I saw this comment elsewhere on t’interweb and thought it would be useful to this discussion:
“I did a thread about this last year and spent hours trawling through names on the worldwide list and finding the corresponding news reports.
What I found was that any trans death other than from natural causes is listed regardless of whether there was a transphobic element to the death or not - and there were some very dubious inclusions.
Firstly, the stats from central America greatly impact the whole narrative because murder rates are shocking in countries like Brazil ( I think it was 67,000 for the year I looked at and there maybe 280 trans deaths but women were killed at rate of 16 per week ) which has extreme poverty, drugs, drug wars and a high overall level of criminality.
Secondly, the number of transwomen involved in prostitution also has a distorting effect on figures from any country because prostitution is a risky business for anyone involved - women, transwomen, men, and boys and girls.
My time consuming trawling uncovered self administered drug overdoses, transwomen murdering other transwomen, random drive by shootings, street brawls, prostitute murders by customers and motiveless murders .... I found little evidence of transphobic hate crimes or even transphobia.
The recent “trans hate epidemic” in the USA of 18 transwomen killed this year piqued my interest. I obtained as much information as possible by going through all published accounts of the murders and subsequent investigations and found that in 12 cases, suspects were awaiting trial and 6 had no suspects or indeed possible motives. One of the cases saw a TW accidentally shot when they intervened in a family domestic argument between Mum and Stepdad. Of the 12 where suspects were detained, there was 1 that I considered an element of transphobia MAY have been present given the reporting, but as no trial yet, all the relevant information has yet to be disclosed.
My research leads me to believe that the transphobic hate crime narrative we are presented with is far from the truth.
I cannot look into peoples hearts and minds and therefore it is possible that there may be underlying transphobia in crimes where it is not the main motive, but by and large, MOST murders of transwomen are NOT motivated by transphobia.
Unlike murders of women where intimate partners are often perpetrators this is not the case for transwomen and we also must take into account that prostitution brings heightened risks in terms of violence, susceptibility to drug use and associated risks.”