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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   8779 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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[Yes, it's my monthly post about my hobby horse.]

Perhaps the most recurrent complaint made by the trans activist coalition is that transgender people in Western countries face an elevated risk of violence and murder, and that this increased risk is directly attributable to anti-trans bigotry. The Transgender Day of Remembrance is observed every November 20th, to memorialise those murdered as a result of transphobia. Organisations like Human Rights Watch claim that violence against trans people in the US has reached "epidemic" levels. A Trump-instated genocide of trans people is either claimed to be imminent or already ongoing, albeit in its "early stages" (conveniently). Various US states have passed laws banning defendants from using the "trans panic" defense (i.e. the defendant was so shocked upon discovering that an object of their sexual desire was transgender that they lost control of their faculties) in murder trials, under the historically dubious claim that this defense has resulted in vastly reduced sentences or even outright acquittals. The increased risk of violence and murder that trans people ostensibly face is sometimes used to justify other policy demands made by TRAs (e.g. trans women must be permitted to use ladies' bathrooms, because if they're forced to use the men's room they'll get beaten up).

Gender-criticals like myself routinely push back on these claims, pointing out that one cannot simply attribute every murder of a trans person to transphobia (any more than every murder of a white person can be attributed to anti-white animus): many of the victims touted by Human Rights Campaign were murdered by a close acquaintance or a domestic partner, and in some cases the perpetrator was also trans. Similarly, a disproportionate share of the cited murder victims are usually sex workers, an already at-risk demographic even leaving transgender identity aside. A simple per capita analysis indicates that, in Western countries, trans people face a vastly reduced risk of murder compared to the general population. A major limitation of the per capita approach, however, is uncertainty over both numerator and denominator: it's possible that there are some murder victims whose transgender identity was not made public knowledge, and getting hard data on the absolute number of trans people in a given country is remarkably difficult and dependent on inherently noisy methods like polls and surveys (which become all the noisier if the question is worded in such a way that it's likely to be misinterpreted by a non-native English speaker).

Two academics at the University of Oxford, Michael Biggs and Ace North* (!), have developed a novel method of investigating the claim that trans people face an elevated risk of violence: comparing the ratio of murder victims to murder perpetrators. If the ratio for a particular demographic is greater than 1, murder victims in that demographic outnumber murder perpetrators, and vice versa. If trans people in the UK face an elevated risk of violence, one would expect the ratio of victims to perpetrators to be greater than 1; if their risk of violence has reached "epidemic" levels, one would expect the ratio to be much higher than other demographics (such as female people).

One detail I particularly like is that the researchers sourced their figures for transgender murder victims from a trans activist website, while their figures for transgender murderers were sourced from a gender-critical website, in hopes that the two organisations' respective incentives to make each figure as high as possible would offset each other. To be as generous to the trans activist coalition as possible, the researchers disambiguated murderers who already identified as transgender prior to their arrest and those who only began doing so afterwards. After assembling a dataset of victims and perpetrators, the researchers analysed their respective media coverage in the national broadcaster, the BBC.

What did they find?

  1. Since the beginning of this century, the ratio of trans murder victims to perpetrators in the UK was 0.8: there have been more transgender murderers than murder victims.
  2. Transgender people follow the male pattern of homicide, rather than female. For all British males in the period, the ratio of murder victims to perpetrators was 0.7, while for British females it was 2.9 (i.e. even though women make up a minority of murder victims, they are three times more likely to be a murder victim than to commit a murder).
  3. The BBC covers trans murder victims far more extensively than it does trans murderers, with an average of 12.5 articles per victim vs. 3.9 per murderer. (The researchers acknowledge that the primary cause of this discrepancy is the single outlier case of Brianna Ghey, something of a man-bites-dog story as both victim and perpetrators were only sixteen at the time.) If a murder victim was transgender, this is usually mentioned prominently in the article, whereas a murderer's transgender identity is often not mentioned at all, or omitted from initial reporting and only stealth-edited in after complaints from readers.

Stray thoughts:

  • I was surprised to find that the researchers' dataset of murder victims includes no female victims at all, while their dataset of murderers includes two female perpetrators.
  • As noted above, sex workers are overrepresented among the victims, making up 36% thereof, and it appears that several were murdered by their johns. Likewise, many victims were murdered by friends, romantic partners or family members, which suggests that transphobic animus plays a minimal role in violence against trans people.
  • While the number of male inmates in women's prisons ought to be zero, I am sympathetic (up to a point) to the idea that transgender inmates may face an increased risk of violence from their fellow inmates, and that they ought to be protected. (Some people think that extrajudicial violence from fellow inmates is just part-and-parcel of incarceration and if you can't do the time, don't do the crime: I am not one of those people.) However, I think the best way to accomplish this is by segregating violent offenders from non-violent (this is already the entire impetus behind minimum- and maximum-security prisons) and placing especially vulnerable prisoners on protection if necessary, on a case-by-case basis. @Celestial-body-NOS, while sensible enough to recognise that putting male inmates in the women's estate is a bad idea, thinks the best solution is to house all trans-identifying male inmates in a dedicated facility, lumping together those who've been formally diagnosed with gender dysphoria with opportunists who only came out as trans post-conviction. I argued that, even from the narrow perspective of protecting transgender inmates, this policy proposal seems worse than mine: I'm not persuaded that the best way to ensure the safety of non-violent offenders who've identified as trans their entire lives is to house them in a facility with violent offenders who only started identifying as trans immediately prior to conviction. In light of this exchange, it was interesting to find that one of the murderers in the researchers' data set is Daniel (later Sophie) Eastwood, who was convicted of murdering a fellow inmate while serving a prison sentence for dangerous driving.
  • The researchers compare their dataset with comparable data in the US, and find that trans people in the US face an elevated risk of murder compared to the UK. But the US has a higher murder rate than the UK in general, and this is probably primarily explicable by the proportion of the population which is black.
  • The researchers compare their study with a Swedish study I've referred to many times, which followed trans people who medically transitioned over three decades, and found that trans-identifying men were twenty times more likely to be convicted of a crime than females, while trans-identifying females were ten times more likely to commit violent crimes than cis females of the same age (testosterone causing increased aggression?).
  • The prominent mentioning of the victims' transgender identity and omitting of the perpetrators' transgender identity is not entirely attributable to editorial bias, and may be downstream of official guidance for judges in murder trials.
  • Even some of the reporting about transgender murderers seems intended to promote the idea of trans people as uniquely oppressed and ostracised e.g. articles about Jenny Swift and Rowan Thompson emphasised their suicides in prison and only belatedly mentioned that they'd been convicted for murder, almost as an afterthought.
  • As I recently complained about, several articles about transgender murderers referred to the perpetrators as "women" without any kind of qualification or disambiguation. These are not our crimes.

*Sounds like the name of an American character in an anime.

@Celestial-body-NOS, while sensible enough to recognise that putting male inmates in the women's estate is a bad idea

That is not an accurate representation of my views. A separate facility for trans-women was an offer of a compromise, and I do not appreciate the repeated assertions that agreement with the 'gender-critical' position, or whatever you call your side of the argument, is a prerequisite for being considered 'mature' or 'sensible'.

So in your ideal world, where no compromise was required with people like me (or those uppity women who would prefer not to be raped during their prison sentences if it's all the same), how would inmates be housed?

As an aside, don't you find it the least bit interesting that, for all your talk about the necessity of housing trans-identified males outside of the male estate in order to protect them from the "ghastly fate" that would otherwise befall them, trans activists cannot dredge up even one example of a trans-identified male being murdered in a British prison in the last twenty-five years?

I do not appreciate the repeated assertions that agreement with the 'gender-critical' position, or whatever you call your side of the argument, is a prerequisite for being considered 'mature' or 'sensible'.

I'll be more than happy to stop, if you'll stop implying that I'm a pervert for disagreeing with gender ideology. A simple trade.

So in your ideal world, where no compromise was required with people like me (or those uppity women who would prefer not to be raped during their prison sentences if it's all the same), how would inmates be housed?

Transgender women could be housed with the female population only if they’ve had bottom surgery, otherwise they go into protective custody in the male wing. I believe that’s the law in many countries right now including the UK, and it seems quite reasonable to me. What would your objections be to that?

So in your ideal world, where no compromise was required with people like me (or those uppity women who would prefer not to be raped during their prison sentences if it's all the same), how would inmates be housed?

One inmate per cell, all interactions between inmates supervised by guards sufficiently numerous to intervene in the event of violence of harassment having the potential thereof.

trans activists cannot dredge up even one example of a trans-identified male being murdered in a British prison in the last twenty-five years?

'Trans-woman murdered' isn't the only bad outcome we are trying to avoid; there is also 'trans-woman beaten up by low-life with extremely retrograde Views on gender roles as a warning to anyone else assigned-male-at-birth who might be thinking about getting in touch with their feminine side'.

I'll be more than happy to stop, if you'll stop implying that I'm a pervert for disagreeing with gender ideology. A simple trade.

I do not believe that you, personally, are motivated by sexual desire in your opposition to trans-inclusivity. That does not change the fact that other people's organs are none of your business, even when your interest in them is not sexually motivated. This is especially the case for the sexual organs, including the gamete-producing organs. If someone starts digging through your medical records willy-nilly, should the Data Protection Act only apply if they are touching themself?

One inmate per cell, all interactions between inmates supervised by guards sufficiently numerous to intervene in the event of violence of harassment having the potential thereof.

Oh, I see: you're doing that thing certain people do where, when asked what your preferred policy solution would be, you describe some impossible utopia that will never and can never exist – then when people point this out to you, you accuse them of being moral mutants.

As always, this is a tremendously useful contribution to the discussion and not a complete and utter waste of everyone's time. That's the hallmark of a truly ethical person: someone who spends all their time daydreaming about hypothetical solutions that will never come to pass, while rubbishing the pragmatic alternatives offered by the more grounded and down-to-earth.

Seriously, dude: this is about as productive a contribution to the discussion as announcing "when I'm in charge we won't need prisons, because everyone will get along with each other!"

Fine, no détente. If you continue to insist that my opposition to gender ideology is rooted in some kind of voyeuristic desire to know the genital configuration of everyone in my vicinity (despite how strenuously I've made it clear that I think it's tremendously inappropriate for trans-identified males to volunteer this information unprompted) – I will continue to insist that, if you really mean what you say, you are painfully naïve.

If you continue to insist that my opposition to gender ideology is rooted in some kind of voyeuristic desire to know the genital configuration of everyone in my vicinity

I do not insist that your inquiry is voyeuristic in nature. My point is that, even though it is not born out of sexual perversion, it is still not any of your business.

I also acknowledge that you have stated that your concern is not with penis/vulva but with testicles/ovaries. (Does this mean that you would consider someone born with a penis and two viable-egg-producing ovaries to be female, and someone born with a vulva and two viable-sperm-producing testicules to be male? What about someone born with one testicule and one ovary, each producing viable gametes of its associated size?) I disagree with your claim that either of them is something which you are entitled to be told by someone who would prefer to keep to themself.

Does this mean that you would consider someone born with a penis and two viable-egg-producing ovaries to be female, and someone born with a vulva and two viable-sperm-producing testicules to be male? What about someone born with one testicule and one ovary, each producing viable gametes of its associated size?

Why is that trans activists' attempts at "gotchas" always reside solely in the realm of the hypothetical?

I disagree with your claim that either of them is something which you are entitled to be told by someone who would prefer to keep to themself.

I continue to insist that asserting that one's sex ought to be kept "private" is a meaningless demand when, in 99% of cases, it can be reliably inferred at a glance. It makes about as much sense as demanding that one's height, eye colour or need to use a wheelchair be kept "private". It's a doubly meaningless demand in this debate given how many trans people will openly announce "I am a trans [woman]/[man]", and the terms "trans woman" and "trans man" are literally defined in terms which are derivative of sex: by disclosing that you are a trans woman, you have therefore disclosed that you are a person of the male sex (and vice versa for trans men). A "trans woman" is "a person of the male sex who identifies as a woman"; let's see what happens when we taboo our words:

Alice: I am a person of the male sex who identifies as a woman.
Bob: What sex are you?
Alice: That's none of your business.

Do you see how absurd this is, and how contrived it sounds post-tabooing?

Why is that trans activists' attempts at "gotchas" always reside solely in the realm of the hypothetical?

Firstable, that question was not an attempt at a 'gotcha', so much as a request for clarification of your particular definition of 'sex'.

Secondable, it is not necessarily hypothetical; any chirurgeon will tell you that human organs never look like the diagrams in medical textbooks: there are always variations, and sometimes they can both be very weird and go unnoticed until the body is scanned or opened up for some other reason. I have even heard of men who were born with all the visible male parts, never considered that they were anything other than men, fathered children, and then went to hospital for some procedure and found out that they had been carrying around uteruses for seventy years!

Thirdable, I believe that the Rightful Caliph has written a defence of the use of hypotheticals in argument.

I continue to insist that asserting that one's sex ought to be kept "private" is a meaningless demand when, in 99% of cases, it can be reliably inferred at a glance.

א, cis individuals outnumber trans individuals by such a degree that, given a sample drawn from the population at large, one can get past 90% just with their gender identity.

ב, Do I need to tap the sign?

given how many trans people will openly announce "I am a trans [woman]/[man]"

I am not claiming that biological sex be kept private at all times; I am saying that the choice should be left to the individual. If Alice wants to declare her transness to everyone, Betty wants to keep it a closely guarded secret, and Carol wants to tell her friends and the readers of her blog but not strangers in the shops when she wants to empty her bladder, their decisions should all be respected.

Returning to the analogy with other forms of medical confidentiality, if Daniel wants to post his entire medical history on his website for everyone and their brother to peruse, he is welcome to do so; other people are disallowed from making that decision for him.

ב, Do I need to tap the sign?

I don't know what this is supposed to mean.

I have even heard of men who were born with all the visible male parts, never considered that they were anything other than men, fathered children, and then went to hospital for some procedure and found out that they had been carrying around uteruses for seventy years!

Some concrete examples or citations would be appreciated. The sex-is-a-spectrum people routinely claim such edge cases exist and then are unable to dredge up even a Weekly World News article.

A separate facility for trans-women was an offer of a compromise

That sounds like a massive expense for a rather small percentage of the population. Prisons generally try to operate on economies of scale, it's a lot cheaper to manage prisoners if you can cram as many as possible into the smallest area you can (without getting complaints from the human rights crowd). It's akin to making a separate third restroom for trannies when you could just have them use the one that matches their sex (bathrooms are, after all, sex separated, and I've been repeatedly told that conflating sex and gender is transphobic).

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din

List the ominous stern whisper, from the Delphic cave within

They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.

"It's not a compromise with sin; we're just reducing expenses at the cost of throwing a rather small percentage of the population under the bus."

"Exactly what do you think a compromise with sin is?"

What an amusing topic to invoke the concept of "sin" under. Beautiful, really.

Pleading to the Gods of the Copybook Headings in support of housing transgender offenders in women's prisons is a ludicrous move. What do you think sin is?

I favour Granny Weatherwax's definition.

"It's not a compromise with sin; we're just reducing expenses at the cost of throwing a rather small percentage of the population under the bus."

"If I claim it's throwing the trans population under the bus then that means it's actually throwing them under the bus." You're assuming a shared moral framework here that very much does not exist. A trans woman is a man pretending to be a woman, or a man who has a mental illness causing him to think he is a woman. Someone who has a mental illness causing them to think they are Napoleon isn't thrown under the bus when I refuse to use taxpayer money to help them invade Russia.

Someone who has a mental illness causing them to think they are Napoleon

Now that's an analogy I've not heard in a long time.

Eh, I've been using that argument since 2010 or so, it's still as applicable now as it was then.

He is, however, arguably thrown under the bus if you insist on locking him in a facility with a population whose notorious Napoleon fetish causes them to brutally rape any transnapoleonics they can get their hands on, which is what I think Celestial meant. (Of course, this line of reasoning could imply that effeminate gay men shouldn't be jailed with regular male inmates, regardless of their gender identification.)

He is, however, arguably thrown under the bus if you insist on locking him in a facility with a population whose notorious Napoleon fetish causes them to brutally rape any transnapoleonics they can get their hands on

If he doesn't want to get thrown in the Napoleon-rape cage then all he has to do is not commit crime and/or invade Russia.

This amounts to an argument that it's good, actually, that they're getting thrown under the bus. We're quite a ways away from "they aren't being thrown under the bus, they're no more oppressed than any other men".

No, I just see preventing prison rape for mtf trannies as no higher of a priority than preventing it for non-trans male prisoners. It's something we should work to reduce, but frankly I don't see many practical ways to accomplish it, especially not without using resources that could be better spent elsewhere. I place a much higher priority on preventing the rape of biological women in prisons, and keeping mtf tranny criminals far the fuck away from them seems like one of the most practical and inexpensive ways to reduce that.

More comments

"Exactly what do you think a compromise with sin is?"

Having prisons in the first place.

Fines, Beatings, Exile and Death should be all the forms of punishment a civilized society dispenses.

"Exactly what do you think a compromise with sin is?"

The method by which we enjoy what prosperity remains despite absolute values-incoherence.

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