Data on violence against trans people & women

[TangoTarantella]

This morning my DP (male) said that trans people were at greater risk of male violence than women. I pointed out that around 2 women a week are murdered by men in the UK (is that just by current or former partners?) and the figure for trans people was around 0. He said that if around 1% of the population are trans then at the same rate of murder of women you’d expect 0 to 1 trans murder per year so therefore in line. Kind of disproving his own point but I’d like some solid data to end this debate with him.

I haven’t been able to find any data on murder rates in trans people or the overall % of trans people in the population. Can anyone point me to any? It has really upset me that he came out with this statement so confidently and I would like to show him that he’s wrong.

Obviously there is more to violence than murder and I imagine women are at far great risk of rape/sexual assault from men than transwomen are. But are there any data on that?

Please help me to educate him otherwise he may be heading for the bin.

You get four points, Hen, for the chutzpah of making false assertions with such conviction.

As far as facts and evidence goes - nul points.

Research indicates that 62% - 73% of transgender people have experienced harassment and violence because they were identified as transgender.

And what percentage of women have experienced harassment and violence because they are women?

75% of younger women report harrassment in the preceeding 12 months alone.

In terms of incidence, violence against men is higher than against women. And violence against men who say they're women tends to be similar as other men. Where it isn't, it's because of other factors - eg in South America there are huge numbers of "transwomen" in prostitution - increased risk the same as women involved in it.

In South American the risk of murder for transwomen is orders of magnitude lower than that for other men, and also lower than that for women. Worldwide ‘transwomen’ are at lower risk of murder than other men, or women.

So is the contention that transwomen somehow miraculously expect to encounter lower levels of harassment and violence than biological women? And think themselves picked on when that turns out to be untrue? Sounds like something men need to fix rather than women need to accommodate.

Research indicates that 62% - 73% of transgender people have experienced harassment and violence because they were identified as transgender.

But I thought no-one could tell, aren't we told ad nauseum that TW have been entering female only spaces for decades and been around just living their lives and no-one has noticed.

Christ on a bicycle! Is this non-debate still going on? The OP has probably binned her DP and run off to Malaga with his best mate by now.

Early pps pointed out that there are no meaningful data in the UK. This led to the suggestion that we should use the 'high quality ' data from the USA as it is a good comparator with the UK. This was rejected on the grounds that the USA crime profile is very different from that of the UK so it isn't a valid comparator. After a bit of to and fro, the USA position was abandoned in favour of the ONS hate crime survey which, we were assured, held all the answers.

This led to a massive argy-bargy. The survey didn't contain anything about women. Oh yes it did, you're not reading it right. It doesn't matter how you read it, sex isn't a category for hate crime so nothing can be captured. We then moved onto what sort of crime could be a hate crime. Only violent crimes are counted. No, the list contains non-violent crimes. You're reading it wrong. Harassment is on the list and isn't a violent crime.

We were treated to a few other detours along the way such as murder rates for TW sex workers in South America, murder and personal crime rates for British Asians and, my personal favourite, why crimes against women aren't ever recorded as hate crimes.

Congratulations to the poster who gamely argued that TW are more likely to suffer violence than women without any visible success and to the couple of posters who exposed each fallacy as it was presented.

Identifying the correct risk factor 'should not be said about any group of human beings'?

What?

PP is just pointing out multiple causative factors. TWs in other countries are disproportionately represented in sex work. Therefore it's very likely the heightened risk comes from that, rather than the fact that they're TW.

The fact that you'd take that as hateful or victim-blaming is bizarre

Agree with this. If women and girls reported all sexual harassment, misogynistic, aggressive comments and street harassment , then the figures would be off the scale. People of both sexes will get comments and insults if they dress in an unconventional way for their sex. As an unconventional teenager who had an arty and unconventional group of friends, we just ignored this or had various snappy responses. When this is addressed at males dressing in stereotypically female clothes, this gets recorded as a hate crime.

Thanks for the summation!

TL;DR - some of us find it hard not to correct mis and disinformation ...

Excellent point!

Thanks - pretty well summed up.