Data on violence against trans people & women

Conclusion (B) is therefore the most reasonable one?

Nice try. The comparator country used to draw this conclusion is demonstrably entirely different in its pattern of crime from the UK.

The only reasonable conclusion is (C).

And, in any case, and even if trans women are experiencing high rates of violence in the UK (for which, to reiterate, there is no evidence), the solution to that lies in tackling male violence, not in letting them use women's facilities.

Trans men, being female, should of course be free to use women's facilities, whether they are at higher risk of violence than other women or not.

Single-sex services for women are about more than a fear of male violence but it is worth reminding ourselves that, though we have no evidence that trans people experience high rates of violence in the UK, we do have cast-iron evidence that a disproportionate number of imprisoned sex offenders are trans women.

Describing London or Brighton as blanket ‘rich areas’ is a stretch.

As for the evidence in the UK, we don’t have the data. I wish we did. But until we do we have to do the best we can with what we have.

So knowing that trans women face nearly four times as much violence in the US as cis women, we have to ask ourselves if it seems credible that the UK would be so dramatically different. I have seen no reasons to think such a thing.

So we have a choice between four conclusions:

(A) trans women in the UK definitely face higher violence rates than cis women in the UK;

(B) trans women in the US face higher violence and in the absence of better UK data and a compelling reason to assume the UK is dramatically different, we should start from a place of assuming broadly the same trends hold in the UK;

(C) we have no UK data and therefore must say we have no idea one way or the other;

(D) trans women definitely do not face higher violence rates in the UK.

(D) is obviously absurd. (C) is also absurd - it would be ridiculous to respond to a gap in data by throwing your hands up and pretending you have no clue what the answer is if there is some, imperfect, data that allows reasonable inferences to be drawn.

(A) is also problematic as we just don’t have the right quantitative data to support it statistically (unless I’ve missed it).

Conclusion (B) is therefore the most reasonable one.

I agree too. Of course, the US and Brazil should be tackling socio-economic deprivation suffered by trans people, and the negative effects of that deprivation, including living in high crime areas and being forced into sex work. But where is the evidence of similar patterns amongst the trans population of the UK?

The census did not capture how gender identity impacts household income. However, it did show that trans people are disproportionately concentrated in wealthy areas of the UK, including London, Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton.

@TeaKlaxon spot on

So you have been involved with some support of trans women in Brazil?
Is there a support group that helps trans women in Brazil?
How does it help them?
Financial support to get out of prostitution?
Supported housing?
Skills and training to get better jobs?
Is this an official charity or something you do off your own back?
I'd be interested in what it is you are doing, could it be mapped across to help other demographics in prostitution?

Some things to keep in mind when trying to compare statistics on this:

A. If we wish to compare rates of a particular type of violence between victims belonging to different demographic groups AND if we wish to assign any observed difference in the level of that violence TO the memberships in those different demographic groups, then, ideally, we would compare people who are otherwise the same except for that membership difference.

This is very hard to do in practice, but trying to control for other things which affect the likelihood of becoming a victim of violence is a way to get closer to that. So, for instance, one reason that men have a higher rate of victimisation, on average, than women, is because men are more likely not to try to mitigate the risk.

In other words, men are more likely to go out at night alone, get into fights with other men when drunk, engage more in the kinds of criminal activities which increase the risk of violence, and perhaps also act in a more aggressive manner towards other men (than women towards men) which is more likely to cause a violent retaliation.

When we apply this to comparing trans women to women who are not trans, the same problem applies: There are other average differences between the groups which should be controlled for before drawing conclusions from the findings.

B. Getting data on people becoming victims of violence is difficult, in general. The two main ways we do that are either by asking people about their experiences or by using information that has come to the attention of the police.

Both types have problems. Not all cases are reported to the police, and we know that most rapes are not, for instance. But self-evaluations of victimisation can also be problematic because there is no other evidence and because it is possible that different demographic groups might define what they see as violent behaviour differently.

When comparing trans women to women who are not trans the problem may be no different, but much of the data on transgender victims has not come from the same sources as the general data (often this research is done by activist organisations such as Stonewall or Glaad or the Trevor Project), and this makes it possible that the questions used are different from what general surveys would use.

c. There is a disconnect between homicide statistics and other statistics about violence. Data from the US and the UK, at least, do not show transgender individuals facing higher rates of homicide than the populations in general, but data from some sources suggest that they do face higher rates of non-lethal violence. I wish to understand this discrepancy, but I have not seen any good explanation for it.

You mentioned transwomen and cis women but forgot women. Only people that actively identify as cis can be called that, stop assuming people's gender. Cis and trans are like Catholic and Protestant and you are forgetting that an awful lot (most?) of people are neither.

Make a massive assumption with no evidence. No one has provided evidence to disprove it? Well, it must be true.

Nope. The patterns of criminal behaviour in the US are entirely different.

We have constant false analogies drawn between the US and UK from gender ideologues. They are different societies, with different cultures and different patterns of offending.

As I posted upthread, if US trans people experience double the rate of burglaries of non-trans people, that suggests that they are disproportionately living in areas of deprivation, so at higher risk of crime generally. The same might be true in the UK, but we do not know.

In the US data, transgender people themselves only thought that 1/5 of violent crimes against them were hate crimes.

If they would be of greater risk of violence, that is because they are men.

That stats I've seen show that men are more violent as a whole, and are more likely to be killed by each other. What the solution for that then? Making women even MORE vulnerable in their own spaces in order to make some men more comfortable and safer.

The total lack of care and regard for women amongst some men is not surprising sadly, but I still find it breathtaking at times. It's like we are merely regarded as 2nd class citisens, an afterthought, or 'The Help'. It is our responsibility, apparently, to look after everyone, even to the detriment of our own comfort and safety, and to accommodate the needs of men. We must make room to include men that problematic men don't want to be around.

I agree with @WallaceinAnderland 's summary of the situation.

Also, if it's not fucking immediately obvious why expecting women to do the above is wrong, then I think it would be enough reason for me to dump someone.

They don’t need to be comparable in overall rates.

What matters for these purposes is whether there is any reason to think the disparity between trans women and cis women would not extend to the UK.

No one has given any reason why the disparity would be lower in the UK compared to the US

The US has an intentional homicide rate of 42/million. The UK's rate is under 12/million. Conversely, the UK's rate of robbery is about double that of the USA.

The US and UK are in no way comparable, in patterns of violent and property crime.

Why do you think trans people are more likely to live in that ‘particular type of area’?

Similar cultural reference points, similar public debate around trans issues.

Why do you think trans people would be safer in the UK than the US?

If anything, in the US there are at least some significant political voices advocating for trans people’s rights, far less than in the US.

No, it proves the point that any person who lives in a particular type of area is more at risk of aggressions against them than those who live in leafy, wealthy suburbs.

Why do you think the US is a reasonable comparator country? because they speak English?

Women are not shields for men who think they're women.
Also, please can you cite the statistics to back up your beliefs?

OP didn’t say her DP’s statement was specifically limited to the UK.

But in any event, in the absence of reliable stats in the UK we should look at reasonable comparator countries and the US is a reasonable comparator country.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that trans people are significantly safer in the UK than in the US.

And that figure related to property offended which goes beyond burglary. It could include vandalism, bricks through windows etc. But you’re right - it may also partly reflect the nature of where trans people live - but I think that proves the point that trans people are more vulnerable.

Agree. The absence of evidence, isn’t evidence of absence. There is nothing wrong with looking at similar countries and expecting similar impacts from discrimination that we know exists in both countries.

Transmen and nonbinary are also included, it’s not just transwomen.

Why would we post links to campaigns to help transpeople to you? It’s obvious you don’t give a shit about transpeople. 😂

Another summary: women are not valid enough to be counted in any hate crime stats, it's only trans women that are so no comparison can ever be made anyway.

I'd like to know why all these people that scream 'bigots' are not posting links to the campaigns they are involved with to assist trans women in Brazil.

Oh, and LTB.

I'm not sure that worked!!

TW commit MORE sexual offences than men according to census data. And that's on top on men committing 98% of them.

1 in every 585 TW in England and wales are convicted sex offenders.

Compared to 1 in every 3000 men.

And compared to 1 in every 243000 women.

Your prejudicial statement was not a question. It’s not worded as a question and lacks the ? at the end.

Finally though you are owning up to the fact you did say it! That wasn’t so hard.

Perhaps next time you are called out on something you say, we won’t have to go through this back and forth of you denying what you said. Debates move along a lot better if people don’t pretend they didn’t say something and discuss points in good faith.