clothing, our language, our exits.

And yet women are never permitted to treat fear as justification for violence.

Women do not respond to fear by killing strangers. We do not escalate everyday conflict into lethal encounters. We do not turn our panic into a death sentence for whoever happens to be nearby.

If women did, the streets would be littered with bodies.

That truth alone should force a reckoning.

Because what men often describe as fear in these situations is something else entirely. It is the shock of losing control. The discomfort of being challenged. The sting of humiliation. The moment when authority does not produce immediate compliance.

That moment is experienced by many men not as inconvenience, but as threat.

And in a culture that teaches men that dominance equals safety, that authority must be obeyed, and that loss of control is intolerable, that perceived threat can turn deadly very quickly.

Renée Good’s death is being processed through a familiar and deeply gendered script. Her movements are scrutinized. Her behavior is dissected. Her seconds before death are treated like a test she somehow failed.

Meanwhile the man who killed her is granted humanity. He is allowed to be scared. He is allowed to make mistakes. He is allowed to have a bad day.

Women are rarely afforded the same grace.

When women say we were afraid, we are questioned. When men say it, belief is automatic.

This imbalance is not incidental. It is structural.

It is why public conversation so often centers the internal experience of the shooter rather than the permanent absence of the person who was shot. It is why we are asked to empathize upward toward power rather than outward toward loss.

And it is why male violence continues to be framed as tragic but understandable, rather than predictable and preventable.

We see this pattern everywhere in American life.

School shootings are treated as random horrors, but the data tells a different story. A peer reviewed analysis of adolescent school shooting perpetrators found that 97.8 percent were male. That is not coincidence. That is a pattern so consistent it demands explanation.

And yet we resist naming it.

We debate video games. We invoke mental health without addressing how masculinity shapes the expression of distress. We search endlessly for causes that do not require us to interrogate entitlement, dominance, and the way American culture treats male anger as both inevitable and excusable.

A wounded ego is not a life threatening situation. But in the United States, it is often treated as one when the person experiencing it is a man with access to a weapon.

This is why the phrase “afraid for my life” has become such a powerful alibi. It transforms emotional discomfort into moral emergency. It reframes control as survival. It turns lethal force into something we are asked to understand rather than challenge.

So we need to ask better questions.

Afraid of what.

Afraid of harm, or afraid of losing authority.

Afraid of death, or afraid of not being obeyed.

Afraid for his life, or afraid his power was slipping.

Because when fear is actually ego in disguise, self defense becomes a story told after the fact. And the systems built around policing and federal enforcement are very good at helping that story stick.

What does accountability look like when the person who killed someone works for the state. What does justice look like when institutions have more incentive to protect themselves than to tell the truth. What does safety even mean when women’s lives are treated as negotiable in the face of male discomfort.

Renée Good should not become another name that fades into procedural language and news cycles. Her death should not be reduced to political noise or treated as collateral damage in a debate about enforcement and authority.

If this makes you angry, do not dismiss that feeling. Anger is a rational response to injustice. Speak. Share. Refuse the framing that centers armed men’s feelings while sidelining women’s deaths.

And if you still want to believe this was just one incident, just one mistake, just one bad moment, look again at the patterns. Look at the numbers. Look at who is believed, who is protected, and who is mourned.

Patterns are not accidents.

They are warnings.

They are the story we keep refusing to tell.

So tell me in the responses. What are you tired of being told to accept. And what would it take, finally, for women’s lives to matter more than men’s excuses.