18 Transgender Killings This Year Raise Fears of an ‘Epidemic’

Eighteen out of many thousands of murders each year is not an epidemic. I’d really like to see this paper stop trying so hard to make stories fit a narrative and actually report objectively. This article does not do that.

In 2018 well over 1800 women were murdered in the US and 18 is an epidemic? I am not condoning the murder of anyone, but transgender people are actually murdered as a lower rate than any other demographic in this country. NYT please pay attention to facts rather than issues du jour.

Being murdered shouldn't in any way be a competition of which group suffers the most. So few comments showing understanding and compassion. Why do you think that is?

I don't feel transgender people are being targeted simply for being transgender. I believe the problem is they pass themselves off as being something they are not biologically and that puts them in a harmful situation. Most heterosexual men do not feel it is ok to sleep with someone who was once a man. Problem is, transgender people tend to only understand how they "feel". Most of these men are looking for women. Not someone who has born a man. Most transgender people feel they are a woman so they live their lives as such with no regard to how the other person feels. They fail to disclose this MAJOR detail and that is why I believe we are seeing these issues. Some transgender people haven't even had the sex change and manage to hide who they are while sleeping with heterosexual men. You are essentially tricking a heterosexual male into a gay act by failing to disclose and give them a choice. Once this is discovered, It can have horrific consequences. They are often embarrassed and humiliated because they were forced to be with someone who never disclosed this. Somedays, I feel like the president but that doesn't make me one. When you don't disclose and give the other party a choice, you have no regard of how they feel. I have seen many stories where people are killed because of this. Even with that said, these killings are very sad and hopefully this won't continue but that is my take on why it happens. I do not believe it is fear and discrimination.

"Tangerine," great film about Trans women of color shot entirely on an iPhone. Amazing. Highly recommended. You will see the trans community as people struggling to make their way in a world that either doesn't understand them or exploits them.

again, The Times promotes transgender rights over all women's rights. At least five women a day are killed in the U.S. Now that's an epidemic.

More men are murdered than women. More men commit suicide and are homeless. Trans women are often murdered by other glbt and are involved with drugs and prostitution in poor neighborhoods with high homicide rates.

So are they biological men turned woman or vice versa? Or did they just identify as women?

18 people does not an epidemic make

All murders are horrific, and all murders should be brought to justice, no matter how marginalized the victim is. That said, it is irresponsible to write an article on the murders of transwomen of color without also mentioning that nearly 40% have engaged in prostitution, over half have been incarcerated for committing crimes themselves, and that 80% of all transwomen - likely much higher for those of color who have less access to healthcare - have done absolutely no medical transition and remain 100% biologically male with the muscle, aggression, and tendency toward risk. Transwomen are not being killed because of "identity," they are being killed because they live extraordinarily risky lives even compared to other biological men. This is not "blaming the victim", it is giving a context that is necessary to accurately address the problem. Transwomen need places for safety, access to health care, and laws protecting their access to employment and housing. They need programs to help get them out of sex work and into healthy, viable employment and mental health care. But activists want to use this to further an "identity" narrative that enriches their own power. This is isn't an "epidemic" of "hate"; it is the very common a predictable outcome of highly marginalized, poor, and often mentally ill and drug addicted biological men living very risky lives. And that is how it should be addressed, if finding a solution instead of scoring "identity" points is the goal.

I would like to know if they were targeted, specifically for being transgender, or if by expressing as the women they were, they simply joined the ranks of other women, murdered every single day in this country. https://womencountusa.org/the-databases

Does it ever occur to The Times that many of these people were probably sex workers? It's a dangerous business.

This article is very weak. The author needs to go back and lay down for us who are the killers, was emotive established, what was the motive, if it was indeed discrimination then based on what criteria, and what proof is there that the motive is in fact the motive?

It is appalling that an 18 year old would be driven to murder someone because of the irrational hatred of departure from gender norms. So senseless, and the article doesn't mention this at all, but we should all know where it's coming from. This murderous hatred is not innate, it's taught, and it's being taught by fundamentalist religion and extremist Republicans. I would bet anything that almost all of the murderers of transgender people are Trump supporters, with possibly a few that think he's not racist or fascist enough. That's the sickness in our society that we have to cure for this mindless killing to be halted. Fundamentalist religion and extreme conservatism are closed-minded ideologies that cannot be tolerant or modern. For humanity to progress and prosper, these ideologies must be eliminated.

More people die from food poisoning or dog bites. Eighteen murders while sad isn’t even a drop in the bucket of all the over 17,000 plus murders we had in 2018. The American Medical Association needs to rethink what constitutes an “epidemic.”

I read a study that showed the transgender "killings" have mostly occurred in domestic situations and/or involved prostitution. nobody is going around killing transgender people. It's a popular theme though with mainstream media.

Your attention grabbing headline is nothing more than hyperbole designed to create smoke where there is no fire. While any murder is horrific, and there's no doubt that trans women of color are vulnerable to violence, the numbers you cite here do NOT constitute an "epidemic." If you want to offer coverage of long established patterns of hate-crimes against women, how about focusing on the murders and sexual assaults of native women and the lack of reporting or follow up by law enforcement?

@David Godinez It may not be an epidemic when seen against the number of 300 million people, but when seen against the number of trransgender women in this country, and especially transgender women of color, it most certainly is.

Murdering people because of their perceived sexuality is identity politics. Trying to protect people from identity politics is fighting for justice. The Right practices identity politics. The left fights for justice. The Right is extreme. The Left is not.

While every murder is a tragedy, even a slight effort at research on the part of your reporter would have revealed an article from the American Journal of Public Health (Homicide Rates of Transgender Individuals in the United States: 2010-2014) showing that those who are transgender are less likely to be murdered than non-transgender comparators matched for age, gender and ethnicity.

There's no evidence for the claim that trans people in the US are "being killed because someone doesn’t understand who we are." In recent-year trans murders in the US where the killers have been identified, it turns out a number of factors - such as prostitution, drug and gun deals, theft and domestic violence - were involved. In more than one case, transwomen have been killed by other transwomen. Also, in the trans murder cases where the perpetrators have been identified, the killers have all been males - and of the same race as their victims. So what's going on here is part of the much larger problem of young black American males being killed by other young black males. That's the real "epidemic." If being trans, specifically MtF, truly caused a heightened likelihood of being murdered as a result of anti-trans animus, the victims wouldn't be mostly or entirely black. Because most MtFs are white. Yet white MtFs are less likely to be murdered than males who are not trans. And what about murders of women who are female? The FBI says 3,222 women were killed by homicide in 2017. That comes out to an average of 8.8 adult females murdered each day in the US - 62 per week, 268 every month. 268 women killed in the US per month. But it's only the transwomen who get the headlines. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/murder https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-1.xls

Any death is a tragedy. And transgender women have every right to be and feel safe. But are rates of death by murder for black transgender women higher than rates of death for blacks by murder in general? I don’t believe so. In fact, they may be lower than male on male murder within the community. Shining light on the issue is important, but being told there is an epidemic when there is not is another thing entirely. The statistics used previously by many activists, journalists, and advocacy groups says that transgender women have a horrifically high risk of murder. What the activists didn’t mention is the source of their numbers was a macro assessment of The Americas, including seriously violent places like Haiti. The risk of death by murder as a transgender woman in America is not necessarily higher than many other groups. Many of these women were murdered by unlawful, scary men they knew who shared their race and may have even engaged them for sex. That’s very different than an epidemic.

This article does a disservice to those murdered TG women of color by not identifying the elephant in the room: Black male attitudes towards Black TG women. This has been covered throughout the summer by other publications including the Grio and skated over by other pubs like the NYT [the article below is one of many examples] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/us/detroit-lgbtq-killing.html?module=inline

One thing that compounds the invisibility of trans lives and deaths is the fact that the mainstream media often doesn’t even see us as “presentable” enough to be the faces of our own struggle. We need to have more trans people, like me and like the transgender women of color mentioned in this article, talking about these issues on mainstream television and internet platforms. Articles like this one are valuable, but I believe that seeing actual trans Americans speaking for ourselves on the news is one of the only ways for the public to get a sense that we exist as real people— above and beyond the fear, shame, and bias our identities sometimes incite.

Transgender women of color are being brutally murdered at an alarming rate in comparison to the number of transgender women of color in the U.S. The comments on this page call for more education for the general public in this matter. We need to do better by this segment of the LGBTQ community. It is clear and vital to me, that us "L's" and more of the "G's" and the "B's" and "Q's" need to work for, advocate for and legislate for the "T's".

Actions like the Trump Administration's ban of transgendered people from serving in the military create a culture where these people are seen as less valid, and those who are inclined to commit hate crimes feel more social support to do so. Elizabeth Warren named these transgendered hate crime victims in a recent speech. Electing her to replace Trump would reduce this culture of hatred starting from the top down.

The FBI reports that there were 17,284 murders in the US in 2018. Which means that transgender people accounted for approximately 0.10% of all murders in the US. While there aren’t good estimates of what percentage of the American population is transgender, activist groups state that between 0.60% and 3% of the population is transgender. So the murder rate for transgender Americans is significantly lower than the national average. Even if the actual percentage of the population that is transgender is substantially lower than the activists’ estimates (which is probably the case), transgender Americans aren’t targeted at a greater rate than others. Bias crimes are horrible - all violent crimes are - but there isn’t an epidemic of anti-transgender violent crimes.

Much love to the trans community - discrimination and hate is a real problem. However, 18 murders in a country with about 15000 murders / year would suggest a much lower likelihood of being killed as a trans person than as cis person. Granted, bulk of murders are drug/gang related, and trans folks are less likely to roll with a gang.. Also granted, hate crimes are especially chilling. but we can combat discrimination, while simultaneously refraining from alarmist talks of 'murder epidemics' etc. no?

Is there more information about the suspects or convicted criminals? Those data may be more helpful in identifying solutions. It seems the article referenced only the case in Detroit in which a teen is accused of killing three people. Do we know more about who is committing (or alleged to be committing) the crimes?

It would be helpful to have some comparative numbers about, e.g., murder rates for other US populations.

Are these going mostly unsolved? What information is being obtained about the perpetrators?

What isn't emphasized in this article is that most of the perpetrators (where they are known or suspected) are also people of color. This is a problem for the black community, which has been less accepting of gay and transgender people than the white community. It is likely that many of these are hate crimes, but based on sexual orientation/identity and not based on race.

According to the FBI, in 2015, 928 women were murdered by their current or former partners. That is an epidemic. 18 murders is not an epidemic.

It's horrible that it's entirely necessary to state and reinforce that these are horrific crimes against humanity! But there should also be effort put into explaining how these crimes are investigated, prosecuted and deterred from happening again. Hate and intolerance of all kinds is flourishing during this administration. We need to vote to clean hatred out of the house-the White House!

I want Ms. Moore to live in a world where she does not have to be afraid, too. 3 women a day are killed in the U.S. by their male partners. No one has addressed the safety of women- they are unlikely to extend care to transgendered women.

As the parent of a transgender child, I find these murders to be horrifying. My heart goes out to the loved ones of these women. But we need to understand violence against trans women of color as a complex problem that is not rooted only in gender transition. It is tempting to say that these women are vulnerable only because they are transgender, but the reality is more complicated. First, trans women are harmed by domestic violence, just like all women. The only recent case in my state was a trans woman killed by her husband. Second, trans women are killed by guns in states that are engulfed in gun violence - Florida, Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina lead the nation for the murder of trans women and in gun violence generally. Finally, there’s the sad fact that sex workers are at high risk for violence. Trans women are disproportionately forced into sex work for survival, and they pay a horrible price. So let's show our solidarity and respect. The National Trans Visibility March is tomorrow in Washington DC, led by an incredible group of trans women of color. They are to be celebrated.

I'm a transgender woman and while I am privileged to be white, I still have to slog through the daily little injustices about living as a transgender woman. I hope that one day we all can be accepted for who we are, but with these killings I see less hope. There needs to be a paradigm shift in how the African American community treats transgender people. While many people are supportive of me, my POC transgender friends are mostly shut out of their families and support networks. There is a huge difference between how white and black transgender people are treated, and it cannot all be racked up to racism. A large segment of the African American community holds conservative views about LGBT rights, and this is expressed by the fact that many POC transgender women have no support networks and have to resort to sex work and the risks associated with that work to survive. They are put in danger by their support networks and families, and are exposed to the threat of death at any moment while people like myself benefit from strong support networks and accepting families.

The headline says that these murders are the result of an epidemic and clearly means to suggest that the epidemic is one caused by hate from the right. But the details of many of the crimes appear to better reflect that these deaths were a result of the hate of bad men who were in some way involved in the lives of these Transgender victims. It is tragic, but it is an indictment of individuals and not our culture as the headline implies.