November 20 is Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Thirty-three transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed by violence in the United States since last year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, 2022, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign.
Twenty-six of those people were killed in 2023, the report released Monday said.
LGBTQ activists have been sounding the alarm about rising anti-trans and gender-based violence in recent years, but particularly this year, when the Human Rights Campaign declared a national state of emergency for LGBTQ people in the United States.
“The epidemic of violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people is a national tragedy and a national embarrassment,” said Kelly Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organizations from the country. “Each of the lives taken is the result of a society that demeans and devalues anyone who dares to question the gender binary.”
More than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country this year, many targeting the transgender community, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and more than 80 of them have passed. . HRC said the number of bills was at a record.
Homeland Security officials said they have seen an increase in attacks and threats against LGBTQ people, including bomb threats against schools, hospitals and libraries that supported LGBTQ events, including Pride parades and drag shows.
President Joe Biden issued a statement Monday condemning the disproportionate impact of violence on the transgender community and reiterated his commitment to LGBTQ equality in America.
“There is no place for hatred in America and no one should be discriminated against simply because they are themselves,” he said. “While each of these deaths is a tragedy, the true number of victims is likely even higher, with the majority of those targeted being women of color.”
The majority of victims killed last year were people of color, most of whom were black transgender women. More than 78% of victims were under 35 years old and the perpetrator was known in only 66.6% of cases, according to the HRC report.
Nearly half of those victims were killed by a friend, family member or intimate partner, the HRC report said.
In 2022, the FBI reported the highest number of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes reported to date with more than 2,400 incidents, an increase of more than 32% between 2021 and 2022. Anti-LGBTQ attacks accounted for 21% of hate crimes, with 4% of them based on gender identity, according to the FBI.
The HRC said that not all jurisdictions report their findings on hate crimes and that FBI statistics do not include incidents that go unreported or incidents of bias that are not legally defined as hate crimes. hate.
“A lot of people are afraid because we’re seeing both the ongoing nature of high levels of individual violence… as well as the militarization of the state and state governments to target trans people,” said Imara Jones, Black trans journalist, founder and CEO. of TransLash Media, told ABC News in a recent interview.
Transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
“The epidemic of violence against the trans community that we’re seeing is fueled in part by people not seeing trans lives as equal,” Jones said. “They hear about the murder of trans people and dismiss it as something natural or logical. And as long as we do that, we will never be able to end this violence.”
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