Murders of transgender people have spiked recently, as anti-trans hate speech has worsened
The ongoing right-wing culture war against transgender people paints them as threatening to those who aren’t trans. Yet scientific studies overwhelmingly show that the opposite is true, meaning that cisgender individuals are quite a threat to them.
There has been plenty of previous research on emotional distress in trans people, which is perpetuated by transphobic attitudes (a recent study found that 82% of trans people have considered suicide and 40% have attempted it, although trans people who receive gender-affirming surgeries have reduced suicide rates). Yet beyond the mere emotional, physical violence against transgender people is a real and present danger, research attest.
There were 29 known killings of transgender people in 2017 and 56 in 2021, with 73% of the people in the latter category being murdered with a firearm.
The authors also noted that Black transgender women were killed at disproportionately high rates, with 73% of the tracked homicides between 2017 and 2021 having Black trans women as victims — even though they only comprise 13% of the total transgender population.
“On an average day there are 69 hate crimes with a firearm, accounting for 4 percent of all hate crimes,” the authors write. “It’s not only the LGBTQ+ community that is affected by hate-fueled violence. Bias-motivated crimes based on race, religion, nationality, disability, and gender remain at troublingly high levels, and LGBTQ+ people hold many of these identities as well.”
“In a recent study conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research to examine the extent to which the extremist beliefs and narratives that mobilize the hard right have been absorbed by the wider American public, we found concerning trends with regards to anti-LGBTQ sentiments,”