Today marks Transgender Remembrance Day, an occasion set aside for America to commemorate the lives of transgender murder victims. Unfortunately, it is also an opportunity for folks on the hard left to use these victims to virtue signal and advance their agenda.
Progressives typically use this day to promote the narrative that transgender individuals are dying due to transphobia. These folks intimate that hate crimes and other acts of bigotry are leading to the deaths of countless transgender folks.
Any victim of homicide is a massive tragedy, regardless of gender identity. But using these horrors to push an agenda is not only cynical, but it also does not actually help the transgender community.
On Monday, President Joe Biden issued a statement acknowledging Transgender Remembrance Day.
There is no place for hate in America and no one should be discriminated against simply for being themselves. Today, on Transgender Day of Remembrance we are reminded that there is more to do meet that promise, as we grieve the 26 transgender Americans whose lives were taken this year. While each one of these deaths is a tragedy – the true toll of those victimized is likely even higher, with the majority of those targeted being women of color.
Looking at Biden’s statement and that of others, one might think there is a widespread rash of anti-trans murderers victimizing people. However, the numbers paint a different reality. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) published a report noting that 26 homicides of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals have occurred in 2023. Again, these incidents are tragic, but they represent a minuscule percentage of the transgender population in America.
According to the data, about 1.6 million Americans over the age of 13 identify as transgender. HRC’s report notes that about 47 percent were murdered by a romantic or sexual partner, friend, or family member, not anti-trans bigots. These numbers do not suggest a rash of rampant hate crimes against transgender individuals.
These statistics underscore a harsh reality: America has far too many murders. Far too many are motivated by hatred based on certain characteristics. But pretending that transgender individuals across the country are susceptible to being victimized by anti-trans bigots is not only untrue, but it does nothing to help the people progressives claim they wish to help.
Indeed, transgender individuals are more likely to die from suicide than from an anti-trans assailant.
People who identify as transgender have significantly higher rates of suicide and suicide attempts compared with the rest of the population, according to a population-level study out of Denmark.
The study of more than 6.6 million people found that those who identified as trans had 7.7 times the rate of suicide attempts and 3.5 times the rate of suicide deaths than the broader Danish population.
What this means is that progressives, who claim to champion trans folks, are more concerned with the deaths they can exploit rather than the epidemic that is actually killing more of these individuals. Again, this shows how little those on the far left actually care about those they are using as political pawns.
What is truly sad about this issue is that folks on the left would rather exploit these victims to advance their agenda, which involves pushing the rest of the country to accept their ideology related to gender identity and other issues. Indeed, one of their favorite political maneuvers is to label those who do not believe in the idea that men can become women and vice versa as bigots.
Promoting the narrative that there is rampant violence against transgender individuals makes it easier to demonize dissenting voices by insinuating that those who disagree are on par with those seeking to commit violence against members of the LGBTQ community. Unfortunately, in the end, it is folks suffering from gender dysphoria who are most negatively affected by this.
