Transgender people twice as likely to be victim of crime

I was thinking about this some more last night while watching an old Derren Brown interview.

This is how the argument goes, isn't it:
'Trans women are women. Trans people are twice as likely to be victims of crime.'

It's the first statement that presents the threat to women's rights. It also has no basis in reality. But it doesn't matter, because everyone's looking at statement 2).

This second statement may be correct but it appears to have no logical connection with 1) so why have they been linked? But again it doesn't matter, because they're already entwined in our heads.

'That's awful,' we say. 'What can we do to help?'

*(the exception being sexual and domestic crime, where most victims are women)

I think there are three things here.

One is that trans people will face disadvantage, harm and abuse because their gender expression varies from the norm. I think any attempt to deny that flies against common sense. We live in a misogynist world, and violent men police gender conformity as part of that.

Two is that false stats are thrown about so commonly (the murder rate being the obvious one, though there are several more examples) and some stats are so unreliable (a self-determined record of what counts as a hate incident, even where it could arguably count as one against women) that people are instinctively sceptical.

Thirdly is that the majority of violent crime affects men - both as perpetrator, and as victim (the exception being sexual crime, where most victims are women). It is not women's responsibility to give up our own protections, provisions and rights to protect one group of male people from another. We are not human shields for male violence and abuse.

All three statements are true.

Nobody has said that they lie. But such a thing as hate crime against Transpeople exists. No such crime against women exists. Consequently they will inevitably suffer higher rates of crime.

And it’s become common place to describe ‘misgendering’ as violence. Even describing it as hate crime as way beyond what it actually is. Words no longer mean much. So I will continue to be sceptical.

Yes, I do agree with that. I didn't express myself very well.

Again, I think it's really improbable that trans people don't suffer disadvantage. I think common sense is clearly on the side that they do.

It's just that it isn't women's responsibility to resolve that, by sacrificing our own rights and protections, afforded to us by sex as a separate protected characteristic.

It's more about dubious stats/studies being used to further the groups own agendas.
And I believe that we ourselves further their agenda when we allow ourselves to get embroiled in these arguments.

Those same stats also appear to show that gay, BAME people and people with disabilities also experience higher rates of crime but this isn't used as an argument for opening up women's spaces to them.

Eyes on the ball.

For me it's not about the fact that trans people experience violence. They do and the police stats show that transgender identity hate crime increased by 37% in 2018/19. That's a staggering amount, even with better reporting and misgendering as a hate crime factored and is unacceptable.

It's more about dubious stats/studies being used to further the groups own agendas.

CatandtheFiddle, this isn't specifically a question for you but your message is a good example. Even if differences in crime victimisation rate can be accounted for by other demographic distributions within the trans population, doesn't that still constitute victimisation (I'm not sure if this is quite the right word)?

For example, the rate of crime against those who spend more time away from home is higher. If a particular demographic is more likely to do this and, as a consequence, suffers a higher rate of crime then, I believe, this represents victimisation of a sort because they are suffering for living their lives as they see fit.

Stats collection is not the same between different demographics which renders robust and accurate comparison between groups meaningless.

The politicisation and Stonewallisation (I know - it’s not a word) of the police means the public’s belief of what constitutes as a crime, or confidence in reporting/expressing an opinion is now biased.

If we had apolitical police with equality of categories of crime with accurate recording then true crime figures by and against different demographics can be established to generate policies fair to all groups.

I am also uneasy about the implication that all transgender people lie

I'd guess age is probably more an indicator than transgender status. People between 16 & 24 are far more likely to be victims of crime, than those of 75. And far more 16-24 yos likely to self-id as trans than people over 75 ....

Arguments against self ID and unisex facilities hold up even if transgender people experience harm
I agree feet - I'm really uneasy about getting embroiled in arguments about stats that have nothing to do with the central argument that a) humans can't change sex and b) that women's legal rights and protections are based on sex, not gender.

You don't know that. and not every transperson is a TRA who thinks like that. You are disregarding the results because some transpeople are not truthful people?

We could equally say about the self reported rape and sexual assault " it wasn't rape, they just changed their minds afterwards" but we don't.

Its not as if it could hurt you to acknowledge that gender none conforming people are more likely to experience violence.

Except that ‘violence’ seems to mean calling someone with a penis ‘he’.

It seems pretty off to dismiss the likelihood that transgender people experience increased violence
They almost certainly do, especially given lesbian and gay people also experience increased levels of violence

Feminists denying what is almost certainly true, denying something for which there is no evidence that is is not true would seriously weaken any feminist arguments against self ID and gender not sex segregation. Because it would look like you are selecting only the facts that you like

Arguments against self ID and unisex facilities hold up even if transgender people experience harm

Oh, if self-reported then it's pretty useless, yes.

I recall someone arriving on Mumsnet to gloat that, less than a year into transition, they had kicked up a huge ruckus to force Center Parcs to allow them to use the open, communal, women's only changing rooms for the spa. They'd been offered use of the unisex cubicle area instead, but had felt this was discriminatory; as they felt they were a woman, they wanted the right to undress amongst the undressing women, communally. There was absolutely no interest or concern in how the women might feel. None. When Mumsnetters carefully explained that many women will be acutely uncomfortable getting undressed alongside a male body they do not know, and that those women have not consented, and that some women may well have suffered sexual assault, so that could retraumatise them, the empathetic, compassionate response was, "you are obsessed with my body..." Women wanting privacy from all male people in vulnerable situations, and wanting this male person to change elsewhere to facilitate that, was reframed in this person's own mental landscape as an obsession with them, individually.

This person then reported the thread to the police as a hate incident.

Apparently, a male choosing to come and tell a group of women that they had succeeded in forcing a company to allow access to all their women customers while they and that male person were naked, and that group of women pointing out that a male person - whose gender identity is necessarily both subjective and invisible - would distress and alarm them when they were unclothed, and that they did not consent to this, is a hate incident. And now recorded as such in the data, because hate incidents are unquestioningly accepted on the word of the complainant. There is no test. Purely subjective. So women telling a male person that no, they didn't consent - women wanting their own rights under the Equality Act upheld, in fact - is recorded as hate.

I do, as I said earlier, think trans people will be subject to harm and harassment, and this is obviously wholly unacceptable. I also think self reporting in this instance is likely to be pretty worthless. Making such stats absolutely meaningless, really.

Bear in mind that hate crime includes misgendering. It does show that hate crimes against trans have increased, partly because of better reporting.

The ONS stats includes all crimes that they were a victim of, not just because of gender and sexuality.

Pretty much Arrietty. I believe the survey is sent out to a random selection of people (randomised by postcode I think, though it's been a while since I was taught about it). Then those people self report if they have been victim of a crime or not.

The 'crime' does not have to have been reported to police. Thus this survey is helpful for keeping tabs on crimes with lower reporting levels, such as race and sex crime, but probably absolutely fucking useless in this instance. As we have seen 'trans women are not women' is viewed as hate speach and literal violence, and so all transpeople who have read this are victims of hate crime. Or wrong think. Or something. Something definitely (self) viewed as a crime though.

The stats didn't load.

(I'm dipping my toes into Twitter)

Fair Cop have actual hate crimes stats on their Twitter feed.

The Crime Survey is the one that’s self-reported isn’t it? There’s a basic problem with the testimony of people who believe in self-identification.

Oh also - Christians are less likely to be a victim of crime than Atheists because (a) they spend 12 hours a week in church where the risk of crime is relatively low (note that the figures explicitly exclude fraud), or (b) because they are older than the general population (which reduces risk), so the comparison isn't a statistically valid once.

One interesting thing I noticed - there are various measures which I'd expect to be correlated with socioeconomic grouping i.e. income, type of housing, level of education, local deprivation. In all cases, people in the higher groups reported more crime (main tables) but felt safer (supplementary tables).