> I don't mean to downplay what is happening because it is happening but do you not think the amount of outrage this topic generates surpasses the level of impact we can have assuming we fix it? It just feels like we're being distracted.
But downplaying it is exactly what you are doing, literally.
To answer your main question, though: the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
The disproportionate harms that this small community is subject to is the key to understanding the level of outrage being evoked on their behalf.
> disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
This is provably untrue. Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics (for example, in 2019, the FBI reported ~7000 criminal offenses[2] in the "hate crime" category). I get it, people are passionate about it, companies change their logos, everyone posts about it on social media, but let's not perpetuate these myths.
Both of you are correct, you're just looking at probabilities conditioned in the opposite way. You're looking at P(trans | killed), which is low. The parent post is looking at P(killed | trans), which is quite high. Understandably, if you are trans P(killed | trans) is a lot more relevant to you than P(trans | killed).
I don't agree, we were talking about proportionality. 0.6% of the US adult population identify as trans (1,254,000). Of that 0.6%, 44 were killed. The math is simple. The overall murder rate in the USA is 0.005% (population: 328 million, yearly murders: 16,425). The per-capita murder rates of trans people in the USA is 0.0035%, barely over half the national average.
To make the claim that trans people are disproportionately affected by crime/violence is simply not true.
> To make the claim that trans people are disproportionately affected by crime/violence is simply not true.
It's well-known that many trans hate crimes go unreported or misreported (as the victim is misgendered). So unless you really think it was highly unlikely for there to be >= 19 unreported/misreported trans deaths (19 + 44 / 1_254_000 > 0.005%), then trans death rates are probably higher.
We're dangerously getting into "no true Scotsman" territory here. Even being as charitable as I can, it just seems that you don't like the data because it doesn't fit your narrative.
> Even being as charitable as I can, it just seems that you don't like the data because it doesn't fit your narrative.
And you seem to like the data because it does. You are right, I don't trust reported numbers of trans people hate crimes, because I'm not aware of any unified reporting standards around trans hate crimes (in general I don't trust reported numbers on newly reported hate crimes, especially when advocacy groups are doing most of the reporting; it means the issue is poorly understood (so badly reported) and highly politicized). I have a pretty large prior here that I believe trans hate crimes are underreported, much like I have a prior that sexual violence is underreported, due to the nature of these instances. Moreover, numbers this low have large uncertainty bands, just using basic frequentist or Bayesian probability methods, enough that I doubt we can even come to much of a conclusion over our topic of discussion. I think we'll have to agree to disagree, and please stop downvoting me. I felt like our discussion was productive.
I don't have a narrative. I look at the data and draw conclusions. You start with conclusions and try to morph the data to fit them. I'll even grant you that sexual crimes go underreported (heck, have 43% to bring up that number up), but even so, it wouldn't account for a "disproportionate" number of crime against trans people. It would barely equal the rate of the general population. You're seriously trying to argue that trans crimes are underreported by multiple factors? That's quite the claim.
> I think we'll have to agree to disagree, and please stop downvoting me.
If you'd prefer working with the data we have presented, take a look at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/tables/table-1.xls . Other than racially motivated hate crimes which comprise most FBI recognized hate crimes, the next most is religious hate crime, below which is sexual orientation motivated hate crimes. And sexual orientation motivated hate crimes rank very similarly to religiously motivated hate crimes. In other words, sexual orientation oriented hate crimes are the 3rd most frequent, and very close in # to religiously motivated hate crimes, the 2nd most frequent hate crime.
Specifically with anti-gender-identity based hate crime, we can see that anti-transgender hate crime has one of the highest incident numbers for any individual cohort, despite knowing that only 0.6% of the population identifies as trans according to data presented earlier in this thread.
> It would barely equal the rate of the general population.
You are generalizing from the specific, here. The data that you appear to be referencing is only looking at murder rates.
You’ve then set up a straw-man argument. The straw is in the data that you’ve not incorporated into your mental model: the rates of crimes other than murder.
Yeah, I used murder rates specifically for three reasons: (1) they are often cited in news articles, including my citation above; (2) they are the easiest to compare side-by-site in an apples-to-apples comparison (gen pop vs population X or population Y); and (3) murder rates tend to be a good indicator of other, proximate, criminal activity (be it sexual assault, physical assault, etc.).
Homicide rates are also quite reliably measured, and comparable across populations and jurisdictions (as opposed to robbery, assault, etc. that are less reliably reported and consistently defined). It is, generally speaking, a good measure.
No one is arguing against the validity of measurements of homicide rates.
At question is 1) the validity of using murder rate to predict to frequencies of other victim-having crimes and 2) the validity of ignoring between-group variation when drawing conclusions about the relative frequency of crime between different groups.
> Also, your methodological techniques are faulty - ease of comparison is not a means in which to determine the validity of a comparison.
This is a straw-man, nowhere do I argue that "ease of comparison is a means in which to determine the validity of a comparison." I do, however, argue that the comparison of murder rates in gen pop to the murder rates of trans pop is a valid comparison. Perhaps you'd like to elucidate why you don't think it is.
I’m not seeing where “U.S. violent and property crime rate have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source” that you cited shows evidence that murder rates are reliable predictors of rates of other types of victim-having crimes?
Additionally, pointing out errors of generalization and particularization is not a straw-man tactic of argument. It is a direct conflict with your argument on the grounds of scientific validity - are you actually measuring what you think you are measuring?
Setting aside that we haven’t yet established that murder rates are reliable predictors of other victim-having crimes, there is a deeper problem, that another commenter was trying to point out to you in terms of Bayesian probability.
To draw the conclusion that I drew, which I continue to defend (for clarities sake: that the LGBTQIA+ community is disproportionately affected by victim-having crime), you would need to look at data that partitions the general public into its various sub-groups and compares the frequency of victim-having crime between all of the individual sub-group, in all combinations.
Such a statistical technique is frequently used in empirical studies of populations, across disciplines.
Statistical analysis of these between-group variations is where you are able to draw out conclusions such as “blacks are disproportionally convicted of certain crimes” or “LGBTQIA+ are disproportionately victims of murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination”.
> Perhaps you’d like to elucidate why you don’t think it is [a valid comparison]
There may very well be some valid conclusions to draw from data about murder rates for the whole population compared to a given sub-group, but that methodological technique suffers from the so-called “law of averages”.
In the scientific community, it is common knowledge that research methodologies based on statistical analyses of between-group variations is a technique that is sensitive to patterns that would not appear in a comparison with the average.
> I’m not seeing where “U.S. violent and property crime rate have plunged since 1990s, regardless of data source” that you cited shows evidence that murder rates are reliable predictors of rates of other types of victim-having crimes?
I'm not sure if you're being purposefully obtuse here, but there's an obvious correlation between the drop in "violent crime" (homicide, murder, assault, manslaughter, etc.) and "violent victimization" (physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, etc.). Do I have to calculate the correlation coefficient for you?
> In the scientific community, it is common knowledge that research methodologies based on statistical analyses of between-group variations is a technique that is sensitive to patterns that would not appear in a comparison with the average.
I don't believe the comparison here suffers from the law of averages. And even if it did, the difference between the two data sets' deviation isn't high enough to be of any significance.
Well just have to agree to disagree, but I’ll refer you to the empirical evidence cited by myself and other commenters that ultimately supports my original assertion.
Possibly violating HN site guidelines here, but I wanted to add a civilly-toned comment to thank you for illuminating one area where our mental models had diverged on this topic.
> you don’t like the data because it doesn’t fit your narrative
In counter argument, you don’t like the laws of logic and probability because they don’t fit your narrative.
Edit: Furthermore, do we not agree, in the United States, under the rule of law, that it is a failure of civil responsibility, punishable by death in some jurisdictions, to murder even 1 person, let alone 44?
How is your argument anything other than we must do everything within our rights and capacity, as a country, to prevent each and every failure of civic responsibility?
> How is your argument anything other than we must do everything within our rights and capacity, as a country, to prevent each and every failure of civic responsibility?
Apart from the insults (accusing me of not liking logic, etc.), this is a straw-man and, just to be clear, is absolutely not what I'm arguing.
I believe this paper ought to suffice as the entry point for the non-scientific community to pursue the academic research that supports my original assertion:
Violence against transgender people: A review of United States data,
Aggression and Violent Behavior,
Volume 14, Issue 3,
2009,
Pages 170-179
That paper (full text in [1]) does not support your argument at all. In fact, murder rates are only mentioned in §3.2:
> The report related stories of 51 transgender and gender non-conforming individuals under the age of 30 who were murdered in the United States between 1995 and 2005.
Quite frankly, this number is even lower than the FBI's statistics.
> What is beginning to emerge from these multiple sources of data are the increased risks of variety of types of violence, though in particular sexual violence, faced by transgender people
Their conclusion directly states that there is an increased risk of violence for transgender people.
Secondarily, their conclusion also hints at there being empirical evidence that one cannot extrapolate from murder rates to cover all forms of victim-having crime. That would imply that your argument is indeed suffering from the law of averages.
You seem to be succumbing to a psychological phenomenon called projection.
In fact, you have set up a straw man argument, contrary to HN site guidelines of using the most charitable reading of my original comment, and then inverted your mental model such that you believe I am the one setting up the straw man.
> Not that it isn't a tragedy, but in 2020, 44 trans people were killed[1] in the US. This is a rounding error even when looking at "merely" just hate crime statistics
I'm confused. How can you compare 44 deaths to 7000 offenses? (Including 55 deaths, across all hate crimes.)
I'm not arguing that trans people are disproportionately killed or assaulted, but that we are in no way a rounding error.
Using your source, the 2019 FBI report:
Of the 8,559 criminal offenses, 51 were Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter.
224 offenses were based on Gender Identity, this includes 173 Anti-transgender offenses, and 51 Anti-Gender Non-Conforming offenses. 342 offenses not included in those numbers we’re targeting “Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group)”
5 of the 51 Murders and Nonnegligent Manslaugters were perpetrated because the victim was in the group "Anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender (Mixed Group)".
1 of the 51 Murders and Nonnegligent Manslaughters were perpetrated on the basis of Gender Identity.
> the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
Citation needed.
From what I can tell they are being given more leeway than any other group, and anyone who dares argue against their “rights” risks losing their job.
Trans-people does absolutely not to seem to be at risk anywhere.
Technically, no, I’d posit that in the scientific community of focus on this topic, it is considered common knowledge and likely an “a priori” logical conclusion.
> From what I can tell they are being given more leeway than any other group, and anyone who dares argue against their “rights” risks losing their job.
Trans-people does absolutely not to seem to be at risk anywhere.
You might refresh yourself on HN site guidelines.
Your comment would have been much more interesting if you had declined to include the quoted portion.
But downplaying it is exactly what you are doing, literally.
To answer your main question, though: the very small community that we are talking about is disproportionately being subjected to murder, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and widespread discrimination.
The disproportionate harms that this small community is subject to is the key to understanding the level of outrage being evoked on their behalf.