Are Trans People Murdered at A Disproportionate Rate?

I hate headlines that ask a question, so if you want the baby and not the labor, I’ll spare you a few minutes of reading: no, trans people don’t seem to be murdered at a disproportionate rate.

It’s common for trans rights advocates to assert that trans people are being murdered violently and at a higher rate than other groups in America, offering anecdotal evidence to support their claim. This goes without saying, but nobody deserves to be murdered on account of their gender. Murder is a heinous crime, and anyone who kills a trans person because of their gender deserves to be charged with murder and a hate crime. That said, the argument that they are being hunted down simply doesn’t hold water when you look at the numbers.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, this year is tied for the highest year on record for number of trans murder victims in the United States. Upon reading that, I expected them to report a number in the hundreds or thousands. The number they reported was 31.

According to the FBI, the United States has roughly 16,000 murders each year. If you do the math, the percentage of those murder victims who were transgender would be 0.1%. Surely, the HRC and trans rights advocates aren’t saying that’s a disproportionately HIGH number? That would mean the average number of trans and gender nonconforming people in America is less than one in one thousand, and that certainly doesn’t seem to fit within their narrative.

Of course, the HRC does offer the caveat that the number of trans murders goes underreported. I’m sure thats true to some extent, but I doubt that’s causing such a drastic discrepancy. So which is it?

Based on the numbers, it seems like either the trans/gender nonconforming community is fortunate to be murdered disproportionately less than everyone else, or the number of trans people is so tiny that 31 murders is a proportionate figure. But to say that 31 is disproportionately high and that they’re being viciously hunted down because of their gender would indicate that the number of trans and gender nonconforming people in the United States is microscopically small.

Of course, it again goes without saying that each of those 31 lives had value and that people don’t deserve to be murdered for something as inconsequential as their gender. However, if trans rights advocates hope to bring people on board with their cause, they should use claims that are backed up by statistics; we get enough attacks on science and data from the far right, we don’t need them from the left, too.