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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Transgender people twice as likely to be victim of crime

60 replies

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 17/07/2020 20:32

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2020

This publication reports on experiences of crime by the victim’s gender identity for the first time, after a new question on gender identity was trialed in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) from 1 October 2019 to 18 March 2020. The data show those people whose gender identity is different from their sex registered at birth were twice as likely (28%) to be a victim of crime (excluding fraud) than those whose gender identity is the same as their sex registered at birth (14%) in the year ending March 2020.

OP posts:
BaronessWrongCrowd · 18/07/2020 08:50

I think it's probable that they are actually the same people. I also think it's very unlikely that many of them are middle aged women hanging out on Mumsbet.

Middle aged is so passé. Prefer the term Age of Wisdom or the Wise women of Mumsnet.Wink

Floisme · 18/07/2020 09:07

I agree with wellbehavedwomen. I'm not comfortable with picking the stats apart. I don't want to ignore the difficulties that trans people must face. But I do want someone to explain to me why any of it is an argument for removing women's legal rights and protections.

feetfreckles · 18/07/2020 09:15

The link to feminism is that anyone obviously gender none compliant, including lesbians and trans, is subjected to greater levels of harm.

We should be fighting for the removal of the gender assumptions, and we can see from the violence stats that currently these are strongly embedded in our society, even if our legal systems apparently give us equality

Yes. It's one of the places where trans and feminism should be naturally aligned , and we should not let a sub groups nasty behaviour stop us from thinking and acting objectively

wellbehavedwomen · 18/07/2020 09:39

Did you know that the people harassed on the street were actually trans? Or did you assume by looking at them? Have you seen other people harassed on the street too?

Yes, I know they were trans. It's not often hard to tell, is it? And yes of course I have, since when do you have to deny one problem to acknowledge another?

You really don't think that someone clearly male, in women's clothing, is going to meet with abuse at times? Seriously? And that someone who is female isn't going to be getting homophobic abuse, when dressed and presenting in a way that a homophobe will probably read as gay, rather than trans?

Obviously women are constantly subjected to street harassment, and obviously crime against us is massively under-reported. I never reported any street harassment, or even groping in pubs and clubs, because it never even occurred to me that it was criminal behaviour, at the time (in my late teens and in my 20s). That doesn't mean crime against women makes crime against trans people impossible, or even less likely. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

I'm absolutely clear that humans can't change sex, and that women need and have a right to retain our spaces, provision, and definition. That doesn't mean I think people who transgress what is regarded as gendered norms deserve to be rendered vulnerable by it.

You can recognise a problem exists for a group of male people, without thinking it's for women to solve by sacrificing our own provision, protection, and legal definition. And when it comes to trans men then it is part of our problem, because their biology renders them more vulnerable, too.

There are a lot of trans women sexually assaulted in male prisons, for example, relatively speaking. Clearly I think it abhorrent that the solution demanded is to harm women instead, by housing trans women in the female estate. Women are not human shields for male people. But I do think separate trans provision is necessary. Nobody deserves to be harmed or abused, not by anyone. And while the stats may not be reliable, who knows, at the moment they're the only stats we have. So it's right to accept that they exist and that if correct, that's not okay.

Misogyny permeates our culture. Every woman alive is subject, at various points, to street harassment. We all know that. It doesn't mean trans people aren't also getting crap from angry and aggressive men, because they police gender expression as part of their misogyny. And no, it's not our problem to solve, clearly. That doesn't mean it isn't a problem at all. I don't need to deny what I regard as reality, or harm meted out to a completely different group of people, in order to defend women's rights.

Al1Langdownthecleghole · 18/07/2020 09:46

@Gronky

Risk taking behaviour is most common in young males.

Could I ask whether you feel that 'risk taking' means an individual is in some way responsible for being a victim of crime? Not necessarily entirely.

I was thinking predominantly of violent incidents which involve males more often than females. Because testosterone/Male socialisation. It's a tricky one because of not wanting to blame the victims, but females, as a class, are more likely to try to de-escalate or avoid a violent situation.
feetfreckles · 18/07/2020 09:53

But it's likely the only additional risk a transgender woman takes over the average Male is that of transgressing gender norms. Should they be punished for that? Should they be blamed?

Gronky · 18/07/2020 10:08

Thank you, Al1Langdownthecleghole.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 18/07/2020 12:40

I thought it was interesting that the only other category approaching this was lesbian /gay (sadly not disaggregated).

I have the impression that (I may well be wrong) that genuine transphobia is actually relabelled homophobia?

OP posts:
nepeta · 19/07/2020 01:05

@ThinEndoftheWedge

A quick glance suggests to me this is about recorded crime. (Maybe wrong).

If so

Most rapes and DV are male in female violence and not reported.

An action which is recorded as a ‘hate crime’ perpetrated against TW is not recorded as a ‘hate crime’ if perpetrated against women. Women literally don’t count.

Systemic structure of statistics gathering is not equitable.

I didn't go through the summary very carefully, but I believe that most of the information comes from interviews of individuals, and that this information is supplemented with some data from the police.

I tried to find the crime data disaggregated for various sub-groups, but could not find that even in the tables. So we don't know if it's theft that differs or violence or some other category or all of them.

petherbridge · 19/07/2020 07:08

These figures are obtained by asking people whether they've been a victim of crime, so don't depend on reporting to the police. They do however exclude sexual offences and ignore domestic violence mentioned in the written part of the survey.

petherbridge · 19/07/2020 07:14

One interesting thing I noticed - there are various measures which I'd expect to be correlated with socioeconomic grouping i.e. income, type of housing, level of education, local deprivation. In all cases, people in the higher groups reported more crime (main tables) but felt safer (supplementary tables).

petherbridge · 19/07/2020 07:16

Oh also - Christians are less likely to be a victim of crime than Atheists because (a) they spend 12 hours a week in church where the risk of crime is relatively low (note that the figures explicitly exclude fraud), or (b) because they are older than the general population (which reduces risk), so the comparison isn't a statistically valid once.

ArriettyJones · 19/07/2020 07:19

The Crime Survey is the one that’s self-reported isn’t it? There’s a basic problem with the testimony of people who believe in self-identification.

SheWhoMustNotBeHeard · 19/07/2020 08:08

Fair Cop have actual hate crimes stats on their Twitter feed.

Transgender people twice as likely to be victim of crime
SheWhoMustNotBeHeard · 19/07/2020 08:11

The stats didn't load.

(I'm dipping my toes into Twitter)

Transgender people twice as likely to be victim of crime
Herja · 19/07/2020 08:16

Pretty much Arrietty. I believe the survey is sent out to a random selection of people (randomised by postcode I think, though it's been a while since I was taught about it). Then those people self report if they have been victim of a crime or not.

The 'crime' does not have to have been reported to police. Thus this survey is helpful for keeping tabs on crimes with lower reporting levels, such as race and sex crime, but probably absolutely fucking useless in this instance. As we have seen 'trans women are not women' is viewed as hate speach and literal violence, and so all transpeople who have read this are victims of hate crime. Or wrong think. Or something. Something definitely (self) viewed as a crime though.

SheWhoMustNotBeHeard · 19/07/2020 08:18

Bear in mind that hate crime includes misgendering. It does show that hate crimes against trans have increased, partly because of better reporting.

The ONS stats includes all crimes that they were a victim of, not just because of gender and sexuality.

wellbehavedwomen · 19/07/2020 09:20

Oh, if self-reported then it's pretty useless, yes.

I recall someone arriving on Mumsnet to gloat that, less than a year into transition, they had kicked up a huge ruckus to force Center Parcs to allow them to use the open, communal, women's only changing rooms for the spa. They'd been offered use of the unisex cubicle area instead, but had felt this was discriminatory; as they felt they were a woman, they wanted the right to undress amongst the undressing women, communally. There was absolutely no interest or concern in how the women might feel. None. When Mumsnetters carefully explained that many women will be acutely uncomfortable getting undressed alongside a male body they do not know, and that those women have not consented, and that some women may well have suffered sexual assault, so that could retraumatise them, the empathetic, compassionate response was, "you are obsessed with my body..." Women wanting privacy from all male people in vulnerable situations, and wanting this male person to change elsewhere to facilitate that, was reframed in this person's own mental landscape as an obsession with them, individually.

This person then reported the thread to the police as a hate incident.

Apparently, a male choosing to come and tell a group of women that they had succeeded in forcing a company to allow access to all their women customers while they and that male person were naked, and that group of women pointing out that a male person - whose gender identity is necessarily both subjective and invisible - would distress and alarm them when they were unclothed, and that they did not consent to this, is a hate incident. And now recorded as such in the data, because hate incidents are unquestioningly accepted on the word of the complainant. There is no test. Purely subjective. So women telling a male person that no, they didn't consent - women wanting their own rights under the Equality Act upheld, in fact - is recorded as hate.

I do, as I said earlier, think trans people will be subject to harm and harassment, and this is obviously wholly unacceptable. I also think self reporting in this instance is likely to be pretty worthless. Making such stats absolutely meaningless, really.

feetfreckles · 19/07/2020 10:32

It seems pretty off to dismiss the likelihood that transgender people experience increased violence
They almost certainly do, especially given lesbian and gay people also experience increased levels of violence

Feminists denying what is almost certainly true, denying something for which there is no evidence that is is not true would seriously weaken any feminist arguments against self ID and gender not sex segregation. Because it would look like you are selecting only the facts that you like

Arguments against self ID and unisex facilities hold up even if transgender people experience harm

Binterested · 19/07/2020 10:49

Except that ‘violence’ seems to mean calling someone with a penis ‘he’.

feetfreckles · 19/07/2020 10:57

You don't know that. and not every transperson is a TRA who thinks like that. You are disregarding the results because some transpeople are not truthful people?

We could equally say about the self reported rape and sexual assault " it wasn't rape, they just changed their minds afterwards" but we don't.

Its not as if it could hurt you to acknowledge that gender none conforming people are more likely to experience violence.

Floisme · 19/07/2020 11:02

Arguments against self ID and unisex facilities hold up even if transgender people experience harm
I agree feet - I'm really uneasy about getting embroiled in arguments about stats that have nothing to do with the central argument that a) humans can't change sex and b) that women's legal rights and protections are based on sex, not gender.

CatandtheFiddle · 19/07/2020 11:04

I'd guess age is probably more an indicator than transgender status. People between 16 & 24 are far more likely to be victims of crime, than those of 75. And far more 16-24 yos likely to self-id as trans than people over 75 ....

feetfreckles · 19/07/2020 11:11

I am also uneasy about the implication that all transgender people lie

ThinEndoftheWedge · 19/07/2020 11:15

Stats collection is not the same between different demographics which renders robust and accurate comparison between groups meaningless.

The politicisation and Stonewallisation (I know - it’s not a word) of the police means the public’s belief of what constitutes as a crime, or confidence in reporting/expressing an opinion is now biased.

If we had apolitical police with equality of categories of crime with accurate recording then true crime figures by and against different demographics can be established to generate policies fair to all groups.