Pakistan, June 4 -- There was nothing honourable about the bullet that tore through 17-year-old Sana Yousaf's body in Islamabad. And nothing isolated about a killing that, though it took place in the capital, echoes a long, bloodied tradition stretching from tribal jirgas to university dorms: when a woman exercises choice, she is marked for death.

Sana, a rising social media voice, a bright medical student who had just celebrated her birthday, was reportedly gunned down in her own home by a man whose romantic advances she had repeatedly rejected. He was neither her father, brother, nor husband. But in the twisted calculus of patriarchal entitlement, her refusal was reason enough.

Some media reports describe this incident as a "crime of ...