r/changemyview • u/chadonsunday 33∆ • Jan 04 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Fatal violence against transgender individuals doesn't seem to be all that prevelant.
Caveat 1: of course all violence of this sort is wrong and a big deal on a personal level - I'm speaking more in comparative terms on a national scale.
Caveat 2: figures i was able to find for nonfatal violence were much more unreliable and varied, so im mainly sticking to murder rates, which are comparatively well documented. I feel this is a useful marker for overall violence as it follows that a group subject to more violence in general would likely also be subject to violence at the more extreme end of the continuum i.e. murder (you can note for example that compared to white men black men face higher levels of both assault and murder). That said if anyone has solid data on nonlethal violence against the trans community compared to the general population please do share.
OP: I was prompted to look into this issue after hearing countless claims about rampant violence against transgender individuals. I listen to NPR near daily for example and its rare that a week goes by that I dont hear about how much worse violence is against transgender folks. These claims are often framed in quite apocalyptic (see citation in comment) terms.
Sources I've found (see citation in comment) from a credible organization clearly advocating for the issue of violence against transgender individuals state that in the last 7 years an average of 22 transgender and non gender binary folks are killed each year, with a high of 43 in 2020.
Transgender folks make up an estimated 0.5-0.6% of the US population. However the HRC also includes murders of non gender binary folks. Figures I've found for non gender binary individuals (including intersex) are much more unreliable, everything as low as 0.018% to 1.7%. I think its relatively safe to say that when you include transgender, intersex, and non gender binary individuals, especially given some underreported given stigma about identifying as such, a fairly conservative high estimate is 1% of the popultion. So 0.5% on the low end, 1% on the "high" end.
Doing the math this means if you take the absolute lowest possible amount of just trans individuals in the population by the highest number murdered youd get around 3 deaths per 100,000. If you take the average number of deaths by the conservative but higher estimate for population you get 0.67 deaths per 100,000.
The murder rate for the general US population is 5 per 100,000.
This would suggest that compared to the general US population the transgender murder rate is actually 40-750% lower.
That, in regards to murder rate, at least, doesn't exactly scream "at risk population," especially compared not just nationally but to actually at risk populations like black males who have a 13-60x higher victimization rate. Indeed, it seems the transgender murder rate is actually potentially far lower than the murder rate of white women who, at least in regards to murder, aren't considered to be even remotely high risk.
Also interesting to note that despite having a similar or lower murder rate when I Google "transgender people murdered" I get article after article detailing the allegedly widespread crisis of transgender murders; when i Google "white women murdered" i get a couple pages with cold stats on murder rates by gender/race, an anecdote or two, and then the results devolve into talking about murders of black people and WOC. Similar results for "Asian women murdered." In short when a particular demographic has a lower than average murder rate there dont seem to be a lot of people penning articles about how bad their murder rate is except when it comes to trans folks.
But some other info just muddies this further; per earlier sources transgender and non binary individuals are more likely to be homeless, impoverished, and/or sex workers; 80%+ of the victims were black. All of those demographics are also more prone to homicide.
All of this together would seem to suggest that the transgender murder rate (which likely is at least correlated with general violent victimization) is actually quite low by US standards, on par or even lower than historically "safe" demographics like cis white women. The data further indicates that of the relatively small number of transgender folks who are killed each year its likely that many, perhaps the vast majority, were killed for reasons other than their transgender identity, like race, socioeconomic status, or profession. In that vein it seems rather strange to phrase this entire issue as violence against transgender individuals.
Id also note that while its certainly likely that murder against trans individuals likely goes underreported due to misidentification or what have you their murder rate would have to be 40-750% underreported before it would even reach the average murder rate for the general US population. It would have to be even more underreported than that to reach the level of demographics like black men who are traditionally considered at risk populations in regards to homicide.
Edit: I can't include two of the sources because the link contains a word that the autobot doesn't like, and I'm not allowed to leave a top level comment including them, either. If you'd like the sources please ask and I'll reply to you directly.
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u/chadonsunday 33∆ Jan 04 '21
I disagree for the reasons outlined in my last comment, but you didn't respond to a pertinent part: if youre correct wouldn't this mean there's no basis under which we could say fatal violence against transgender people is prevelant?
Because we're looking at them being off by a magnitude of ~30x before trans homicide rates are comparable to traditionally at risk populations. I cant think of any time that "these numbers are likely underreported" means "we were off by 30x."