Violence Against Transgender People and People of Color is Disproportionately High, LGBTQH Murder Rate Peaks
The murder rate of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected (LGBTQH) is at its highest, according to a recently released 2011 report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP). The report also shows that transgender women, people of color, and youth and young adults are at a disproportionately high risk of being victims of what the NCAVP terms hate violence.
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On a side note, when I was in high school I was in the Gay-Straight Alliance and in my junior year the ‘official’ LGBT abbreviation was LGBTTQQQ and I’m sort of confused why it changes all the time or like no one place has it the same way (this is the first time I’ve seen an H on there).
Anyways, this shit is fucked. If you haven’t heard about CeCe McDonald yet get on that.
There’s competing ways to add on to the base acronym, and some are better than others…like, historically, HIV-affected people, whether they are queer or not, have been targeted for many of the same patterns of violence as (other) queer people, and the vast majority of HIV/AIDS activism was organized by PWA/HIV-positive people who were in the queer community, so that makes sense to me…and I think here, there’s a recognition of how violence against HIV-affected people is tied to LGBTQ-targeted violence (so it makes sense).
I have no idea what, say, the NPIC-standard acronym is these days…but I know that including two Ts (for “Transsexual” and “Transgender”) is seen as a bit dated because Transgender’s definition has broadened (and seems to be the preferred non-profit/socially acceptable term) and just plain Trans is seen as the broadest (and is the more in-community term). I remember a lot of throwing in a TS for Two Spirit 8-10 years ago, but, I think people finally realized that rather than making spaces inclusive for First Nations/NDN people, that only encouraged a bunch of white people to appropriate Two Spirit.
I definitely have some death hills with this, related to the misappropriation of “queer” by radicals and the trying to lump in kinky and poly straights in, etc.
Back to the main point, yeah, these statistics are super important and are real strong signals of how race, gender, and particular forms of perceived gender non-conformity have a super strong impact on class composition and how that is directly formed through intraworking class repression and how and when the state apparatus intervenes (or fails to do so, e.g. Brandy Martell in Oakland). Standing out as violating patriarchal roles targets you for “policing”, doing that in a way that is perceived as a rejection of masculinity ups the violence of that “policing”, being a POC means people know they can most likely get away with killing you for it.
