The Rise Of Hate

I don’t think we need to be told that there has been a rise in violence directed toward LGBT people. Houses and cars have been sprayed painted with hate, bullying and harassments have increased along with a rise in murders.

Violence Against Transgender People Is on the Rise, Advocates Say
New York Times
By MaggieE Astor
November 9, 2017

Even as transgender people have scored political victories and turned public opinion in favor of more protections, violence has risen, especially against black and Hispanic transgender women. And Ms. Montez’s case shows the difficulties advocates face in tracking killings and other hate crimes.

The full death toll is impossible to determine, but by rights groups’ estimates, each of the past three years has become the deadliest on record.

The Human Rights Campaign has documented the killings of 25 transgender people in the United States so far in 2017, compared with 23 last year and 21 in 2015. Other organizations, like Glaad and the Transgender Law Center, have slightly different tallies, but the trend holds.

Transgender people have been killed this year in Chicago and in Waxahachie, Tex.; in the Ozarks of Missouri and on the sidewalks of Manhattan. They have been shot, stabbed, burned and, in at least one case, pushed into a river. On average, one to two have been killed somewhere in the United States every week.

Some people say that only 25 trans women have been killed compared to all the murders here in the U.S. but consider we are only about 0.5% of the population and also the murders were not caused by a family dispute, the were not caused during a crime but rather they were committed because of hate. Many were committed after the murderer had sex with the victim and in a transphobic rage of self-hate kills the woman.

Other acts of violence have been spurred by the climate of hate that political leaders have created.

Almost all the murder victims in the past several years have been nonwhite women. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the annual murder rate for Americans ages 15 to 34 is about one in 12,000. But an investigation by the news organization Mic found that for black transgender women in the same age group, the rate was one in 2,600.

For many trans women they live on the edges of society because they might have been disowned and thrown out of their family at an early age. Many have not completed their education because of bullying and harassment in schools and they had to make their living off the street.