Transgender Death and Violence
The first thing you should know: data collection about violent crimes against transgender people is incomplete and unreliable. The deaths of trans victims often goes unreported or misreported. Of the 32 known transgender homicide victims of 2024, 38% of them were deadnamed and misgendered by authorities and press. Victims are commonly not identified as transgender initially, and victims are in varying levels of coming out. Some are out socially and legally out, some are socially out but haven’t changed their documents, some are only out in private, etc. This means the number of trans people who have been murdered in the United States is undercounted.
The second thing you should know: This isn’t something we can understand if we just talk about being transgender. 61% of transgender victims of fatal violence since 2013 are Black transgender women, so we must consider the intersection between race and gender when understanding the violence we face. We also need to understand how race and gender impact things like income, access to mental health resources, rates of substance abuse, incarceration and recidivism rates, etc. All of these things also play a role in how often we experience violence, it’s not just that we are transgender that gets us killed, but often we are denied access to housing, employment, healthcare, familial support, etc., which plays a role in the violence we experience.
Now that we’ve discussed the imperfect nature of the data we have and the multiple factors that constitutes that data, let’s take a look at the data of violent victimization against transgender people.
•Transgender people experience 86.2 victimizations per 1,000 people compared to 21.7 victimizations out of 1,000 for cisgender people. This means trans people are victimized four times more often than cisgender people. (Violent victimization here includes rape, sexual assault, aggravated assault, and simple assault.)
•Transgender murder doubled between 2017 and 2021
•One in four transgender women who were victimized thought the incident was a hate crime compared to less than one in ten cisgender women.
•Half of all violent victimizations aren’t reported to the police. The rate of non-reporting is equal between cisgender and transgender people. This is due to the low rate of arrests and convictions in comparison to incidents and reports. For example, of the 31% of rapes that are reported, only 5.7% of reported rapists are arrested and less than 1% of rapes lead to convictions.
•Nearly half of all transgender people have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. One in ten transgender people have been sexually assaulted in the past year.
•Transgender people aren’t just at an elevated risk of experiencing one form of physical or sexual violence, they are also at elevated risk of experiencing multiple forms of violence, also known as polyvictimization.
•Transgender people often have complex needs after violent victimization and little to no access to services that meet these needs.
•Transgender individuals who do gain access to services for their complex needs after violent victimization often experience a lack of awareness and competence amongst healthcare providers to meet those needs.
•22-38% of transgender people have been harassed by police. 15% experienced physical abuse by police and 7% were sexually assaulted by police.
•26% of transgender people have experienced physical assault and 10% of transgender people have experienced sexual assault from a healthcare worker.
•78% of transgender youth reported “significant abuse” at school. 31% noted this abuse came from the teachers.
When you put all of this together… it shouldn’t be surprising that 40% of transgender adults in the US have attempted suicide compared to the 4.6% of the general population that has attempted suicide. Anti-trans laws increased the rate of suicide attempts by 72% amongst transgender youth. Transgender people’s rate of suicidal ideation is at 10-15% compared to the general population’s rate of 3.7%. Transgender people are more likely to have multiple attempts than single attempts, and all- yes, ALL- transgender youth who attempted suicide said at least one attempt was related to their gender identity and their gendered experience. 16% of transgender people think about suicide when they first “feel” transgender.
It also shouldn’t be surprising that transgender youth have significantly higher rates of self-harm than their cisgender counterparts. Or that transgender people experience higher rates of addiction.
We are being murdered, raped, assaulted, and bullied, at higher rates than the average population. Far too often, these victimizations come from teachers, police officers, and healthcare workers. This leads us to self-harm more, attempt suicide more, and intoxicate ourselves more.
Our quantity and quality of life is being stolen from us. And it won’t get any better if we don’t start doing something right now about it. It doesn’t have to be huge things. Just use our fucking names and pronouns. Trans youth who have their names and pronouns respected attempt suicide HALF as often. Let us change our documents, give us access to healthcare, just give us a space that actively tells us they respect us. It saves lives.
We are in danger. We are fucking dying. Some will look at these statistics and say we are exaggerating because we aren’t dying more or we aren’t being assaulted more. How much do we need to die before you help us?
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/documents/pronounssuicideprev.pdf
https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117016/documents/HMKP-118-JU00-20240321-SD011.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6913646/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5649411/
https://forge-forward.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/FAQ-10-2012-rates-of-violence.pdf
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08862605211039250
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10110792/#CR3
https://vawnet.org/material/transgender-rates-violence
https://reports.hrc.org/an-epidemic-of-violence-2024#epidemic-numbers
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/lgbtqiapk-addiction/transgender
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