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.

The US has an intentional homicide rate of 42/million. The UK's rate is under 12/million. Conversely, the UK's rate of robbery is about double that of the USA.

The US and UK are in no way comparable, in patterns of violent and property crime.

They don’t need to be comparable in overall rates.

What matters for these purposes is whether there is any reason to think the disparity between trans women and cis women would not extend to the UK.

No one has given any reason why the disparity would be lower in the UK compared to the US

If they would be of greater risk of violence, that is because they are men.

That stats I've seen show that men are more violent as a whole, and are more likely to be killed by each other. What the solution for that then? Making women even MORE vulnerable in their own spaces in order to make some men more comfortable and safer.

The total lack of care and regard for women amongst some men is not surprising sadly, but I still find it breathtaking at times. It's like we are merely regarded as 2nd class citisens, an afterthought, or 'The Help'. It is our responsibility, apparently, to look after everyone, even to the detriment of our own comfort and safety, and to accommodate the needs of men. We must make room to include men that problematic men don't want to be around.

I agree with @WallaceinAnderland 's summary of the situation.

Also, if it's not fucking immediately obvious why expecting women to do the above is wrong, then I think it would be enough reason for me to dump someone.

Make a massive assumption with no evidence. No one has provided evidence to disprove it? Well, it must be true.

Nope. The patterns of criminal behaviour in the US are entirely different.

We have constant false analogies drawn between the US and UK from gender ideologues. They are different societies, with different cultures and different patterns of offending.

As I posted upthread, if US trans people experience double the rate of burglaries of non-trans people, that suggests that they are disproportionately living in areas of deprivation, so at higher risk of crime generally. The same might be true in the UK, but we do not know.

In the US data, transgender people themselves only thought that 1/5 of violent crimes against them were hate crimes.

You mentioned transwomen and cis women but forgot women. Only people that actively identify as cis can be called that, stop assuming people's gender. Cis and trans are like Catholic and Protestant and you are forgetting that an awful lot (most?) of people are neither.

Some things to keep in mind when trying to compare statistics on this:

A. If we wish to compare rates of a particular type of violence between victims belonging to different demographic groups AND if we wish to assign any observed difference in the level of that violence TO the memberships in those different demographic groups, then, ideally, we would compare people who are otherwise the same except for that membership difference.

This is very hard to do in practice, but trying to control for other things which affect the likelihood of becoming a victim of violence is a way to get closer to that. So, for instance, one reason that men have a higher rate of victimisation, on average, than women, is because men are more likely not to try to mitigate the risk.

In other words, men are more likely to go out at night alone, get into fights with other men when drunk, engage more in the kinds of criminal activities which increase the risk of violence, and perhaps also act in a more aggressive manner towards other men (than women towards men) which is more likely to cause a violent retaliation.

When we apply this to comparing trans women to women who are not trans, the same problem applies: There are other average differences between the groups which should be controlled for before drawing conclusions from the findings.

B. Getting data on people becoming victims of violence is difficult, in general. The two main ways we do that are either by asking people about their experiences or by using information that has come to the attention of the police.

Both types have problems. Not all cases are reported to the police, and we know that most rapes are not, for instance. But self-evaluations of victimisation can also be problematic because there is no other evidence and because it is possible that different demographic groups might define what they see as violent behaviour differently.

When comparing trans women to women who are not trans the problem may be no different, but much of the data on transgender victims has not come from the same sources as the general data (often this research is done by activist organisations such as Stonewall or Glaad or the Trevor Project), and this makes it possible that the questions used are different from what general surveys would use.

c. There is a disconnect between homicide statistics and other statistics about violence. Data from the US and the UK, at least, do not show transgender individuals facing higher rates of homicide than the populations in general, but data from some sources suggest that they do face higher rates of non-lethal violence. I wish to understand this discrepancy, but I have not seen any good explanation for it.

So you have been involved with some support of trans women in Brazil?
Is there a support group that helps trans women in Brazil?
How does it help them?
Financial support to get out of prostitution?
Supported housing?
Skills and training to get better jobs?
Is this an official charity or something you do off your own back?
I'd be interested in what it is you are doing, could it be mapped across to help other demographics in prostitution?

@TeaKlaxon spot on

I agree too. Of course, the US and Brazil should be tackling socio-economic deprivation suffered by trans people, and the negative effects of that deprivation, including living in high crime areas and being forced into sex work. But where is the evidence of similar patterns amongst the trans population of the UK?

The census did not capture how gender identity impacts household income. However, it did show that trans people are disproportionately concentrated in wealthy areas of the UK, including London, Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton.

Describing London or Brighton as blanket ‘rich areas’ is a stretch.

As for the evidence in the UK, we don’t have the data. I wish we did. But until we do we have to do the best we can with what we have.

So knowing that trans women face nearly four times as much violence in the US as cis women, we have to ask ourselves if it seems credible that the UK would be so dramatically different. I have seen no reasons to think such a thing.

So we have a choice between four conclusions:

(A) trans women in the UK definitely face higher violence rates than cis women in the UK;

(B) trans women in the US face higher violence and in the absence of better UK data and a compelling reason to assume the UK is dramatically different, we should start from a place of assuming broadly the same trends hold in the UK;

(C) we have no UK data and therefore must say we have no idea one way or the other;

(D) trans women definitely do not face higher violence rates in the UK.

(D) is obviously absurd. (C) is also absurd - it would be ridiculous to respond to a gap in data by throwing your hands up and pretending you have no clue what the answer is if there is some, imperfect, data that allows reasonable inferences to be drawn.

(A) is also problematic as we just don’t have the right quantitative data to support it statistically (unless I’ve missed it).

Conclusion (B) is therefore the most reasonable one.

Conclusion (B) is therefore the most reasonable one?

Nice try. The comparator country used to draw this conclusion is demonstrably entirely different in its pattern of crime from the UK.

The only reasonable conclusion is (C).

And, in any case, and even if trans women are experiencing high rates of violence in the UK (for which, to reiterate, there is no evidence), the solution to that lies in tackling male violence, not in letting them use women's facilities.

Trans men, being female, should of course be free to use women's facilities, whether they are at higher risk of violence than other women or not.

Single-sex services for women are about more than a fear of male violence but it is worth reminding ourselves that, though we have no evidence that trans people experience high rates of violence in the UK, we do have cast-iron evidence that a disproportionate number of imprisoned sex offenders are trans women.

TeaKlaxon · Today 21:26

B) trans women in the US face higher violence and in the absence of better UK data and a compelling reason to assume the UK is dramatically different, we should start from a place of assuming broadly the same trends hold in the UK

So should we assume the U.K. suffers the same trends in, say, school shootings, and gun crime in general?

We also have a different demographic, a different society, and we have a better safety net in regards to poverty and ill health ( in dire straights though those services are).

No. Because we have reliable UK data, and because we can point to specific factors that mean the UK’s gun crime stats are different.

Neither is the case here.

On the contrary in fact, polling over the last couple of days shows that among a large number of countries, attitudes toward trans people are very similar in the UK and the US. So there is actual positive reason to believe that the US stats might be similar (in trend if not in rate) in the UK.

Conclusion (C) is patently absurd.

There is no area where, absent perfect data, we would dismiss entirely somewhat relevant data to draw reasonable inferences with appropriate health warnings.

Pretending that relevant but imperfect data doesn’t exist is a nonsensical approach to empirical evidence.

As for the evidence in the UK, we don’t have the data. I wish we did. But until we do we have to do the best we can with what we have.

And the reason we don't have reliable data is? Muddy the waters regarding sex and gender and this is what you end up with and who wanted to muddy the waters with TWAW?

Also, it is remarkably strange how you want demographics split when it suits what you are trying to prove and use worldwide data rather than specific country data when it doesn't suit your argument.

Again, stop using 'cis' the word you are searching for is women no prefix required.

That is nonsensical.

We have a tonne of evidence that US crime patterns are different from the UK: not just as regards gun crime but all crime. And not in a straightforward way - some types of crime are commoner here. The whole picture is totally different.

We also have a tonne of evidence that the US is culturally very different: gun control, the death penalty, abortion rights, State provision of healthcare, positive discrimination, maternity rights, employment rights, broadcast media, judicial system, political system, policing, attitudes to international affairs etc etc etc.

We have no evidence that things are the same in the UK and US, as regards the socioeconomic situation of trans people or levels of violence.

So lots of evidence that things are different generally. No evidence that things are the same for trans people, economically or for crime. And yet you want us to accept that things are the same.

That makes no sense whatever. It's like saying, I know we have evidence that Mars has almost no atmosphere and no discernible lifeforms, but we should go ahead and assume it's the same as the Earth anyway, because they are both planets. Total logic fail.

Cracks me up when people roll out this old fable.

Let’s say for one second it was true, who are TW at risk from? Men.
so they want to use female spaces for safety. From men. But they are men no? No, they’re not because they self ID as a woman.
Right so, self ID is accepted.

OK even if I could get on board with TW using female spaces, they also want to self ID. So now they’ve diluted the “safe” space anyway as they’ve opened up the space to any man, not just TW. They’ve opened the door to any man who wishes to exploit self Id for his own pleasure.

so the whole argument starts to fall apart. You want to be safe but you can’t be safe because you’re allowing the very people you’re scared of to fucking follow you through the door.

if TW are scared of being hurt by men why do they also advocate for allowing any men to follow them into our spaces.

I mean we know the answer of course.

There aren't imperfect data for the UK. There are no data.

The absurdity would be to draw any conclusions in the absence of evidence.

I saw an appalling clip of a transwoman being beaten up by a group of men in the US and I would say the nature of the violence was different from what would have been done to a woman. Not private sexualised control, but almost proud public punishment of a sexual minority.

Isn't this what comparable though to what generally happens with male-on-male violence? Maybe I'm wrong, as it's an impression I have, no data to back it up, but I perceive male-on-male violence, involving strangers, as being many-to-one, or sometimes many-to-many in a group fight, often started over someone wearing the wrong football shirt, or looking/being gay, or whatever. Male-on-female violence is more likely to be one-on-one and is often sexual violence.

What conclusions do you draw from these data, @TeaKlaxon ?

Rates of incarceration for sexual offences within the population as a whole:

Women: 3 per million
Men: 395 per million
Men who identify as women: 1916 per million

Doesn’t your position do the exact same?

If trans women can use women’s bathrooms then you claim any man can use them simply by claiming to be a trans woman.

But if everyone must use bathrooms in accordance to biological sex, then any man can simply claim to be a trans man.

But if everyone must use bathrooms in accordance to biological sex, then any man can simply claim to be a trans man.

Hmm, like that will work. This is not the 'gotcha' you seem to think it is.

the US is a reasonable comparator country.

What utter nonsense. Not even worth getting into a discussion about, although more patient women than me are making very good points.

Talk me through why it wouldn’t work*

Obviously in this hypothetical world where we think sex offenders will be bound by the rules of who is allowed use which toilet when they decide how to carry out their crimes.

In that hypothetical world, when someone appears to be biologically male in the women’s toilets says, when challenged, ‘I’m a trans man and I have to use the women’s bathroom’ what happens then?

The US is not a reasonable comparator with the UK when it comes to violent crime. How many mass shootings has the UK had this year?