From The Critic: 21st October, 2021
Let’s begin with the clearest indicator of the extent to which a community is “marginalised and abused”: the murder rate of those within it. Because there is no stable definition of what constitutes a “trans person”, there is no standardised method for recording the deaths of trans people across the UK. However, we know that there have been eight reported murders of people who defined themselves as transgender, transsexual or cross-dressers in the UK since reporting began in 2008. Note that the UK is not a European anomaly — in Germany there hasn’t been a murder of a trans person since 2008, while 26 countries in Europe have reported no murders of trans people for the entire period.
Even though we’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of people who identify as transgender in the last few years, a trans person hasn’t been murdered in the UK for nearly three years and there are, for example, no reports ever of a trans person in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland being murdered.
Moreover, not one of even the eleven people Transrespect says were murdered, were killed due to “transphobia”. The victim in each case was typically murdered by a male sexual partner due to drugs or money issues. None were killed by a woman — and one was killed by a man who identifies as a woman. True, the total number of hate crime offences has soared in recent years. However, this has been driven by changes to both the recording of crimes and the identification of what constitutes a hate crime. Measures of hate crime that are unaffected by changes in policing or recording methods, such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales, show a “long -^term decline in hate crime."^
Hate Crime Reported
RACE
2015/16 @ 45,440
2016/2017 @ 58,294
2017/2018 @ 64,829
2018/2019 @ 72,041
2019/2020 @ 76,070
*RELIGION
2015/16 @ 3962
2016/2017 @ 5184
2017/2018 @ 7103
2018/2019 @ 7203
2019/2020 @ 6822
SEXUAL ORIENTATION
2015/16 @ 6700
2016/2017 @ 8569
2017/2018 @ 10,670
2018/2019 @ 13,314
2019/2020 @ 15,835
DISABILITY
2015/16 @ 3393
2016/2017 @ 5254
2017/2018 @ 6787
2018/2019 @ 7786
2019/2020 @ 8469
TRANSGENDER
2015/16 @ 820
2016/2017 @ 1195
2017/2018 @ 1615
2018/2019 @ 2183
2019/2020 @ 2540
Of the five monitored strands that the police record as hate crimes, the transgender category has, every year, and by some distance, seen the least number of “hate crimes” against it. In fact, religion — the next-lowest — saw nearly three times as many incidents in the last recording year.