The LGBTQ+ community has come together every Nov. 20 since 1999 all over the United States for the Trans Day of Remembrance to mourn the lives lost to transphobic violence.
Each year, many are lost in this gender diverse and expansive community: trans binary, non-binary, two-spirits, agender, gender-nonconforming, gender-fluid, genderflux, genderqueer and so many more.
Often this is done at the hands of either an intimate partner, family or alleged friend and most often done with a gun. The highest affected groups are Black and Latina transwomen, but there is as much as a 50% underreporting of transphobic violence. This is often due to misreporting.
Transphobic homicides and femicides both get reported as not being tied to their identities, which in both often centers around feminine gender. Femicide is more prominent in South America, and a special type of intimate partner death – the Dowry killing – is high in South Asia. Like the United States, these countries often fail to accurately report these deaths. In the cases of trans women, this is notably higher worldwide. Often femicide goes unreported and trans women often get unclaimed by their families, deadnamed and/or misgendered by all parties involved, but so do individuals from all gender expansive and diverse communities.
A report in The Global Americans titled “Femicide and International Women’s Rights” highlights this issue. It found that, “Much of the data that is collected on homicides is not disaggregated by sex, which results in many murders of women not accounted for, especially in armed conflict and in poverty-stricken areas. Nevertheless, there have been recent improvements in the collection and availability of data on femicide. Since 1995 more than 100 countries have conducted at least one survey addressing the issue.”
It is due to the work and diligence of the LGBTQ community that we can learn the basic information of just a handful every year that have suffered a violent end of their lives. The Human Rights Campaign, which tracks trans murders in the United States, relies on community help with leads and to correct information as do many other LGBTQ organizations. Because of the need to protect themselves, people sometimes submit this information anonymously.
On the official website for the Human Rights Campaign, you can find articles providing some statistics on transphobic violence. They highlight that since 2013:
• More than four in five (85%) of victims tracked were people of color, including about 69% who were Black and 15% who were Latinx
• 77% were under the age of 35
• 69% of deaths involved a firearm
• 15 people were killed by police or while incarcerated, including two in 2022
• In 40% of the cases, the killer remains unknown or at large with no arrest made
• Of those with a known killer, 65% were killed by a person they knew
• 19% of those whose killer is known were killed by an intimate partner
• 9.7% were killed by a friend or family member
• 36% were killed by an acquaintance
• 70% of those killed were initially misgendered by the media and/or police
A display in the Madison College Gateway throughout November and part of December recognized the 37 people in the United States who died from transphobic violence between Nov. 20, 2021, and Nov. 20, 2022.
The display was set up by the Student Senate Racial Equity Committee and assisted by the GSA.