Debunking False Stats On MTF Sexual & Physical Assault Rates

By the same token, different groups of men offend at different rates according to age, socio economic status etc including straight men committing more crimes than gay men with some studies suggesting that gay men have lower rates of criminal behaviour, including physical aggression, compared to heterosexual men.

The other really important point to bear in mind is that being a victim is not the same as harmless. Vulnerability is a slippery concept.
Men are more likely to be murdered or seriously assaulted than women. They are also more likely to be murderers or commit violent crime.
In addition - although I can't find stats on it at the moment - I am fairly sure that prisoners and criminals are more likely to have been victims of serious crime than the general population. (I know I have read this but can't find it.)
So again even if this is true it does not automatically mean that trans people are less like to be perpetrators.
And it certainly does not entitle them to enter female spaces.

From same Gender disparities paper

In July 2016, the BJS began identifying transgender people among NCVS respondents aged 16 years or older.3 Gender identity was measured with 2 questions: sex assigned at birth (male, female, and don’t know) and current gender identity (male, female, transgender, or none of these). Respondents are categorized as transgender if they identified as transgender or their current gender identity was male or female and was different from their assigned sex at birth. Respondents are categorized as cisgender if their current gender identity matched their assigned sex at birth. In the 2017–2018 NCVS, about 0.10% (n = 420) people were thus classified as transgender and 99.9% (n = 435 061) were cisgender.

The approach used to separate out the transgender cohort seems sensible

The numbers of members of each cohort

not transgender - 435,061
transgender man (TIF) - 181
transgender woman (TIM) - 188
prefer not to say - 51

This is odd because an estimated 1% of people aged 13 and over in USA are trans. This would suggest that far fewer than expected people from the trans community are suffering victimization - if the spread of victimization was even between populations then you would expect a 1% reported figure.

The small number of people in the transgender cohort leads to the wide 95% confidence bands in this graph (below)

So whilst the general population data is reasonably accurate, the same can't be said of the transgender statistics. It would have been useful if this were pointed out in the Williams Institute article (and others)

But that confounding variable could also be countered by trans women limiting their social visibility as a consequence of fear or that they don't 'date' as much the average woman because of a comparatively limited pool of suitors.

Many factors could come into play that are very tricky to untangle.

Given that most people claim they don't report sexual assaults in general (an estimated of only 18% of women do in the UK) self reporting surveys albeit highly problematic are often the only closest indicator of rates. IE incarceration rates aren't a reliable indicator of offending rates.

Whilst it's important to keep in mind the deficiencies in self reporting surveys, that applies universally not just on trans people's experiences. It might be politically expedient to minimise sexual violence against trans people by weaponising unconfirmable data but this works both ways that the #metoo 'doubters' will only be too happy to exploit.

This might be a timely reminder that misguided efforts to protect women can end up hurting them even more.

Started looking at this one

williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/
Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime - Williams Institute (ucla.edu)

The headline for the original article is - Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime

The data for the headline appears to come from this paper

Gender Identity Disparities in Criminal Victimization: National Crime Victimization Survey, 2017-2018 - PubMed (nih.gov)

The four to one claim in the Williams Institute paper appears to come from this statement

Transgender people experienced 86.2 victimizations per 1000 persons compared with cisgender people's 21.7 per 1000 persons

But note that the language from the original paper has been changed - original paper uses victimizations but the Williams Institute article uses the term violent crime

The original paper does define the term criminal victimization but not general victimization

Anecdotal data and small-scale studies suggest that transgender populations are at a heightened risk of criminal victimization,1 which is defined as any action by others that violate laws affecting oneself or one’s property.

So it looks as though victimization is quite a broad category involving both person and property. It is unclear if victimization might be a broader category that includes things the victim perceives as a crime

Either way, the Williams claim of four times more likely to be the victim of violent crime seems to be an overstatement of what the report actually says

I think the Williams Institute Survey included something like 430k people. Around 400+ were trans. It’s obviously very difficult to get a true comparison when the subset is so small.

Not to be dismissive, but many trans persons are involved in sex work. Approx half of transgenders murdered globally are based in Brazil, where nearly 100% of those murdered are sex workers who are killed by their pimps or lovers. (At least acc to research I read a few years ago, so based on deaths in 2021-22 if I recall correctly).

On the basis of the higher than normal engagement with the sex industry I feel that comparing cis and trans population figures is overly simplistic and creates skewed comparative data. If you look at the data for sex workers 68% experience rape, 74% experience client violence (acc to SASH London, so based on a UK based sample, so admittedly this may also be skewed) but it’s indicative enough that it begs the validity of trans v cis comparisons without reference to occupation and social demographics.

What I think data about violence towards transgender individuals does tell us is that they are vulnerable and not enough is being done to support them on a local level. Whether this is because of comorbid psychological and psychological illness - the MH issues that underly their feeling that they are trans, undiagnosed ND conditions, drug addiction - or the lack of social support (such as alienation from family) that leads them into sex work etc is not clear and studies need to be done and funding put in place.

Any death is tragic, but I genuinely do not feel transgender persons are more vulnerable to rape/violence/murder than the average member of the ‘cis’ population.