Only half of cisgender people in the US consider violence against trans women a major problem, despite increasing numbers of fatal attacks on Black trans women in particular.
Just 42 per cent of cis men and 59 per cent of cis women see violence against trans women as an issue, according to the Black Futures Lab report ‘Beyond Kings and Queens: Gender and Politics in the 2019 Black Census’.
In 2019, at least 22 trans and gender non-conforming people were killed and 91 per cent of them were Black trans women, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT+ advocacy organisation that tracks anti-trans violence in the US.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve become more aware of the ongoing high levels of violence that trans folks face in their everyday lives,” said Alicia Garza, who founded the Black Futures Lab and is also the co-creator of Black Lives Matter, in an interview with Xtra.
“When Black trans women have an average life expectancy of 35 years old, there is something wrong,” Garza said.
“And it’s not just the function of people being mean to each other—which is what I think a lot of people think is [the reason] why Black trans women are dying. We don’t actually get into these bigger questions of economic security and the choices that Black trans folks are having to make every single day to survive because they’re largely locked out of the formal life economy.”
The lack of economic security for Black trans women was confirmed by the findings of the Black Futures Lab report, which revealed that 91 per cent of trans, gender non-conforming and non-binary people reported their household income as being less than $50,000 (£38,458) a year, compared with 61 per cent of cisgender people.
Black trans women reported the lowest income of all the respondents – with 29 per cent on a yearly income of below $15,000 (£11,537), compared with 16 per cent of all other respondents. This makes them twice as likely to be making less than $15,000 a year as anyone else.
“I don’t think that we’re doing enough to talk about and ideate around what it means to ensure that Black trans people have access to adequate, quality, affordable health care, and that the lack of access to it is one of the primary reasons that folks are dying,” Garza said.
“So it’s not just a function of people being murdered on the basis of discrimination. It is also about the choices that people are forced to make because they don’t have access to the things that they need to live,” she added.
The federal minimum hourly wage in the US is $7.25
The government is giving trans people a special health card that will give them access to an existing government health insurance scheme, which was introduced in 2015 to provide health cards for those earning less than $2 a day, although trans people will not face that financial test.
Prime minister Imran Khan said that his government was “taking responsibility” for trans people, who say they are routinely denied treatment and can face harassment or ridicule from hospital staff and patients.
“It is part of a grand programme to provide health insurance not just to the poor but the vulnerable sections of society, including … transgender (people),” said Mirza.
“Any person who identifies as transgender is eligible for this health insurance programme,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Trans people have historically faced severe discrimination in healthcare settings, with doctors denying trans people treatment when they could not decide whether to treat them in a male or female ward.
The health ID cards giving access to the free healthcare scheme will be immediately available, but only to trans people who have registered as trans on their other identity documents.
Pakistan officially recognised transgender people in 2012, adding a third gender option to forms and official documents.
The 2017 national census counted Pakistan’s trans population for the first time, recording 10,418 trans people in a population of about 207 million, though charities estimate there are at least 500,000 trans people.
“The scheme is good but healthcare providers need to be sensitised,” said Zehrish Khan, project manager for trans rights group Gender Interactive Alliance. “Many of us resort to drugs and alcohol because we need psychiatric help and empathy to overcome the continuous harassment we face.”
Aisha Mughal, a trans rights expert, said about 2,500 trans people were currently registered under the government’s third gender option, which means that the new free healthcare is not readily accessible.
“Only a few transgender people know about this and the first step is to spread the word,” Mughal said. “It is just the beginning.”
There are almost no differences between young trans kids and young cis kids when it comes to the strength of their gender identity, new US research shows.
This finding, from researchers at the University of Washington, was true even for trans kids who have only recently come out and socially transitioned (changed their name, pronouns and gender presentation in terms of clothes and hair).
The researchers found that children who identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth (cisgender children) tend to gravitate towards toys, clothing and friendships that are stereotypically associated with their gender. And in the same way, regardless of how long they have lived as their gender, trans kids also gravitate towards the toys, clothes and friends associated with their gender.
“Trans kids are showing strong identities and preferences that are different from their assigned sex,” said lead author Selin Gülgöz, who did the work as a postdoctoral researcher at the UW and will start a new position this winter as an assistant professor at Fordham University. “There is almost no difference between these trans- and cisgender kids of the same gender identity — both in how, and the extent to which, they identify with their gender or express that gender.”
The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and followed more than 300 trans children in the US, as well as nearly 200 of their cisgender siblings and about 300 unrelated cisgender children as a control group.
“While in both groups there were, for example, some tomboys, on average, most transgender girls, like their cisgender counterparts, wore stereotypically feminine clothing, chose toys such as dolls to play with, preferred playing with female playmates, and identified themselves clearly as girls, and not boys,” said Kristina Olson, the study’s senior author.
“Thus the transgender group looked similar to the cisgender group in both the range of responses and the most common responses.”
The similarities among trans and cis children on the various measures were somewhat surprising, the researchers said, because trans children, unlike their cis counterparts, were for at least some of their life treated as a gender other than the one they currently identify as.
“We’re not seeing any increases or decreases over time in how strongly transgender children identify with their current gender,” Gülgöz said.
The study adds to previous research in this area that shows that a trans child’s gender identity is strong and consistent, whether it’s tested before or after the child has socially transitioned.
“Our data thus far suggest that the act of transitioning probably isn’t affecting gender identity one way or the other,” Olson said.
However, non-binary children were not accounted for in this study, and nor were trans people who come out later in life. The study also only included trans children who had at least some family support of their trans identity.
Whether these findings would extend to trans children whose parents refuse to affirm their gender is currently unknown, Olson cautioned.
A 67-year-old man who the Home Office said wasn’t “gay enough” to stay in the UK has received an early Christmas present – asylum status from the government.
Yew Fook Sam, known as Sam, lives in Kirkby, Liverpool, and has lived in fear of being deported to Malaysia, where homosexuality is illegal, for the past three years.
When he heard about being granted asylum, Sam told the Liverpool Echo: “I am so happy. I was crying and screaming with joy when I got the phone call from my lawyer. This will be my best Christmas ever!”
Home Office officials had previously said that they believed Sam was lying about being gay in order to stay in the UK, using the fact that he doesn’t have a boyfriend as evidence.
Sam said he tried to tell them that at his age, he doesn’t need sex.
He added: “I was so disappointed and depressed after being told that I was not gay. How can I prove it?”
A campaign led by his friends at St Bride’s Church in Percy Street, Liverpool – where Sam is part of the Open Table LGBTQIA+ worship community – and promoted by the Echo saw more than 5,000 people sign an online petition urging the Home Office to reconsider.
Sam said he’d lived a lie in Malaysia, marrying a woman at the age of 30 and fathering two children.
But when his wife learnt that he was gay, in 1988, she left him and took their children to the US. Sam hasn’t seen his kids since.
“It’s been such a joy to work with Sam and I am delighted that he has this lovely Christmas present,” said Helene Santamera, an immigration lawyer at the Immigration Advice Service in Liverpool.
“Through his bravery, he has now created a pathway for others who are facing outdated and oversimplified ideas about sexuality.
“And I think the Echo story clinched asylum for him, because it was picked up by so many other papers – including in Malaysia, which would have confirmed the point about the dangers he could face.”
Sam said: “I have been photographed on gay marches here [the UK] and I would be in danger of being arrested – and attacked by members of the public. I fear I could be killed if I had to go back.”
Sam, who arrived in the UK in 2005 on a tourist visa and remained in the south of England, working, until he was arrested in 2016, is studying tourism at the City of Liverpool College with a view to being a tour guide.
“I am so happy here – Liverpool people are so kind and welcoming,” he said.
Sam has been granted asylum for five years, the standard time. One month before this ends, he will become eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain.
A gay 19-year-old from a small town in Maine has become one of the youngest elected officials in the US, after winning a spot on the city council.
Keagan Roberts took home the second-largest share of the votes for a seat on the South Berwick Town Council, which serves a town with a population just shy of 7,500 people.
Roberts, whose twin brother is also gay, toldOut magazine that South Berwick is the kind of small town where “everyone knows everyone” and that it had been “such a great place to grow up” as a young gay person, after coming out in middle school.
“My school was super understanding,” he said. “I really didn’t face too much bullying, at least to my face, which was nice. I also have a twin brother who’s gay, so that kind of made high school a little bit easier. It’s amazing. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
The teenager said he was speechless when the results of the vote came in.
“I didn’t realise my message had touched so many people,” he said. “I was just really proud of what I was able to do and just what I was able to accomplish.”
After he is sworn in, Roberts will be the youngest-ever city council member in South Berwick’s history.
He will also be one of the youngest elected officials in the US.
Roberts’ mum is Tiffany Roberts-Lovell, the local representative in the MaineHouse of Representatives, where she has served since 2018.
He said that she taught him how to inspire people and how to run a grassroots campaign.
“My mom definitely had to coach me through, and some days were better than others,” he said. “I also work, so it’d be like, ‘Let’s go knock on 100 doors and then you can go work your shift.’ Some days I’d ask, ‘Mom, do we have to do this?’ And she said, ‘Yep, you have to do this. This is how we get votes.’”
He added that he hopes his win will inspire other young LGBT+ people to run for public office.
“I hope that it doesn’t matter how young you are, it doesn’t matter how you identify, you can do whatever you put your mind to,” he said.
For the first time, hundreds of sex workers marched through the streets of Stockholm calling for sex workers’ rights and the decriminalisation of the sex industry.
The sex workers’ rights protestors demanded that the government end the “harmful”, “unjust” and “stigmatising” criminalisation of sex work.
At the September 29 protest, activists urged the government to listen to their condemnation of the Swedish model – the sex-work law that criminalises sex workers’ clients and is broadly opposed by sex-worker organisations globally.
rans sex workers told PinkNews how the lethal combination of transphobic discrimination and the criminalisation of sex work puts their safety and survival on the line.
“Transgender people and queer people in general in Norway are still stigmatised and discriminated against to begin with,” says Lilith, from Norwegian sex workers organisation PION. “So we are as a community are often overrepresented in the sex industry.”
We are seen as the parasites, the monsters that the world needs to abolish.
“When the Swedish law criminalises our clients, it also creates this notion that we are a criminal enterprise. Yes, it only criminalises clients, but it creates this illusion that the whole sex industry is criminal. As such, we are seen as the parasites, the monsters that the world needs to abolish,” she says.
Placard at the march in Stockholm. (Twitter/SWARM)
Sex worker rights are human rights.
The Swedish – also called Nordic – model, which makes it illegal to buy sex, was hailed as progressive by feminist organisations when it was introduced in 1999. Versions of the law have since been introduced in other countries including Norway, Iceland, Ireland and Canada.
In 2016, Amnesty International said sex work has to be decriminalised worldwide, because the current models of partial criminalisation prevent the “realisation of the human rights of sex workers“.
Criminalisation impacts trans sex workers twofold, Dinah, from Trans United Netherlands, told PinkNews.
“Decriminalisation for trans sex workers is very important because we are already discriminated [against] and actually criminalised as trans people, we are very much on the forefront of being visible in society and then the only way that we can do work, many times, is sex work,” she says.
There is a double criminalisation – one on being LGBTIQ and one on being a sex worker.
“Criminalisation of sex work means that there is a double criminalisation, in fact. One on being LGBTIQ and one on being a sex worker.”
The protest in Stockholm was organised by sex-worker organisation Fuckförbundet. (Twitter/SWARM)
Trans sex workers vital to gay rights movement.
Red Canary Song is a New York-based, migrant sex-worker grassroots organisation that fights for justice and police accountability, after the death of Chinese massage worker, Yang Song, during a police raid in Flushing in November 2017.
The organisation’s director, Kate Zen, says that US anti-trafficking laws similar to the Swedish model increase policing of sex workers and “primarily harm migrants, trans, and street-based sex workers, while doing little to actually reduce the factors driving trafficking: poverty, migration laws, lack of adequate and accessible housing and healthcare”.
“Migrant, black, brown, and trans sex workers are overrepresented in police arrests, and report rampant police violence, including sexual violence,” she says. “Ironically, these are also the groups of people that pro-police/anti-prostitution organisations say they want to help. Their help is clearly misdirected, and actually harming the very people who are most vulnerable in society.”
The leaders of LGBTQ movements in NYC during the Stonewall Rebellion were trans sex workers of colour.
“More than 50% of sex workers in the US say that they have turned to sex work in order to survive, pay for medical procedures, due to employment discrimination in other jobs. LGBTQ people are overrepresented in the sex industry, and the leaders of LGBTQ movements in NYC during the Stonewall Rebellion were trans sex workers of colour – Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson,” Kate says.
Dozens of sex worker organisations went to the protest in Stockholm on Sunday.
Henna, from sex-worker led activist organisation FTS Finland, says that Finnish sex workers went to the protest in solidarity with their Swedish colleagues “as well as any other colleague who is affected by the Swedish model”.
Listen to us, please!
“Be that trans sex workers or cis, both are affected by this model which doesn’t hear what the sex workers are saying. Listen to us, please!” she says.
Only one country in the world has listened to sex workers and decriminalised sex work – New Zealand.
The New Zealand model aims to uphold the human rights of sex workers and to decriminalise sex work. It was introduced in 2003.
While New Zealand’s approach appears to be moving towards ensuring safety for sex workers, other countries appear to be moving backwards.
Mimi, a trans migrant sex worker from French sex-work union STRASS, told PinkNews that laws criminalising clients – introduced in France in 2016 – are negatively affecting many trans sex workers.
“Especially those who are trans migrant sex workers, who face a lot of discrimination, especially when they are undocumented and working on the streets. Many of them face more insecurity, especially more aggression and more violence.
“More physical violence and any kind of attack, because right now, trans migrant sex workers need to isolate themselves in order to hide their clients from the police, and this is the reason, this is why they are more exposed to violence than before, because they are afraid that their clients will be arrested.
“This, and the fact that there are fewer clients, is a direct result of the criminalisation of the clients.”
Red umbrellas – the worldwide symbol of the sex workers’ rights movement – at the Stockholm march. (Twitter/SWARM)
Criminalisation increases police violence against sex workers.
Police violence as a result of the criminalisation of clients is also being experienced by sex workers in Ireland, according to Adi, from the Sex Workers Alliance Ireland.
Ireland brought in laws making it illegal to buy sex in 2017, but has only seen two clients prosecuted since then – while in that time “we’ve seen a 92 percent increase in violent crime against sex workers”, she says.
“In Ireland, and elsewhere, it’s impossible to find employment in any other field other than sex work – I’ve tried, over and over again, to find other types of work, but nobody’s willing to hire you,” Adi says. “And then in sex work, you’re constantly facing Gardaí harassment, which in my case resulted in my eviction from the premises in which I was working.”
LGBT+ people are overrepresented in the sex-work industry.
The widespread impacts of the criminalisation of sex work have catalysed the sex workers’ rights movement around the world. Luca Stevenson, coordinator at the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), says ICSRE also joined the Stockholm protest “in support of decriminalisation of sex work”.
Many LGBTI people sell sexual services to survive.
“Most LGBTI organisations around the world – Transgender Europe, ILGA Europe, ILGA World – are supporting the decriminalisation of sex work. We know that many LGBTI people sell sexual services to live, to survive,” he says.
The last time someone spat at me in the street, it was the eve of Pride month and I’d just left an LGBT+ pub in east London.
I’d been to see a drag king show with a friend, and as we walked towards the bus stop a man approached us from behind, spat – twice – at us, and walked off.
“That dude was so gross,” I text my friend when I got back to mine. “Hope you got home alright?”
She replied, “Yeah. Asshole. It was because we’re both queer-presenting, right?”
Being spat at isn’t something I’d usually consider worth writing about. As many LGBT+ people could tell you, it’s not exactly uncommon.
When a lesbian couple were beaten up on a night bus in north London on May 30 – the night before I was spat at, in a street a few miles away – politicians were quick to condemn it.
It was “absolutely shocking,” said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Penny Mordaunt, the women and equalities minister, said, “[I’m] appalled to see this kind of homophobic violence in the UK.”
We live in a country where – during Pride month – Ann Widdecombe, an elected MEP, says on national television that science “may yet cure” homosexuality and Michael Gove’s Tory leadership bid is backed in a national newspaper by an openly anti-trans MP.
So, forgive me for not sharing Corbyn’s shock at a homophobic attack. As queer women were quick to point out, violence against lesbians has been happening for years .
As we approach the halfway line of Pride month, we mark the third anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed and 53 injured in what was (then) the US’s deadliest mass shooting. Those killed were overwhelmingly Latinx and queer.
Though what happened in Orlando was at a scale we haven’t seen since, the violence has not stopped.
On June 4, a mayor in Alabama suggested killing LGBT+ people, in a now-deleted Facebook post. When confronted by the media, he first denied writing it, then admitted to it but said he thought he was sending a private message to a friend.
That same day – June 4 – a gay man in Atlanta called Ronald “Trey” Peters was robbed and fatally shot by two men who shouted homophobic slurs at him.
“‘Give him the f***ing bag, f*g,’” one of the men shouted, before opening fire, according to a witness. Police are treating it as a hate crime – although Georgia doesn’t have hate-crime laws, so the homophobic nature of the attack won’t be reflected in the weight of the law used to prosecute his killers.
These violent incidents all happened in the first 12 days of Pride month this year – and sadly this is far from a comprehensive list.
Lesbian political activists in the US are divided over whether they want Pete Buttigieg for president or whether they want a woman, according to Politico.
But interviews with prominent LGBT+ Democrats have shown that there is a “collision of goals and ideals in the community of lesbian political activists this year”, Politico reports.
“Mayor Pete, he’s a trailblazer,” said Campbell Spencer, a lesbian and political consultant who worked in the Obama White House and sits on the board of the LGBTQ Victory Fund – which this year endorsed Buttigieg to be president, it’s first-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate.
“But I’m one of these women who thinks we are way overdue for having a woman in the White House. That’s a lens through which I’m going to filter my decision,” Spencer added.
“It feels like a slap in the face to just go directly to the white gay guy, when for decades you’ve been trying to elect a woman and it didn’t happen last time,” said one lesbian Democrat who works in national politics. “If Pete Buttigieg is elected it won’t feel like a vindication of Hillary Clinton. If a woman is elected, it will.”
“As a woman, as a lesbian, as someone who was all in for Hillary Clinton and as someone who was a historic first myself, I would love to see a woman at the top of the ticket,” said Annise Parker, the former Houston mayor who is now president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund.
“And talking with other women inside the community and not, we understand the importance of Pete’s candidacy — but dammit, we’re half the population. It’s time” for a woman president, Parker added.
LGBT+ voters make up around six per cent of the US electorate, according to 2018 midterm election exit polls.
Buttigieg previously addressed his sexuality in a speech to LGBT+ campaigners at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in Las Vegas on May 11.
“I may be part of the LGBTQ community, but being a gay man doesn’t tell me what it’s like to be a trans woman of colour in that same community, let alone an undocumented mother of four, or a disabled veteran, or a displaced auto worker. But being gay, just like every other fact about me, means I have a story,” he said.
“And if I look to that story, I can find the building blocks not only for empathy, but for the impetus for action. The more you know about exclusion, the more you think about belonging, and we have a crisis of belonging in this country.”
A woman in Idaho could be the first transgender inmate to receive gender-confirmation surgery through a court order.
A panel of judges ruled on August 23 that Adree Edmo’s gender-confirmation surgery should be provided by Idaho and Corizon, the state’s prison healthcare provider.
The surgery is estimated to cost between $20,000 and $30,000.
Edmo is serving 10 years for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy when she was 22 and is scheduled for release in 2021. She is not eligible for parole.
The 9th circuit court of appeals ruling agreed with a December 2018 ruling from US District Judge B Lynn Winmill that was in Edmo’s favour and ordered the state to provde her with surgery.
The 9th circuit court of appeals judges wrote that Windmill’s findings were “logical and well-supported” and that “responsible prison officials were deliberately indifferent to Edmo’s gender dysphoria, in violation of the Eighth Amendment”, according to NPR.
Idaho has 90 days to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. In a statement, Idaho governor Brad Little said, “We cannot divert critical public dollars away from the higher priorities of keeping the public safe and rehabilitating offenders.”
“The hardworking taxpayers of Idaho should not be forced to pay for a convicted sex offender’s gender reassignment surgery when it is contrary to the medical opinions of the treating physician and multiple mental health professionals,” he said.
But the ruling consistently rejected the medical opinions of the prison’s healthcare providers.
“It is enough that [her doctor] knew of and disregarded an excessive risk to Edmo’s health by rejecting her request for [gender confirmation surgery] and then never re-evaluating his decision despite ongoing harm to Edmo,” the judges wrote.
“Prison authorities have not provided that treatment despite full knowledge of Edmo’s ongoing and extreme suffering and medical needs,” the judges wrote.
Edmo’s lawyer, Lori Rifkin, said news that Idaho would appeal was “reprehensible”.
“She suffers every single day while they have denied this treatment to her for years and there can be no reason justifying Idaho’s continued refusal to provide her care except bias,” Rifkin said.
Edmo has twice attempted self-castration while in prison.
The ruling doesn’t mean that all trans inmates in Idaho would be eligible for state-funded gender-confirmation surgery, but it would set a standard for providing the surgery to certain inmates with severe gender dysphoria like Edmo.
Palestinian Authority (PA) police also issued an official statement on August 18 encouraging members of the public to report on the activities of LGBT+ groups.
Palestinian LGBT+ group Al-Qaws says that the PA police statement “promotes incitement against Al-Qaws” and followed an “unprecedented” attack on the group via its social-media channels.
Al-Qaws had been planning a “queer camp” for the end of August in Nablus, northern West Bank.
“The statement promotes incitement against Al-Qaws – and LGBTQ Palestinians – by encouraging members of society to report on Al-Qaws activities. Al-Qaws has since denounced such fear-mongering by Palestinian authorities,” the group said in an online statement.
“Al-Qaws has refused the ban on its activities and noted it will continue its work to fight patriarchy, colonialism and homophobia across historical Palestine,” the statement said.
While LGBT+ activities are officially banned in the West Bank, Al-Qaws has suggested five ways to support Palestinian queers.
Centre Palestinian LGBT+ voices.
“We are constantly talked about but our voices are rarely heard,” said Al-Qaws.
“When reporting on issues that pertain to LGBTQ Palestinians, just ask yourself: whose voice does this story centre?”
“Come talk to us and hear our perspective. Do not simply copy and paste translated Hebrew/Israeli media to tell our story. Al-Qaws activists and staff always provide our names when interviewed, so if you read an article/post with a claimed quote from us with no name attributed, you should know it is not from us.”
Colonialism, patriarchy and homophobia are all connected.
“Singling out incidents of homophobia in Palestinian society ignores the complexities of Israel’s colonisation and military occupation being a contributing factor to Palestinian LGBTQ oppression,” Al-Qaws said.
“We ask that you situate Palestinian LGBTQ oppression within the larger context of Israeli occupation, colonialism, patriarchy and homophobia.”
Steer clear of pink-washing.
“Perpetuating tiresome tropes of presenting Palesitnians as inherently oppressive and Israel as a liberal state that protects LGBTQ rights is counter-productive and factually baseless,” Al-Qaws said.
“Our struggle as queer Palestinians is against Israeli colonialism as much as it is against homophobia and patriarchy in Palestine.”
“Israel uses pink-washing tactics to lie about ‘saving’ LGBTQ Palestinians from their society. We ask that you steer away from these lies that are intentionally used to justify their colonisation of Palestine.”
Understand that Al-Qaws’ priority is community organising.
“We are a small team of dedicated activists who believe change comes from working within our local context,” said Al-Qaws.
“We put enormous daily and strategic efforts in our local grassroots advocacy organising in Palestine. Therefore, and especially in such a crisis, we prioritise providing education and safety to our communities first.”
Support Al-Qaws’ work.
Practically, this includes following them on social media and sharing their resources.
“We believe in the power of people to make social change possible,” Al-Qaws said.
“Talk to your friends and family about the importance of standing up against bigotry towards LGBTQ people, and make sure that your vision of liberation and freedom in Palestine includes us all.”
