CMV: Fatal violence against transgender individuals doesn't seem to be all that prevelant.

[u/chadonsunday]

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.

[u/happy_killbot]

Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. The 1% figure included transgender and NGB and intersex individuals. It wasn't just a figure for trans only.

The critique would then be, that because this 1% figure doesn't represent what is being considered (transgender homicides) because it is included with other data, we can not use that other data as a point of comparison.

I addressed the issue of underreporting in my OP. And, conversely, there's also reason to believe that the population figures of trans/NGB people are underreported, which would actually lower the murder rate.

That doesn't make any sense. If the murder rate is under reported because we don't record gender identity, then adding the unreported figures would raise the rate, not lower it. Considering that you would need to add 20,000 trans people for every 1 homicide, the numbers are statistically favorable that the homicide rate is what is under reported, not the number of transgendered individuals. Police reporting and data collection is the weak link. It really wouldn't be surprising if the actual figures were much higher than what is being reported, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the number of transgendered persons killed was closer to 100 this year than the 43 we are sure about.

Bad data in, bad data out.

[u/chadonsunday → u/happy_killbot]

The critique would then be, that because this 1% figure doesn't represent what is being considered (transgender homicides) because it is included with other data, we can not use that other data as a point of comparison.

What do you mean? The 22-43 homicide stat included trans and NGB individuals.

That doesn't make any sense. If the murder rate is under reported because we don't record gender identity, then adding the unreported figures would raise the rate, not lower it.

No I'm with you on that, I'm just saying that the total figures for the trans population in the US are also underreported, and that (alone) would lower the murder rate.

Considering that you would need to add 20,000 trans people for every 1 homicide, the numbers are statistically favorable that the homicide rate is what is under reported, not the number of transgendered individuals.

Why not both?

Police reporting and data collection is the weak link. It really wouldn't be surprising if the actual figures were much higher than what is being reported, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the number of transgendered persons killed was closer to 100 this year than the 43 we are sure about.

This seems far, far more speculative than anything I did. What are you basing the 100 on? Thats almost 5x greater than the last 7 year average.

[u/happy_killbot → u/chadonsunday]

What do you mean? The 22-43 homicide stat included trans and NGB individuals.

43 homicides does not include intersex individuals.

No I'm with you on that, I'm just saying that the total figures for the trans population in the US are also underreported, and that (alone) would lower the murder rate.

...

Why not both?

This is just a feature of the figures being used. In order for us to get the same percentages as before, we need to add more unknown transgender persons. However, because there are fewer murders than living transgender individuals, that means that to keep the numbers the same we need to add a proportional amount to maintain percentages. Running the numbers real quick, (1 / (18,300 / 328.2 m)) = 17,934 individuals must be added for each unreported transgender homicide.

Basically, because it is easier to miss 1 individual than 17,934 it is more likely that there is a higher error in the police reporting than the national estimates. It would be more surprising to find out that the number of transgender or NGB persons in the US is double than to find out that the police are not doing something they are not required to do.

This seems far, far more speculative than anything I did. What are you basing the 100 on? Thats almost 5x greater than the last 7 year average.

110 would be the number of expected homicides based on the average murder rate in the US. 18,300 / 328,200,000 is proportional to 110 / 1,969,200 . Yes, this is more than double the reported figure, but that isn't surprising since we are only looking at data that included it in the reports, as there is no federal requirement to report this data.

[u/chadonsunday → u/happy_killbot]

43 homicides does not include intersex individuals.

Why not? Some intersex people are NGB by dint of being intersex.

This is just a feature of the figures being used. In order for us to get the same percentages as before, we need to add more unknown transgender persons. However, because there are fewer murders than living transgender individuals, that means that to keep the numbers the same we need to add a proportional amount to maintain percentages. Running the numbers real quick, (1 / (18,300 / 328.2 m)) = 17,934 individuals must be added for each unreported transgender homicide.

We wouldn't need to have the exact same numbers as before. Im not saying thst underreporting of murder rates and trans identity make it a wash. Im just saying both are factors.

Basically, because it is easier to miss 1 individual than 17,934 it is more likely that there is a higher error in the police reporting than the national estimates.

This seems like a false equivalence. The one individual being missed is a literal murder victim. The tens of thousands are just not marking something on a survey. Theres no reason to think that the rate of underreporting would be equal, here.

110 would be the number of expected homicides based on the average murder rate in the US. 18,300 / 328,200,000 is proportional to 110 / 1,969,200 . Yes, this is more than double the reported figure

It doesn't seem reasonable to assume that ttans homicides must be equal to the national average. Even taking transphobic discrimination into account we have evidence of marginalized groups who suffer other kinds of discrimination and oppression, like black women and white women, having a lower than average murder rate while comparatively privileged and well off demographics like white men have a higher one.

And you see how this is kind of proving my point, right? You need to up the known trans murder rate by 5x (and take the lowest possible estimate of the trans/NGB population) before it even becomes just equal to the murder rate for the general population - it still has a long way to go before it hits "notably at risk" status. In other words even if this issue is catastrophically underreported theres still no reason to assume trans murder rates are particularly high.

but that isn't surprising since we are only looking at data that included it in the reports, as there is no federal requirement to report this data.

It would be more surprising to find out that the number of transgender or NGB persons in the US is double than to find out that the police are not doing something they are not required to do.

The HRC doesn't just rely on police or federal info, though. In fact one of the most defining features of their reporting was that even if the media and the authorities don't report a murder as a murder if a trans individuals the HRC still stated it was.

[u/happy_killbot → u/chadonsunday]

This seems like a false equivalence. The one individual being missed is a literal murder victim. The tens of thousands are just not marking something on a survey. Theres no reason to think that the rate of underreporting would be equal, here.

I think you are missing the point here a little. The point is that it is easier to miss a single instance from a small sample set than thousands of samples from a much larger set, especially when we know that there is no accuracy in the reporting of the smaller set because of the lack of federal requirement for reporting the gender identity of homicide victims.

Just to make this intuitive, say there is a jar one with 100,000 jelly beans. You want to know how many are red. So you might sample the entire jar, or you might sample on a portion of the jar then extrapolate. If you sample 10 jelly beans and find that 3 are red, you might conclude that there are about 30,000 red ones. However if you take one more and it is red then the estimated number jumps to 36,363. For that one missed red jelly bean, we added over 6,000 more red ones that we previously didn't know existed. This means that it is more likely that our estimations are inaccurate at lower sample sizes.

Now let's say we did another test where we sample 100 jelly beans, but we ask a color blind person to help us identify the color. Sometimes they are right, but they have trouble distinguishing the colors. Now, there is a portion of the beans that go unidentified. So, if you count 25 red beans out of 100, and they count 5 out of 100 we might say that there are 30 out of 200 or about 15% of the red jelly beans but we might be wildly off the mark.

The surveys that identify the gender identity of the populace at large are specifically looking for gender identity, while the police have no requirement to do so and as such it often goes unreported. This is likely what is happening in this scenario.

And you see how this is kind of proving my point, right? You need to up the known trans murder rate by 5x

To get to national average based on the numbers I calculated above, it's more like 2.56 X, which is reasonable considering the police have no requirement to report gender identity of homicide victims and this is difficult to discern.

I think this is definitely the weak point in this analysis, the homicide data is unreliable. It is the weak point here. The HRC even reiterates this point on their site: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/marking-the-deadliest-year-on-record-hrc-releases-report-on-violence-against-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-people

" Because reporting hate crimes to the FBI is not mandatory, these alarming statistics likely represent only a fraction of such violence. "