Number of trans people who are murderers is greater than the number of trans people who are murder victims in UK **Title amended by MNHQ**

[WombOfOnesOwn]

This year, the number of murderers who are transgender is higher in the UK than the number of murder victims.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4156440/Transgender-woman-boyfriend-murdered-flatmate.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4997224/Father-two-stabbed-death-transgender-woman.html

And then there's attempted murders and current murderers declaring themselves trans while behind bars:

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jailed-killer-who-chopped-testicles-9882176

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/transgender-murderer-moved-womens-prison-9770465

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/transgender-woman-accused-trying-murder-9569383

www.thesun.co.uk/news/2193637/transgender-female-running-champ-to-be-detained-in-hospital-after-trying-to-murder-top-uk-athletics-official/

Does the fact that MTFs are victimizers in these obscenely violent criminal acts more frequently than they are victims change how lawmakers will see their claims of eternal victimhood? I doubt it. How many male murderers will have to be given elective surgery at taxpayer expense and housed with women (far less likely to be in prison for violent crime) before someone takes a long, hard look at the reality of the situation?

As people on the thread have noted, the data is very difficult to read due to the low numbers/lack of statistical significance, the lack of official stats and the range of transgender identities which make it hard to calculate anyway.

It looks as if in the US at least transgender people experience an average murder rate. However, trans women of colour are disproportionately likely to be murdered. A key issue is the tendency for the bodies of transgender women who are murdered to show signs of 'overkill' (a phenomenon where the severity of injury far surpasses the violence needed to kill them). Most of these murder victims appear to be sex workers.

What concerns me about this thread is the lack of empathy towards any murder victim who may well be someone's child, parent or sibling. As feminists we should be concerned with a. the social conditions which produce the extreme male violence demonstrated in the overkill phenomenon, which affects women worldwide; b. the social conditions which push people into sex work, which affects women worldwide, and c. the intersectionality issue which points to the idea that black people who don't fit in societal gender norms are more likely to experience negative consequences- which affects women, worldwide.

The violence experienced by transgender people has strong overlaps with the violence experienced by non- trans people, especially women, and is to some extent a useful barometer as to where we are in terms of global sex-based equalities.

Reference: Stotzer, Rebecca (2017) 'Data Sources Hinder Our Understanding of Transgender Murders' American Journal of Public Health, Vol.107(9), pp.1362-1363

spannablue

It's a complete waste of everyone's time you talking about US stats and surveys, when we are talking about law in the UK.

I think the thing about the trans murder rate, Spanna, (and the trans suicide rate) is the way they are misused to make a polemical point.

Murders of any sort are terrible. Murders for reasons of hatred (whether transphobia - and yes, this is an instance where I'm more than happy to use that word, racial hatred, homophobia, misogyny) always seem particularly awful because they seem both pointless and evil.

But the world wide figures (which include the sky-high murder rates of trans prostitutes in Brazil - shocking, but in line with their generally sky-high murder rate) are then used as part of a scare campaign: "Look at this terrible headline murder rate (no, don't dig down to see what it looks like in your country) therefore trans people are far more oppressed than any other group, therefore women must cede women's rights to transwomen, because relative to trans women (based on these murder rates) women are actually a relatively privileged group."

Pointing out that this is a misuse of statistics is not the same as minimising murder. I can say, for example, it is terrible that men are sometimes murdered by their female partners (and I believe this: a male relative of mine was battered to death by his wife), and also note that women are far more likely to be murdered by their male partners, and that therefore as a society we should allocate resources accordingly. That doesn't detract from the awfulness of men being murdered, it just points up the fact that accurate statistics are needed for making policy decisions.

The other thing is that the murder rate of prostituted women is horrendously high anyway and the stats for trans women are part and parcel of this.

Stop haranguing feminists. We didn't widen the definition of trans to include a population orders of magnitude more likely to be sex offenders. We didn't campaign for self-ID. We didn't recommend driving a coach and horses through safeguarding frameworks.

If you don't think Karen White is a woman and feel the Karen White case is damaging for genuine transgender women as you put it - take it up with Stonewall and stop bad mouthing the women who have been pointing this out for years.

Well put.

It looks as if in the US

This is the UK, not the US, so any comparisons are meaningless.

Hm.

Datun, others have used US-specific details in the thread and have been allowed to run free with their analyses. The reference is a useful one as it points out the reasons why the data on this topic is not sound, and these reasons apply to the UK too.

FematsTheorum the OP was using the topic of murder to make a polemical point too.

My point stands though: we have a common enemy in the larger systemic issues which impact women worldwide and we should be addressing those instead. If the same energy was directed at, for example, poverty in women's lives... imagine if a full page ad in the Metro had been taken out about that! Imagine buses emblazoned with 'Tory austerity politics hit women hardest'!

Women in prostitution as a group are overrepresented in murder statistics.
People from certain ethnic minority backgrounds are also more likely to be victims of homicide.
Being from an impoverished economic background can also put you at a higher risk of being the victim of crime.
So these are all independent risk factors for being the victim of homicide that are not unique to trans people.
If the state of being trans in and of itself was a significant independent risk factor for being the victim of murder in places like the USA or the UK, then one would expect to see much higher murder rates for all trans people (that cross ethnic/economic divides). But this is simply not the case, according to the evidence I have seen.

My point stands though: we have a common enemy in the larger systemic issues which impact women worldwide and we should be addressing those instead

A) most women can eat and breathe at the same time. B) what do you mean by women.

And you can't use US homocide rates in the UK. The issues are different.

Munro Berkdorf reckoned they had, what was it, three years to live? Because a Brazilian transwomen prostitute's life expectancy is thirty five. Leveraging murder for political capital is not a good look.

Imagine buses emblazoned with 'Tory austerity politics hit women hardest'!

WTF has that got to do with male pattern violence and sexual violence and how it expresses - or doesn't express - itself within the MTF trans population?

And WTF do you get off telling women how to spend their money? I think the trans lobby should spend more of its government and corporate third sector funding campaigning on austerity that affects women. Why are they spending it all on political propaganda instead? Don't they care about women even though they call themselves women?

We have a ridiculous situation where a bunch of people think trans people are incapable of being criminals. If any are they cry comes up they are either not really trans or how dare you upset other trans people
If people talk about female drug addicts or violent women I am not offended because I am neither of those. Why are we expected to pretend a trans person cannot be a criminal
Trans women are male so they are in fact much more likely than women to be criminals. It you are a trans woman who is not criminal then you have no reason to be offended

"It looks as if in the US at least transgender people experience an average murder rate. However, trans women of colour are disproportionately likely to be murdered."

This is not true, and you have not read the thread. The murder rate for black men (34.21 per 100,000), specifically is many, many times, higher than that of white men. The white male rate is 3.90 per 100,000.

And a VERY important stat is that the black female rate is 4.41, while the white female rate is 1.45

So we can see these factors:

• black female vs white female 3x more likely
• black male vs black female 7.8 more likely
• white male vs white female 2.7x more likely

Anyway, the murder rate for black transwomen is consistent with that for black males.

Black lives matter, not just black transwomen lives.

Incidentally, and while this is horribly offtopic to the original post here which is specifically about the UK, there's a recent serial killer who killed four prostitutes in Texas.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/16/serial-killer-us-border-patrol-agent-charged-murder-four-women

One was transgender.

Why did he kill them? Because they were prostitutes (and all Hispanic).

Was the killing of the transwoman motivated by transphobia. It would not appear so. Although this case got lots of publicity because of the serial killing aspect, I would question whether in general the killings of prostitutes who are NOT transgender gets significant publicity.

I don’t think anyone believes transgender people can’t be criminals. But that doesn’t make most of them criminals. How do you want transgender women to be identified?

*Imagine buses emblazoned with 'Tory austerity politics hit women hardest'!

WTF has that got to do with male pattern violence and sexual violence and how it expresses - or doesn't express - itself within the MTF trans population?*

Because male violence happens within a misogynistic cultural context which has recently both leveraged and been exacerbated by austerity policies

And WTF do you get off telling women how to spend their money?

I am a woman. I am not 'telling' women- we women are discussing it amongst ourselves.

I think the trans lobby should spend more of its government and corporate third sector funding campaigning on austerity that affects women. Why are they spending it all on political propaganda instead?

Whatever 'the trans lobby' is. The organisations I know (Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, GIRES, TransMediaWatch, Stonewall, etc) all have different foci. Some focus on supporting people with family relationships, mental wellbeing, physical health, etc; others on developing best practice and research in health and education; others on lobbying for human rights.

Don't they care about women even though they call themselves women?
Not all transgender people are women. One of the biggest critiques I've seen of the anti-trans 'faction' is that you very rarely engage with the issues surrounding trans men. What say you to this?

[The only thing I have seen on this relates to concerns about improper use of binders. I think that if kids are going to do this anyway then they need to at least have access to best practice for safe use of binders].

spannablue

What you say you're a woman, can you clarify? Are you trans?

When not what

One of the biggest critiques I've seen of the anti-trans 'faction' is that you very rarely engage with the issues surrounding trans men. What say you to this?

What is this "anti trans" faction that you would like to question, spanna?

The vast majority of people here are pro-woman.

It's not the same thing. Still, do let us know how you get on when you find this anti trans faction and grill them.

Speaking from a pro-woman stance, I can tell you that the reason that trans men don't feature much in my activism around sex self- ID is that I don't feel that transmen are trying to obliterate the meaning of the words I use to describe myself, co-opt women only spaces or threaten me with violence. So I am happy to live and let live there.

This thread, spannablue, is about whether or not male offending patterns continue through transition into the MTF trans population.

I understand you want to deflect from this topic because all the evidence we have suggests that it does and the insistence of Stonewall on shunting non-dysphoric cross dressers into the MTF trans population makes it worse.

I've responded to your attempted derailments - AUSTERITY! WOMEN SPENDING THEIR MONEY WRONG! WHAT ABOUT TRANS MEN (WHO AREN'T MALE SO NOT TOPICAL TO MALE PATTERN OFFENDING)! - once and I won't be doing it again.

I repeat: this thread is about whether or not male offending patterns continue through transition into the MTF trans population. Do you have anything substantive to say about that?

I would question whether in general the killings of prostitutes who are NOT transgender gets significant publicity.

The murder rate for US prostitutes (mostly female) is 20 times the national average. That's based on figures in the 90s I think but I doubt it's come down much.

Datun

Just to clear this up, I am a female woman, assigned female at birth, with boobs and a womb, no penis (nor have I ever had a penis). My partner is also a female woman, assigned female at birth, with boobs and a womb, and no penis (nor has she ever had one). We have four kids.

Sophocles

I don't believe in factions (I think these things are much less well organised and nuanced than that) but when I mentioned the anti-trans faction above I would include FPFW, AWP etc and to some extent this corner of MN

Munro Berkdorf reckoned they had, what was it, three years to live? Because a Brazilian transwomen prostitute's life expectancy is thirty five. Leveraging murder for political capital is not a good look.

It's also worth bearing in mind that male average life expectancy in Brazil is only 71.4 years according to current WHO profile compared to 79.5 in the U.K. in 2017. But Brazil is a hugely dangerous country to be a prostitute or gay too. And their murder rates dwarf ours for everyone. 13 women killed every single day.

I disagree with your characterisation of those organisations, and this place.

So, returning to the topic at hand, what do you think happens to male patterns of offending when males transition? You disagree with the position here, so what is the substance behind that disagreement?

Spanna

The reason I ask is because you seem to be calling feminists who support women's rights, anti-trans. I don't really understand how women's rights, women drawing their own boundaries and refusing to compromise means they are transphobic.

It would be the same if suddenly all redheaded men decided they have a reason to access female spaces.

It's got nothing to do with the specific characteristics of the people making their demands, except to become informed about them, in order to refute the reasons.

It would be the same if suddenly all redheaded men decided they have a reason to access female spaces.

"Anti ginger activists"