Help with trans-women assaults vs women assaults

[Kalula]

I know the subject line doesn't make much sense, I can't really think of a better title and am in a bit of a hurry. I'm in a debate with a TRA who is pushing the 'trans women are sexually assaulted more than cis women and are a more vulnerable group than cis women' (paraphrased) line.

He has linked to an article showing how trans women have a shockingly high rate of sexual assault.

Now, I know that there must be some counter argument to this, some facts, links etc, so I'm trying googling but not really getting much. Do any of you savvy women have any info I can use to defend women?

Ugh, sorry about that mess of a link. I'll try again: ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/pubs/forge/sexual_numbers.html?fbclid=IwAR1pgU2dUhfSGQYOzTXqEH8hBSy6N3-dfV84j9HlXcm9_6hgAm_tFbLqwy0

@HubertHerbert

Men in prison with men will be at higher risk than women not in prison with men. That's because of the presence/absence of men. Putting men in women's prisons may "restore balance", but it's not helping anyone, and will only increase the total assault.

But the claim is that this leads to greater utility - as the oppression and capacity for suffering is greater for transwomen than women. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster

The net gain for humanity is increased because it outweighs the suffering of women

It's hard to argue against this if that's what someone believes.

So, basically, its not as bad when a women is assulted, as when a man is assulted. says... a man...hmmm

[quote Justa47]@gardenbird48

There are a lots of reports of all types of women being assaulted like that especially in LATAM and Far East[/quote]
I think it best to focus on the situation in this country though (are you based in the Uk?) - there are all sorts of problems faced by people in different countries - journalists in Iran being executed for publishing the wrong thing, large groups of schoolchildren getting kidnapped by militants in Africa (sorry I can’t remember which country), thousands of women murdered each year in Brazil - it is all terrible but we can’t lump everyone’s experience in together. The experience of transgender people in other countries can be very different to here and we have no way of influencing that.

We can’t change our laws and safeguarding because police are apparently sexually assaulting trans people in Latin America (do you have any links to back up that statement?).
We need to focus on the uk and thankfully trans people are pretty much the safest group of people.

Trans people themselves have said here on Mumsnet very recently that there is greater acceptance of their situation here so let’s celebrate that and stop trying to undermine vital safeguarding for women and children (who are not the safest group in this country).

Thanks OP.

Well at first look it looks like the studies they are quoting a high prevalence of sexual assault are quite old, so the cohort of "transgender" people would have been quite different. The one in Virginia also was a study of the African American trans population, which we know is more at risk as black people in general in the US are are at higher risk of violence than their white counterparts. They look to be small studies, the link doesn't work to the one I clicked on.

Also in my experience people making this argument tend to give the rate of rape of women and girls, and compare it with the rate of sexual assault of MTF trans people. Most women have been sexually assaulted at one time or the other, bum pinches, men rubbing up against you on a crowded train etc.

The one in Virginia also was a study of the African American trans population

Sorry, not Virginia, Washington DC

Where in that link does it state that transwomen are more likely to be sexually assaulted than women? 1 in 2 transwomen report sexual assault in this report, a statistic which to me seems quite low as most women I know have been victims of some sort of sexual assault at least once if not on numerous occasions throughout their lifetimes. Has your friend never heard of Me Too?

Yes your 'friend' is including figures from Brazillian favelas. If you're a South American prostitute then things are grim. I would point out that they are even worse for female prostitutes that get murdered in even greater numbers. But I imagine he is being dishonest by extrapolating the figures for transwomen and merging the data for women for general population (thus reducing the numbers). But if you are playing the victim game here, then female prostitutes are murdered in greater numbers than transwomen prostitutes.
But rejoice, if your not in this group things are much much better. In the UK you are less likely to be assaulted as a transwoman than a male.
You may need to point this out. There was one TRA (UK based) who was using these stats to claim he had a life expectancy of 35 years.

Some random stuff:

The "highest rate of murder" stats are global, and largely transwomen working as prostitutes (in Brazil, I think?). Not OK, but it shows how appalling the "sex industry" is.

Transwomen have much the same rate of committing crime as men, proportionately.

98% of sexual crimes are committed by men.

An average of 2 women a week are murdered in the UK by domestic partners/ex-partners. It's risen to around 3 women a week during lockdown in 2020.

Something like 151 million female foetuses/infants are aborted/murdered each year because they are female. This is femicide on a global scale.

As PP have said, have a look at Fair Play for Women, Woman's Place UK, and counting Dead Women, to get the stats.

[NB: I'm totally in favour of women's rights to control their fertility, but aborting a pregnancy because the foetus is female is something else]

like segregating chickens from foxes and foxes from QCs

Necessary wins internet today

So, basically, its not as bad when a women is assulted, as when a man is assulted. says... a man...hmmm

This is just the age old belief that females are subhuman compared to males; it's a common theme with power differential. There was a whole lot of writing in the US prior to the civil war about how slavery wasn't that bad because black people didn't have the same emotions or feel pain the same way as white people did, they were 'other'. It's as unacceptable and revolting to do this to the class of 'woman' as it was to do it to the class of African descent Americans.

Why does this person not believe that women are equally human to his own class of human? How does he justify that? And why does he seem to have this belief that this inferior group of humans are there for the better good of 'humanity' - aka the real humans, which would be the ones born with penises?

This is how a bog standard misogynist supports this gender ideology: it props up all the existing beliefs and makes them socially acceptable.

These stats that are usually used include "sexual assault plus rape" to get their count (typically, the US Transgender Survey, 2015).

These are numbers from the United States.

When you go to the source material for this claim (USTS'15), you'll discover that among the trans-identified, females (whatever they identify as) are more at risk than males. The two generalized sources for this, USTS, above, and HRC put TW at 47-50% likely to experience sexual assault and/or rape.

But if you go to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, you'll find that the combined rates are higher for all women as well as for bi- men than trans folks.

All trans- people, M and F: 47% USTS, 50% HRC

transmen: 51%
all "nonbinary females": 58%
lesbians: 57%
bisexual women: 80%
heterosexual women: 55%

transwomen: 37%
all "nonbinary males": 41%
gay men: 41%
bisexual men: 48%
heterosexual men: 22%
"crossdressers": 19%

Note, that the NSVRC used "1 in 5" for its rough estimate of women who are raped; some sources say "1 in 3", so the above numbers are a low estimate.

If I did it properly, here is a chart from the 2015 USTS (p.205) going into this topic.

So transwomen less likely to be assaulted than gay men and way less likely to be assaulted than women.

We need to focus on the uk and thankfully trans people are pretty much the safest group of people.

There is zero evidence for this and considerable evidence its not true, such as here: www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/17/trans-people-twice-as-likely-to-be-victims-of-in-england-and-wales

@Kalula

There is a lot of misinformation on this thread, some of it deliberate I suspect. To summarise, there is no evidence that trans women commit crimes at the same rate as men, and there is certainly no evidence that trans people are as likely to assault someone than be assaulted. It is a preposterous claim. Whilct most of the reseerch has been done in the US, it is absurd and offensive to even suggest that because 50% or so of trans people have been sexually assaulted that 50% of trans people are also sexual offenders. Research across the EU has also found high levels of violence towards trans people and trans women in particular.

fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2015-being-trans-eu-comparative-summary_en.pdf

The claim that the UK demograph of trans women is mostly middle class white men is also without any evidential foundation. All research points to trans women, wherever they live, being economically marginalised. Research by Stonewall found 15% of trans people had experienced homelessness, research in Ireland found half of trans people are unemployed.

www.stonewall.org.uk/lgbt-britain-trans-report

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-transgender-people-are-unemployed-mkqfmb3d2

Having said that your friend is probably over-egging things somewhat. Much of the research on sexual assault in particular suggests that trans women are probably sexually assaulted at roughly the same rate as other women. But it's not a competition and it's in everyone's interests to create systems which provide protection for all, not attempt to minimise or deny the truth about the rates of violence all women, including trans women, face from men.

jj Where is your evidence that the subset of the male sex that is transwomen are less violent than other males?

it is absurd and offensive to even suggest that because 50% or so of trans people have been sexually assaulted that 50% of trans people are also sexual offenders. *

Don't think anyone said any such thing???????? Just that transwomen are just as likely to be sex offenders as other males. If being sexually assaulted was a trigger to becoming a sex offenders the prisons would be full of women.

We need to focus on the uk and thankfully trans people are pretty much the safest group of people.

There is zero evidence for this and considerable evidence its not true

so jj, how many transgender people (of both sexes) were murdered in the uk in the last two years? (Clue = zero, against 240 ish women and a horrifying number of baby girls, something like 24? I'm cooking dinner so can't check - can anyone who's already eaten lay their hands on the links please?)

what part of transition (ie. a male person declaring themselves to now be female) do you think changes the predisposition of a person to commit crime? So, given that approx. 95% of sexual assaults and rapes are committed by males, the male-bodied transgender people are going to be in that stat.

I think it was Keep Prisons Single Sex that looked at the data published by the Ministry of Justice to get the figures showing that approx. 60% of transwomen in female prisons being were convicted of sexual assaults/rapes, against I think 17% of the normal male population.

So either transwomen are much more likely to be sex offenders or there are many men prepared to id a a woman to access female victims.

heterosexual men: 22%
"crossdressers": 19%

Interesting.

Especially by contrast with the sky-high rates of sexual assault for women. But that little statistic is interesting all on its own. I thought putting on women's clothes puts men in terrible danger?

Thanks for sharing those stats, HedonistPoet

@334bu

jj Where is your evidence that the subset of the male sex that is transwomen are less violent than other males?

I said there is no evidence that they are. As you know because we've discussed it before there has been no published research on the subject.

It seems likely however, if gender is a social construct, then a change of gender would have an impact on behaviour. Equally many trans women are only sexually interested in men, some trans women don;t have a penis, and many trans women take the same drugs which havve been used to chemically castrate sex offenders. On top of this there is seemingly a lack of trans criminals. If trans women retained patterns of male criminality you'd expect to see trans terrorists, trans serial killers, trans bank robbers and trans gangsters, I'm not aware of any in the UK. I'm not sure a trans woman has ever been convicted in the UK of killing a child for example. I've certainly never heard of trans women being members of football firms and street gangs. And if you look at the trans crime website only one trans women, who was tried as a woman, has been convicted of rape in the last four years. Roughly 10,000 men have been convicted of rape in the same period. The same website also shows that not one trans women - who identified as a trans woman and was treated as such by the legal system - was convicted of a rape or sexual assault against anyone in 2020.

So there's a lot of reasons to support the idea that trans women as a subset of those born physically male do not retain patterns of male criminality and the onus is on those who claim they do to provide some evidence - of which so far there is none.

There’s also a new study by Fair Play for Women showing that transwomen retain a male pattern of criminality: fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-sex-offences/

So we can assume that as males they will behave in a similar fashion to other males until you can prove otherwise.

jj

Do you have any evidence that the offending patterns of TW (with or without GRC) are the same as those of women?

Well as the vast majority of transwomen retain their sex organs the difference between them and other males is negligible. So where is the evidence that they are less violent and less likely to sexually abuse women than other males? The numbers in prison for sex offences would seem to imply that there is no difference.

[quote EmpressWitchDoesntBurn]There’s also a new study by Fair Play for Women showing that transwomen retain a male pattern of criminality: fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-sex-offences/[/quote]
That is not a study, it's a blogpost on a highly biased wesbite which completely ignores anything which might undermine their argument.

Still waiting for your evidence jj

Anecdotal 'evidence' - I've supported around 1000 -1500 child and adult survivors of rape and serious sexual assault - both police and non police cases. The overwhelming majority were women and girls by sex. They were all bar a small handful assaulted by men/older boys. The men and boys I've helped were exclusively assaulted by men/older boys. I have supported 1 male to female trans person and 2 female to male trans people. They were all assaulted by men. I can pick out on one hand the number of times the alleged perpetrator was female by sex. Not giving an opinion, just sharing my long experience in the field.