Help - looking for reliable stats on violence against trans people

[crunchermuncher]

I wonder if anyone can help - I've been discussing the need for women only spaces with a friend. He is supportive however seems to have bought the narrative that trans people are more at risk than women.

Where does this come from?
I have been searching for stats about this for days. I have found info on fair play for women about murder rates which seem broadly the same between the 2 groups but of course this doesn't capture other forms of violence and abuse.

Can anyone link me to any studies?

Has this belief come from women not being a minority group (we are an oppressed majority) and therefore are somehow less deserving of support?

I want to change his mind. He's not asking me to change mine or justify myself.

Isn't he? When he says that trans people are more at risk than women is he not trying to convince you that this is true?

You've asked question about why people like your friend think certain things:
trans people are more at risk than women. Where does this come from?
Has this belief come from women not being a minority group (we are an oppressed majority) and therefore are somehow less deserving of support?

These are things which your friend is saying, or that you think he believes. The only people who can explain to you where these beliefs come from are people like your friend who believe them. Once you know where their beliefs come from then you can start to dismantle them. If you don't know why they believe these things, then you might find all sorts of evidence to refute what you think they believe to be evidence, just to be met with, 'I didn't mean it like that'.

Perhaps your friend believes in gendered souls. All the evidence in the world won't convince him if he thinks it is possible for someone to literally be 'a woman in a man's body'.

No, he's not asking me to change my mind, we often debate all kinds of things. We like taking arguments apart and looking at where beliefs come from, including our own, and trying to construct robust arguments for our own beliefs.

He's stating that he has a different belief to me. It's not something he feels particularly strongly about, so I want to explore it further. For what it's worth, he doesn't believe in gendered souls, or anything else that might uncharitably be labelled as claptrap. He does not think that TWAW and is what I would call feminist in his views. However we were exploring possible workable policy solutions that could be put forward to this debate that would be acceptable to all parties involved.

I still maintain that I'm not going to change any minds without good evidence (sadly we know that even with good evidence there are many who will ignore it, but he's not one of them).

We're looking at the practicalities from a policy perspective, not just a philosophical / political one.

What’s his proof? It’s often flawed’research’, articles in our favourite ‘news’paper or just made up stats.

Stonewall directs you to a survey done by the European Union Agency For Fundamental Rights. This was an online survey in 2012, of LGBT people. The notes to the survey says “limitations..not random and the results can not be generalised to characterise the whole LGBT population”. The Technical notes confirm it was an Opt-in survey. 6,759 people from the UK chose to do the survey. 12% said they were transgender. Ages skewed young (There is a table) because of the survey method. Young people probably experience a lot more violence so this makes the data harder to compare to UK averages from other sources.

If I select UK and transgender. The question “physically/sexuality attacked or threatened with violence at home or elsewhere in the last 5 years for any reason” has yes for 41%.
The problem is what to compare this to.
Is 41% bad? Yes.

Meaningfully worse than other groups, bearing in mind the limitations of the survey? Dunno.

The same survey has 31% for “all AMAB” (will be trans and non trans). All AFAB is 30% (same definition). Lesbians are at 26%.

So trans people might be reporting a worse experience with violence than others in the UK, but it’s not exactly proof.

Any research send them my way. My favourite bit when I studied psychology was stats - I (shines fingernails) even read the MMR ‘research’ back in ‘86(?) and declared it to be a crock.

Can anyone link me to any studies?

Bleedin' 'ell Crunchermuncher. All that flak for asking a simple question. You can't win.

Innit! Was fully expecting to be told I'm a handmaiden for not demanding he write his own peer reviewed paper and present it to me!

I feel a PhH coming on...

Entitled ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics (subtitled ‘bullshit in research and the gobshites who create them’)’

Men are indeed more likely to be murdered in thiscountry (and afaik most/alcountries) just joined. Statisitically it's safer to be a woman where murder is concerned! But of course something like 98% of murderers are male. Women murder victims are much more likely to be murdered by someone they know/family members/intimate partners than by a stranger which is not the case for men. Not much consolation there for anyone, though.

Transwomen appear to go on murdering and committing other crimes at the same rate as males generally, which is no surprise, while transmen offend in typical female patterns: take from that what you will.

The huge issue - the elephant in the room - is male violence which is so normalised that society seems to view the loss of life in the same way as road collisions. No - scrub that, road safety has been a huge focus and deaths are right down. Why don't we do the same for male violence?

the comment from a PP about women not being human shields for men at risk is very pertinent and powerful and one I would use to my MP or if arguing on behalf of girls' rights to single sex spaces in schools.

OP you could usefully ask your friend if he sees women as 'service humans' born to enable and enrich male lives (the handmaiden view) or whether he recognises women as full human beings and people in their own right. If he goes for option B you have a common starting point and can ask some hard questions about the 'human shield/just be nice/ budge up and hand over your rights' expectation. And if he continues to argue as if he believed option A you can call him on that!

All the high numbers have been found out by Stonewall, for the UK. They include the 41% from the survey the EU did here www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/trans_stats.pdf
The problem is evaluating the numbers they’ve found.

Gottalife Interesting report from the Trans lobby group. According to it 10% experience threatening behaviour in public spaces, 5% physical abuse and less than 2%sexual abuse. Wonder how that would compare to female stats.

Interestingly 27% said they suffered no abuse of any type ; evidence which was" suspect" according to the report as the people who made this statement felt that because they passed so well as women, the abuse they received was just what any other woman would have been subjected to .

An often quoted stat is that transwomen have a life expectancy of 35. This isn’t correct. In the US in 2018 the average age of transwomen who were murdered was 35. The average age of Women who were murdered was 25-29, so non transwomen are murdered younger!!!

OP do remember, too, that hate crimes cannot be recorded agaisnt women because we are not covered by that legislation! Nor are men, of course. But all the LGBTQ groups are. So there's no way of comparing because no stats are recorded and no crimes are reported. That means trans people cannot claim to be the subject of 'more' hate crimes or incidents than either womwn or men. No data exists for comparison.

Womwn! I invented my own word. Now, what shall I have it mean?

So back to the EU 2012 survey. They asked people responding to choose between subgroups and these are the rates of violence:
Transgender 37%
Transsexual (sic) 36%
Woman with transsexual past 36 %
Man with transsexual past 30%
Gender variant 39%
Cross dresser 24%
Queer 38%
Other 30%

Those rates vary quite a lot. That could be because the data isn’t statistically robust, or It could be helpful. Dunno.
Certainly if you look at the two “past” ones, could the 6% include a biological or socialisation difference? Dunno.

Back to the broader point, if there was a correlation between trans and violence, what should the UK do about it?
We do know that testosterone etc in adolescence is correlated to violence, leaving care, leaving the forces ditto. In all cases as victim and perpetrator.

In these cases the UK should take actions, directed at these problems. Changing the law so people are treated as if they weren’t teens, were given new documentation saying they were really raised by their birth family, had an office job hasn’t been considered as solutions.

Transgender people suffering from violence deserve the UK’s help in causation analysis. One of the groups of questions would be about sex work, obviously.

I haven’t seen anyone else link to this:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839172/hate-crime-1819-hosb2419.pdf

I’m just off out, so don’t have time to comment on it much at the moment.

I'm sure I read somewhere that quite a bit if the violence towards trans women isn't so much random stranger violence but more by men who have been surprised in a dating context as to the identity of their date.
Which is not to victim blame but it does seem to be asking for trouble, sane as if a gay man attempted to come onto a straight man, he would probably consider the risk of his approach being rebuffed in physical terms if he picked the wrong man. (Again bot victim blaming)

*TheReal” has some stats which include transgender people, but not women. Violence against women is t recorded the same way.
In the UK burnout’s suggestion doesn’t seem to be a factor in recent murders?
Sex work, drugs, intimate partner violence do seem to be factors in murders, including those of trans people. The last murder was Naomi Hersi in 2018. The punter who booked Naomi knew he was booking a transwoman and they spent some time together before Naomi’s murder.

No, he's not asking me to change my mind, we often debate all kinds of things. We like taking arguments apart and looking at where beliefs come from, including our own, and trying to construct robust arguments for our own beliefs.

So he has attempted to construct a robust argument for his belief that trans people are more at risk than women, and has tried to examine where his belief comes from?

I would use that as the starting point. What it his argument, and why does he believe this?

For example, what evidence has he seen that this is true?
Why did he find this evidence so compelling?
What does he see as the best solution to protect vulnerable males from violent men?
Should women have to compromise their own safety from violent men in order to protect vulnerable men from those same violent men?
etc.

I still don't understand why you're asking people who don't believe something why those who do believe it hold that belief. It's like going onto a site for atheists and asking them about why people believe in God.

Here are some stats on Hate Crime in Scotland. Problem is that it doesn’t mean much if you don’t know the total population of each group affected, and of course as someone else has pointed out as misogyny isn’t a hate crime it can’t be compared.
www.copfs.gov.uk/media-site-news-from-copfs/1887-hate-crime-in-scotland-2019-20

I do think violence against transpeople exists. There are people in the UK who can be violent to those who are different. For instance Sophie Lancaster’s murder. She was murdered and her boyfriend left unconscious just for dressing differently. Neither were trans. Her murderers have been caught and the social reaction was to the actual issue.

Here are some hate crime stats for England and Wales (last year though sorry). Although it looks like it has increased hugely over the period covered we would need to compare with the number of people identifying as trans over the same period to make any sense of it. (Table is on page 6)
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839172/hate-crime-1819-hosb2419.pdf

Goody’s data was also noted by the police to benefit from many campaigns to increase reporting.

And they still don’t report “crimes” or “non-crime incidents” where the victim/witness thinks the reason was her sex, but will record the crime/non/crime incident where the victim (or anyone with knowledge) thinks it is because the victim was trans.

oldcrone for goodness sake RTFT.

I've politely asked if anyone can link me to some stats and repeatedly explained why I want them. I don't need to justify myself any further.

When having a conversation with someone you want to influence, have you ever found demanding they justify why they disagree with you to be effective? Because I haven't.

I've repeatedly said here that it's not something he thinks about that much, I wanted to talk about it (because I read upset about some comments on social media 're JKR from a mutual friend, and my friend is the most openly GC person I know IRL to talk to). He was listening to me rant and putting his thoughts in too. He admitted he didn't know that much about it but had heard trans people are at greater risk of violence than women. I instinctively disagree and want to check that my instincts can be backed up with facts. Because that's how I like to form opinions.

I can't believe I'm being criticisedfor trying to form a fact based argument. This is not helping women's cause.