August 18, 2022

"While that statistic felt true — and transgender women of color are more likely to be murdered than their cisgender female peers, experts say — it’s false."

"Experts worry that this statistic gives trans people, especially Black trans people, an expiration date on their lives and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. 'What you are doing is creating huge levels of fear, which causes high levels of stress, which will actually cause people to die younger,' said Laurel Westbrook, a professor of sociology and the author of 'Unlivable Lives: Violence and Identity in Transgender Activism...."
 
From "For years, Black trans women have been told their life expectancy is 35 years. That’s false. While there’s no evidence to support the statistic, experts do worry that it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for Black trans women" (The 19th).

One researcher believes he's traced the false statistic to a 2015 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on violence against LGBTQ+ people in Latin America, which relayed what was only an anecdotal assertion and didn't even purport to be about the United States.

32 comments:

Andrew said...

Trust the experts.
Trust the science.

PB said...

Renee Richards is 88.

Static Ping said...

Lying with statistics is a well known ploy. Really, the only change is how incredulous the media is. When they are not intentionally passing along propaganda, they are easily duped given that most of them could not pass a college level statistics class if they were allowed to cheat. At least they used to defer to authority - a logical fallacy but at least a defensible one given how ignorant they are - but these days, Joey Numsgood throws out a random number and they all repeat it dutifully if it fits their narrative.

To be fair, this goes back at least to Kinsey and his hackery. The 10% number, despite being discredited at the time and repeatedly discredited since then, is still repeated by our "betters." Kinsey is still seen as a hero despite just being a pervert who was bad at his job and was trying to justify his own kinks.

J said...

Liars,damn liars, and faux statisticians.

Levi Starks said...

The ever so gentle way left wing fake news is fact checked.
It’s 100% false, but they had the very best of intentions.

gilbar said...

which would you rather have?
a live fiction? or a dead fact?

The Truth of the Matter IS: some people die!!! This means, WHAT EVER WE WANT, MUST BE DONE!!

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

There's sort of an official line that we live in a golden age of enlightenment, lots of science, lots of people popularizing science, no statements about public policy made without good backing in evidence. Not so much.

gilbar said...

suicide rates for trannies EXIST!
murder rates for trannies EXIST!!
This MEANS(!) That this is a HUGE PROBLEM!!!!

Thank GOD! that the Boston Children's Hospital is working on (making money from) this!!
(even though the so called rates are for black male tranny sex workers; not teenaged white girls)

BarrySanders20 said...

Too good to check. If the stat feels good, and if it supports the narrative, go with it!

Enigma said...

Now go back and report complete data:

What percentage of transgender women of color (TWoC) are sex workers? What is the average life expectancy for male and female sex workers in the same region or country?

What percentage of TWoC were killed by sex partners who believed they were having sex with a biological woman of color?

Owen said...

No, it's true. Every time anybody anywhere utters the epithet "maricon," a trans person of color suffers a mortal wound.

Data: you gotta believe it.

Balfegor said...

I haven't gone back to check this, but I recall reading a simple analysis taking number of transgender homicide victims and dividing by number of transgender Americans according to activist claims, to arrive at the conclusion that transgender Americans have a significantly lower chance of becoming homicide victims than the average American. Of course, this was entirely a function of barmy activist overstatements about the percentage of the population that is transgender (often lumped together with "nonbinary"), but there's a good chance that basic denominator problem infects any comparison of homicide rates for subjective groups of this sort. So my first thought is that that all these statistics are basically garbage in garbage out.

All that said, it would be quite surprising if transgender Blacks weren't homicide victims at significantly higher rates than transgender Whites, given that even in the pre-BLM days of 2019, there were almost as many Black homicide victims as White homicide victims even though there's about five times as many Whites as Blacks. Post-BLM, I expect the ratio is even more lopsided against Blacks. Doesn't make 35 years plausible, but that might be the reason it "felt" true. Blacks are much more likely to be murdered than Whites, and men are much more likely to be murdered than women. Black transgender women, regardless of their self-identification, fit cleanly into the demographic subgroup at the highest risk of getting murdered, i.e. Black men.

J said...

Liars,damn liars,and statisticians.

Jupiter said...

".. Laurel Westbrook, a professor of sociology ..."

Filthy parasite.

Moondawggie said...

"Layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors"...

Moondawggie said...

"Layers and layers of fact-checkers."

Right...

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Die old and leave an ugly corpse.

Joe Smith said...

'One researcher believes he's traced the false statistic to a 2015 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on violence against LGBTQ+ people in Latin America, which relayed what was only an anecdotal assertion and didn't even purport to be about the United States.'

Now do Saudi Arabia...

Elliott A said...

All lifestyle choices affect longevity. If you hang out with crazy people in seedy places it doesn't usually end well

ccscientist said...

Let's assume the true number is X (whatever that is) for trans murdered/drug overdose etc. Let us assume that it is higher than for non-trans (and we know the trans suicide rate is high). The article wants us to hide that number because it might scare people when actually knowledge of things can prevent bad outcomes. For example, I am not going to play russian roulette because it is dangerous. If the risk is hidden...not good. Same with heroin or jumping off bridges. Scary things should change our behavior. The woke want to hide the facts to protect feelings. So, better dead than made uncomfortable. eh

Rabel said...

The article offers no contrary evidence. It only says that "experts" could not verify the claim. There is no reference to research proving otherwise.

This does not falsify the claim.

BUMBLE BEE said...

A gay acquaintance who counsels trannies remarked to me that trannies are "seriously fucked up". Could that be so?

n.n said...

Elective abortion. Women (i.e. female sex) and transgender (i.e. sex-correlated attributes)/homosexual women or transgender/neo/quasi/pseudo males who identify as female are deemed burdens? The transgender spectrum is narrow and dull. Diversity (e.g. color blocs: "people of color", racism) breeds adversity and may have been a motive (e.g. trans/homosexual female raped by "people of color", trans/homosexual male mass rape... rapist targeting males).

Michael K said...

Propaganda can become a self fulfilling prophecy. How many black trannies are murdered while doing "sex work?"

Anthony said...

Well, when you consider both the plastic straw ban and Covid lockdowns resulted from children's school science projects, one shouldn't be surprised.

Tina Trent said...

More propaganda by activists living fat and happy on DOJ, CDC, and FBI grants. Prosecutors and police are trained to investigate all murders of trans people and cross dressers as hate crimes first, while the media pumps up this false narrative. There's a huge career reward system built into playing these games with hate crime statistics. Just as most violence is intraracial, I suspect most crime committed against these groups is committed by other group members. The same goes for gays and lesbians in numbers the activists work hard to hide.

We had a case in Georgia where the GBI grotesquely announced they were trying to determine if a murdered prostitute was killed in a hate crime because he was a man or if it was just killing a woman, in which case it wouldn't be hate.

Call me TERF, but that's a tad dehumanizing. Of women. Of course.

Deevs said...

Balfegor, I once did a back of the envelope calculation on the trans murder rate since I kept hearing about this epidemic of violence against them but never saw any numbers. I used the Human Rights Organization's estimate of trans people in the US along with their list of murdered trans people. I think this was 2018, and I used their 2017 numbers. The number I came up with was 4 per 100,000 trans murders to roughly 5 per 100,000 for the general population. Later, I came across an actual study that found the trans murder rate is closer to 2 per 100,000.

John henry said...

PB said...

Renee Richards is 88.

Dierdre mccluskey is 80

Jan Morris lived to 94

Greg The Class Traitor said...

As a general rule, all SJW "statistics" should be considered total lies until proven otherwise

Just like all "hate crimes" should be assumed to be bullshit until proved otherwise

JaimeRoberto said...

If you can't trust numbers from an advocacy group, whose numbers can you trust?

RMc said...

(T)ransgender women of color are more likely to be murdered than their cisgender female peers, experts say

Sample size.

Larvell said...

“Peers.”