Another trans woman murdered - 13 for the year so far

[Emogene]

I not surprisingly check the news about transgender issues on just about a daily basis. Frequently there are articles about the death of yet another trans person as the result of murder. An yes, I agree it is heinous that this happens but I need information in order to more clearly grasp and understand the magnitude of the problem. My head likes facts rather that rhetoric.

I agree that the loss of just one person, regardless of who they are, is a loss to us all!

The above is my disclaimer in an attempt to not stir up a firestorm, the following is in fact an honest search for a meaningful number that allows myself and others to see what the 17 hate crimes/murders year to date resulting in the death of transgender people really means.

I posted the following online in response to a news article but had no response beyond a single, 'Wow'.

"Trying to put into context the number of deaths, year to date for transgender persons, I looked up the Uniform Crime Report, 2013, table 16. Under the heading of murder and non negligent homicides the rate of death nationwide was 4.6 deaths per 100,000 of population. The actual rate of death, of course, varies by jurisdiction. That year 13,483 deaths were reported, an average of 36 or 37 deaths per day. Does anyone have a rate per 100,000 of murders committed on transgender people?"

Thanks everyone for your reply.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

wow is possibly the only response

God forbid you don't have the statistics per 100000 to help you truly understand the problem with people murdering these women because they are transsexual...

[PretzelGirl]

Tied to a bumper and drug behind cars, lit on fire, brutally beaten until unrecognizable, run over by a car three times.... I am a person that generally looks for stats in things and the horror and hate here says enough by itself.

[Michelle789]

I agree with Sue. I like stats too. But in the case of TG murders, one murder is one murder WAY too many. Stats really only predict the probably that any one of us could be murdered in our lifetime. The reality is many TG who are murdered are often underprivileged, live in not so nice neighborhoods, and don't have cars. Many are forced to be out after midnight, either because they are sex workers, or because the only work they can find, even if it's not sex work, requires them to work past midnight. Sometimes they just want to live their lives, and may have gone to a party or to hang out with friends, and walk home late at night. In all fairness, what's wrong with being out late at night if your job requires it, or if you just want to have fun? Right?

Even living in a nice neighborhood doesn't make you safe. The best thing you can do to avoid getting murdered or beaten or raped is to learn the same safety tips that ciswomen learn from the time they're 5 years old. I personally know a transwoman who doesn't drive not because of her race, not because no one will hire her because she's TG, but because she has epilepsy and cannot legally drive because of her medical condition. She has to walk and face catcalling and TG harassment every day because she doesn't have a car. I only face getting called "sir" sometimes because I have a car. It's not fair. It totally sucks that because so many of us are economically underprivileged that a huge amount of us cannot afford cars.

Oh, and not to mention the people who are murdered by their boyfriends or family members. It's not always being out at 2 in the morning that causes this. Sometimes it's acquaintance hate crimes too.

Yeah, it's ultimately the result of people who hate us for being ourselves. People who perceive a transwoman to be as serious of a threat as pulling a gun and threatening to shoot you. People who perceive being a transwoman to be an automatic terrorist. When the real terrorists are the people who murder trans people. People who are so fearful of the unknown their instinct is to murder. People who are so mentally deranged they feel a need to take another life. People who don't value human life. People who don't even see us as human.

[Badtranny]

Hmmm, interesting. Soooo......

It seems like what you're really trying to do is put these murders in perspective. Like, per capita and shit?

I have a couple of questions for you.

1. are you out and living life in the danger zone like the gals that have responded before me or are you skulking around in only safe spaces?
2. what is the minimum number of murders for the crime of being an authentic whole person would you consider too many? 20? 100? .00002%?

[Claire Cook]

Paula,

These are truly horrifying stories and serve as real wakeup calls to us. The fact that transwomen of color are especially targeted is doubly troubling.

There is a certain segment of the population (that will remain nameless here cuz of rules and whatnot) that will not unbind themselves from traditional notions of gender and sexuality.

The world is turning slowly, but I fear it may get worse before it gets better as the aforementioned population will probably get even more violent before they finally fade away.

Melissa, I fear that given the current political and social climate in this country things will just get worse. In addition to the latent fears that you mention, there are cultural and (I'm sad to say) religious bases that lead to these reactions against us. Yes. these people are not about to change.

[Emogene]

Yes, Badtranny, you hit it exactly on the head, I am trying to put it in perspective. And yes, I am very aware of the human toll when a person dies having been an investigator for some years; people do kill themselves and others in quite nasty ways. Still deal with the PTSD at times.

And yes, to satisfy your curiosity, I don't live in the big city but in a smaller community with a very diverse and accepting, generally, populace.

My point is not that one death or even a 1,000 deaths are any less heinous but rather what is the actual rate of death.

In order for society to respond, you need facts. If, as we suspect, the death rate for trans people as the result of murder exceeds that of the population as a whole then you have a solid, irrefutable point upon which to base a demand for action.

Society is use to dealing with 13,000 deaths annually. Faced with that figure, the allocation of finite resources by police departments, where few agencies will ever deal with the murder of a single transgender person, is not likely to change without their political masters being forced into the reallocation of dollars. Like it or not, that is reality.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

you really don't get it all and should quit while you are way behind...

[Anne2345]

Seriously, Emogene? You would come *here* with *that* response? Wow.

You are correct, though, in that it's all about the facts. And here, on *this* issue, the facts kinda really speak for themselves in quite the persuasive manner . . . .

[becky77]

I see what you are saying Emogene, so 13 Trans women killed is not that much but also in the scheme of things they are murder statistics and if they were victims of say mugging or some other crime where they were not particularly targeted I might agree.

After all people get murdered everyday, the problem is how and why they are murdered, that kinda makes the statistics not matter.

The way I see it is you have a criminal, he/she targets people looking for money. Sadly the victims are just unfortunate, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
With trans people they are targeted just for being themselves, not because of money or drugs, just because they dare to exist.
These are not victims of crime, they are the crime!

If someone like you wants to make them disappear into statistics, what hope is there?

[Emogene]

OK, One last try here. Please read the content clinically without righteous indignation.

You know murder and assault and discrimination against transgender people is a problem, I know it is a problem and you all know that it is a problem, a serious one.

The larger media outlets, the public in general and our political masters do not know it is a major problem.

If one has a problem, one must identify it irrefutably and without question in order to have the tools to force the media, public and ultimately the politicians to respond. That is what I am asking for here, I am not a statistician and can't perform the analysis of raw data required to prove to the satisfaction of the above groups that we have a major, sustained, ongoing and quite probably increasing problem as we become more prominent within society.

We can continue to wail and beat our breasts, and we can reinforce to ourselves within our little group that we have a problem, and wail and beat our collective breasts. Has that worked for us in resolving our problem? No, things are just as bad and possibly worse.

But if you wish to change society, you have to have solid facts to take to the media, thence to the public and as a result of significant and sustained general public outrage and indignation to the politicians who control our world.

Do you think military leaders say, today I am conquering our enemies, because our cause is right and just? Or do they plan, assure their power base supports them and then they accumulate supplies of weapons and personnel and when the time is right they strike with overwhelming speed, surprise and violence of action.

OK, this girl is not condoning, I am mad and powerless and have no way to affect the way we are treated. I am frustrated. I will speak no further on this topic and we can all go our separate ways deploring the world and doing nothing.

[Anne2345]

Emogene, I think you are entirely missing the point here. I don't know what the statistics are, and I really don't care. Because statistically, the TS population is such a small minority of the general population that we are statistically irrelevant to begin with, IF this becomes a war based upon stats and stats only.

This has little to do with statistics. This has EVERYTHING to do with what is right and wrong, what is human and inhumane, and what constitutes hate versus inclusion and love. Feelings, emotion, and an overpowering sense of righteous indignation are our most effective weapons against the hate and naysayers. A showing of our simple humanity and humanness and realness are much more effective in the media than spouting off a bunch of numbers that most people won't pay attention to or understand to begin with.

[CONSUELO]

I don't want to get into the stats argument but I would like to point out that the TS community is small and the TS community of colour is even smaller, so the 13 deaths so far could indicate a high rate.
But that is all irrelevant when you consider the death of an individual, especially one with whom we share an important characteristic.

[LeaP]

Facts themselves don't matter. They only matter in context. When the general public's response is either a collective yawn or "good," even in the face of really horrific beatings and murders, the problem is the context.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

E.

You are just making lots of assumptions about how the world works. I don't think they are right..you have no basis doe them

It's about the hatred and dehumanization of us. Stats won't change that. And frankly the media covers these murders quite a lot.

[PaulaQ]

The basic problem with your desire for better statistics to put this into perspective is that it feeds into the erasure we get as trans people - that is, the powers that be tend to take the line "well, if we don't have a statistic for it, it must not be a problem." Unfortunately, this attitude kills a great many of us, because it also applies to healthcare issues such as HIV.

There have been 18 murders that we know of so far this year. This is more than last year, and the year isn't over yet. There are likely many more because there are many factors that make analyzing these statistics hard:
1. Trans people's identities are often erased upon death, even a murder, because the victims are identified as cross dressing men, not transgender people.
2. Another example of erasure is that sometimes the person is only listed on their death certificate under their dead-name, assigned at birth gender, so it isn't even obvious a trans person has been murdered.
3. Some states (Texas, where I live is one such), will not categorize trans murders as potential hate crimes, and thus focus additional law enforcement resources on them. So no doubt, some murders slip through the cracks because of this - they are not required to report these murders in any way that brings them to national attention.

This also ignores our very high suicide rate - our suicide attempts are frequently the result of violence and other discrimination we face. We know that 41% of us, on average attempt suicide. This is also indicative of a great deal of violence directed against us. To make matters worse, mental health care for those of us who do attempt suicide is often terrible. In some places, you are better off sitting on top of a suicidal trans person, and hoping that they'll simmer down and decide to live than you are call 911 and hoping the police don't take them to some hell-hole of a psychiatric hospital that makes them worse.

As it is, we know that there have been 18 murders so far this year, and there are about 700,000 of us, as best we can tell. Since most of the murders were of trans women of color, we can presume that the pool of most likely murder victims is much smaller than 700,000.

Unfortunately, no one gathers good statistics about us. Therefore, we can just die, and no one cares, because if what happened was a huge problem, they'd have statistics for it, right? Since there's no statistics, there's no problem! I've listened to government officials use this type of illogic - "We don't measure that. Well, we don't have any statistics that say that happens. So it must not be happening, because if it were, we'd measure it..." This type of thinking kills quite a few people. And it's not just a law enforcement thing - it's a health care thing. For example, trans men, and trans people in general, have a high incidence of HIV. So here's a natural question - does PrEP (Pre Exposure Prophylaxis) treatment benefit gay transgender men, because their sexual activity with other men puts them at high risk for HIV infection? And you know what the answer is? We don't know. Nobody measures it.

So I hope you can see that the lack of statistical data about us is a serious, serious problem.

OT: @LeaP - that is the best forum avatar ever. You win.

[LeaP]

OT: @LeaP - that is the best forum avatar ever. You win.

Thank you! Fun, huh? And they say we are too serious around here ...

[whowhatwhen]

As it is, we know that there have been 18 murders so far this year,.

*19


The world is a terrible place let's nuke it and salt the earth so nothing may ever grow again.