Just came across this on Twitter
twitter.com/Kt_Leung/status/1269574876081328129
This was shared by Katie Leung. Leung is an actress who had an expensive education courtesy of her banker parents. She's not I think stupid.
The original petition seems to have been started by a white woman from Thetford who likes sharing petitions on Facebook.
It reads
'Black Trans women have a life expectancy of only 35 years. This is outrageous '
Common sense would tell you that this is not true, and it's right in the first sentence. In fact, this relates to the average age at death for murdered transwomen in the Americas. www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/23/41471629/is-the-life-expectancy-of-trans-women-in-the-us-just-35-no
Murder victims tend to be younger. 80% of murder victims are under 45. The life expectancy of transwomen is NOT 35. This is just an outright lie. It might well be less than average, and you could probably some sort of petition if you found the reasons for that, but facts are important.
" We need white cis people to speak up with them as their own voices are often shut down or completely ignored. Its actually quite hard to even find reliable statistics (most likely due to lack of recording) so I am being careful with information, but in 2019 26 transgender women in the UK were murdered and the majority of those were POC. We need to do better and so does our government. Black Trans Women are endangered and they urgently need attention and justice! "
Come on! If there were 26 transgender women being killed every year in the UK we'd notice. I mean all of us, individually - it would be reported on the news. In fact the 26 figure relates to the USA.
Channel 4 News, not known for its right-wing extreme views, suggests that there are in fact on average ONE murder of a transperson (not necessarily because they were trans,) each year in the UK.
AIBU to think that the 100,000 people who signed and shared this obvious nonsense should be ashamed of themselves for spreading fake news? Not because it's wrong to care about black transwomen, but because the entire story is false. And because if you want to show your support for black people in the UK during the current global protests, then sharing things that are actually 100% false, especially as a white person who isn't trans, is just counter-productive.
Is it that much to ask people to check facts before signing some shit off Facebook?