3 ms·

It's rather disingenuous to point at the increase in murders like that, given how 2020 saw a huge spike in murders year over year for the general population. S

It's rather disingenuous to point at the increase in murders like that, given how 2020 saw a huge spike in murders year over year for the general population. So 44 trans people were murdered in 2020, out of a total of 21,570 in the US [0]. Estimates for the trans population range from 0.39% [1] to 0.58% [2]. That's about 2-3x lower than we'd expect, as a population of that size with an equivalent murder rate would have 84-125 homicides per year. If we zoom in on black trans people and compare them to the black population as a whole, 27 were murdered compared to 9,941 for the black population [3]. Doing a bit of napkin math, and with the assumption that the rate of transgender identification is the same in the black and non-black populations, and using 46.9 million for the black population, we get: 21.2 murders / 100k for the black population 16.2-24.1 murders / 100k for the black trans population (using 0.58% for the first figure, and 0.39% for the second). So the surprising conclusion seems to be that the trans population has a significantly lower homicide victimization rate compared to the general population, and black trans population has a slightly lower rate than the black population. And if anything, I'd expect this gap to expand once correcting for age (the trans population skews younger) and the rapid increase in trans identification over the few years. [0] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-and-nonnegligent-manslaughter-cases-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-a... [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/ [2] - https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/transgender-population-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/transgender... [3] - https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/shr https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri...

elgernon 5y ago
this is the kind of comment I come to HN for, informative and based on facts.
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staysafeanon 5y ago
Logical, data driven approaches to understanding problems like this are heresy in the empire of virtue signaling.
lkey 5y ago
So sure, mentioning deaths is inflammatory, but not without context. It was in reply to the parent comment's (and Chappelle's) narrative of 'the trans community has somehow been too successful'. Additionally, a black trans death is precisely what Chappelle used to justify his own monologue. Analyses like you just did do feel authoritative, but it is important to remember that HRC only began tracking these things in 2013, and given the state of play in the US, I wouldn't expect it to be a complete survey for quite some time. Quoting from the nih article you cited about the difficulties collecting data: *Research has shown that transgender individuals around the world and in the United States are exposed to widespread social stigma, discrimination, harassment, and physical and sexual abuse. Compared with the general population, a national survey conducted in the United States in 2008 found that transgender individuals were 4 times more likely to live in extreme poverty, had double the rate of unemployment, and had almost double the rate of being homeless. In terms of health, transgender individuals had 4 times the rate of being HIV-infected and 28% postponed medical care because of discrimination. Particularly alarming is that 41% of survey respondents reported at least 1 suicide attempt. A barrier to understanding social determinants and health disparities faced by transgender people is the under- or nonrepresentation in a range of demographic and health-monitoring activities,5 which may result from a lack of transgender-inclusive data collection with regard to gender identity.* Additionally, your zooming analysis didn't account for victim gender disparity. 3,584 female victims in 2020 vs 14,194 males. Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion. 44/21570 (0.002) becomes 27/3584 (0.0075) when viewed through the lens of gender. I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
- pseudo0 5y ago
  Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing. Those things aren't somehow mutually exclusive. And Chappelle's anecdote was about a black trans person who committed suicide after being marginalized by their community, and I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide. > Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion. I deliberately didn't try to break it down by gender because of the inherent issues with comparing someone who has biologically and socially developed as a male (to varying degrees, eg. someone who begins transitioning at 15 is going to be different than someone who starts at 35) to natal women. It is notable though that if you look at the stats, the victimization rate for black trans women falls in between the stats for black men (much higher) and black women (much lower). It would be interesting to look at other indicators like automobile accidents that show significant gender divergence to see if a similar pattern emerges. > I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself. Unfortunately I don't think we'll get better stats anytime soon. Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID, but there is no equivalent "trans: Y/N" anywhere. And many trans people would vociferously oppose something like that. The result is that police will likely only include trans identification in case documents if it is relevant, eg. with a hate crime.

elgernon 5y ago

this is the kind of comment I come to HN for, informative and based on facts.

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staysafeanon 5y ago

Logical, data driven approaches to understanding problems like this are heresy in the empire of virtue signaling.

lkey 5y ago

So sure, mentioning deaths is inflammatory, but not without context. It was in reply to the parent comment's (and Chappelle's) narrative of 'the trans community has somehow been too successful'. Additionally, a black trans death is precisely what Chappelle used to justify his own monologue. Analyses like you just did do feel authoritative, but it is important to remember that HRC only began tracking these things in 2013, and given the state of play in the US, I wouldn't expect it to be a complete survey for quite some time. Quoting from the nih article you cited about the difficulties collecting data: *Research has shown that transgender individuals around the world and in the United States are exposed to widespread social stigma, discrimination, harassment, and physical and sexual abuse. Compared with the general population, a national survey conducted in the United States in 2008 found that transgender individuals were 4 times more likely to live in extreme poverty, had double the rate of unemployment, and had almost double the rate of being homeless. In terms of health, transgender individuals had 4 times the rate of being HIV-infected and 28% postponed medical care because of discrimination. Particularly alarming is that 41% of survey respondents reported at least 1 suicide attempt. A barrier to understanding social determinants and health disparities faced by transgender people is the under- or nonrepresentation in a range of demographic and health-monitoring activities,5 which may result from a lack of transgender-inclusive data collection with regard to gender identity.* Additionally, your zooming analysis didn't account for victim gender disparity. 3,584 female victims in 2020 vs 14,194 males. Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion. 44/21570 (0.002) becomes 27/3584 (0.0075) when viewed through the lens of gender. I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.

pseudo0 5y ago
Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing. Those things aren't somehow mutually exclusive. And Chappelle's anecdote was about a black trans person who committed suicide after being marginalized by their community, and I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide. > Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion. I deliberately didn't try to break it down by gender because of the inherent issues with comparing someone who has biologically and socially developed as a male (to varying degrees, eg. someone who begins transitioning at 15 is going to be different than someone who starts at 35) to natal women. It is notable though that if you look at the stats, the victimization rate for black trans women falls in between the stats for black men (much higher) and black women (much lower). It would be interesting to look at other indicators like automobile accidents that show significant gender divergence to see if a similar pattern emerges. > I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself. Unfortunately I don't think we'll get better stats anytime soon. Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID, but there is no equivalent "trans: Y/N" anywhere. And many trans people would vociferously oppose something like that. The result is that police will likely only include trans identification in case documents if it is relevant, eg. with a hate crime.