According to an annual count compiled by the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, at least 33 trans or female non-conforming people were killed in the U.S. over the past month, the vast majority of whom were people of color.
The annual report from the Human Rights Campaign was made public on Monday in honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to remember those whose lives have been tragically murdered by anti-transvestment murder.
According to business leader Kelly Robinson, the illness of assault against transgender and female non-conforming individuals is a national tragedy and an embarrassment. ” Every life lost is the result of a community that denigrates and undercuts anyone who dares to question the identity gap.”
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the HRC’s education arm, released an annual “Epidemic of Violence” report that found that the average age of those killed in the previous year was 28, and the majority of deaths were caused by firearm violence.
According to Robinson,” The 33 citizens we lost in the previous year were increasingly younger and people of color, with Black trans women disproportionately affected.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 2021, more than 26, 000 persons died from crime across the country.
According to the Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law, on 2.8 million Americans identify as trans or nonbinary. The Human Rights Campaign’s total number corresponds to.001 % of that people.
Black trans people are most at risk
The firm’s 2023 projection was a little bit higher than its 32-person full from the previous year. Given that such deaths occasionally go unreported, misreport, or are initially misclassified due to misgendering, Robinson said that the numbers likely do n’t reflect the actual total.
Kris Tassone, the National Center for Transgender Equality’s plan director, agreed. Based on police reports, memoirs, proposals from friends and family, and cooperation with other activists, Kris ‘ personal total of 53 trans transgend lives lost to violence was even higher.
It is crucial to keep in mind that TDOR is about remembering the names and the testimonies of those we have lost, even though the statistics are a powerful way to quantify the issue of murder against our communities, according to Tassone. ” Each story was about a person who deserved an entire life free from prejudice and hatred, and their loved ones lament their lost.”
335 for deaths, with 85 % of them occurring to people of color, have been documented by the Human Rights Campaign since 2013.
90 % of the 33 murders that took place between November 21 and November 20, 2023, involved people of color, with more than six trans women being Black.
They included people like Chyna Long, a 31-year-old Black trans woman who was fatally shot in Milwaukee while visiting her parents, and Tortuguita, an environmental activist 26 years old who died last year after being shot by police in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2017.
In the Human Rights Campaign report, nearly four out of every five (79 % ) victims were under 35, and one-third of those cases involved murderers who were not identified.
According to the report, more than half ( 51.5 % ) were initially misidentified by police or in news reports.
Robinson of the HRC noted the rising language, threats of violence, and legislation in recent years that have targeted the transgender area, such as laws prohibiting gender-affirming healthcare, bomb threats against libraries and hospitals that serve trans and intersex people, as well as next year’s large shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ facility in Colorado Springs.
According to Robinson, “each of these hideous deeds serves to increase stigma and foster a hostile culture that puts the lives of anyone outside the gender binary in danger.”
Are language and anti-trans policy a part of the issue?
For the first time in its 40+ time past, the Human Rights Campaign declared a “national state of emergency” for LGBTQ+ Americans earlier this year, citing the fact that more than 550 anti-EQL+ charges had been introduced into state homes across the nation. More than 80 laws were enacted.
The FBI reported that between 2021 and 2022, hate crimes based on gender identity increased by almost a third ( 32.7 % ).
The fact that almost two-thirds of patients were Black trans people, according to Tori Cooper of the Human Rights Campaign’s Transgender Justice Initiative, is a crisis brought on, among other things, by prejudice, dangerous manhood, and transphobia.
According to Cooper,” These survivors had families, friends, hope, and goals.” ” None of them deserved to have horrifying murder taken their life.”
