Part of his criticism was centered around how the 'alphabet people' have made rapid strides, but that conveniently forgets that black people can be gay or trans too, and also haven't made the same gains white LGBTQ folks have.
I'll gladly cede that America is more structurally and culturally anti-black than they are anti-LGBTQ, but that isn't the argument he was making.
This is a pet peeve of mine, but someone actually tell me which millionaire/billionaire actually remained 'cancelled' after being cancelled. As far as I can tell, the only people actually being cancelled are the trans people being fired from their jobs for finding the special distasteful and voicing that publicly.
It's rather disingenuous to point at the increase in murders like that, given how 2020 saw a huge spike in murders year over year for the general population.
So 44 trans people were murdered in 2020, out of a total of 21,570 in the US [0]. Estimates for the trans population range from 0.39% [1] to 0.58% [2].
That's about 2-3x lower than we'd expect, as a population of that size with an equivalent murder rate would have 84-125 homicides per year.
If we zoom in on black trans people and compare them to the black population as a whole, 27 were murdered compared to 9,941 for the black population [3]. Doing a bit of napkin math, and with the assumption that the rate of transgender identification is the same in the black and non-black populations, and using 46.9 million for the black population, we get:
21.2 murders / 100k for the black population
16.2-24.1 murders / 100k for the black trans population (using 0.58% for the first figure, and 0.39% for the second).
So the surprising conclusion seems to be that the trans population has a significantly lower homicide victimization rate compared to the general population, and black trans population has a slightly lower rate than the black population.
And if anything, I'd expect this gap to expand once correcting for age (the trans population skews younger) and the rapid increase in trans identification over the few years.
So sure, mentioning deaths is inflammatory, but not without context. It was in reply to the parent comment's (and Chappelle's) narrative of 'the trans community has somehow been too successful'.
Additionally, a black trans death is precisely what Chappelle used to justify his own monologue.
Analyses like you just did do feel authoritative, but it is important to remember that HRC only began tracking these things in 2013, and given the state of play in the US, I wouldn't expect it to be a complete survey for quite some time.
Quoting from the nih article you cited about the difficulties collecting data:
*Research has shown that transgender individuals around the world and in the United States are exposed to widespread social stigma, discrimination, harassment, and physical and sexual abuse. Compared with the general population, a national survey conducted in the United States in 2008 found that transgender individuals were 4 times more likely to live in extreme poverty, had double the rate of unemployment, and had almost double the rate of being homeless. In terms of health, transgender individuals had 4 times the rate of being HIV-infected and 28% postponed medical care because of discrimination. Particularly alarming is that 41% of survey respondents reported at least 1 suicide attempt. A barrier to understanding social determinants and health disparities faced by transgender people is the under- or nonrepresentation in a range of demographic and health-monitoring activities,5 which may result from a lack of transgender-inclusive data collection with regard to gender identity.*
Additionally, your zooming analysis didn't account for victim gender disparity.
3,584 female victims in 2020 vs 14,194 males.
Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are
black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion.
44/21570 (0.002) becomes 27/3584 (0.0075)
when viewed through the lens of gender.
I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing. Those things aren't somehow mutually exclusive. And Chappelle's anecdote was about a black trans person who committed suicide after being marginalized by their community, and I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide.
> Given that the majority in the murdered trans population we are discussing are black trans women, not factoring that in will give you your counterintuitive conclusion.
I deliberately didn't try to break it down by gender because of the inherent issues with comparing someone who has biologically and socially developed as a male (to varying degrees, eg. someone who begins transitioning at 15 is going to be different than someone who starts at 35) to natal women. It is notable though that if you look at the stats, the victimization rate for black trans women falls in between the stats for black men (much higher) and black women (much lower). It would be interesting to look at other indicators like automobile accidents that show significant gender divergence to see if a similar pattern emerges.
> I can't make that fbi website spit out better numbers, but the fact that the fbi doesn't even have an incentive to track this kind of thing is telling all by itself.
Unfortunately I don't think we'll get better stats anytime soon. Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID, but there is no equivalent "trans: Y/N" anywhere. And many trans people would vociferously oppose something like that. The result is that police will likely only include trans identification in case documents if it is relevant, eg. with a hate crime.
Even if a community did have a higher homicide victimization rate than average, it could still punch well above its weight in terms of Twitter mobbing.
Even if I ceded that trans people are uniquely online and 'too strong' on twitter, and I additionally cede that somehow that also means 'they' (and not a few individuals) are uniquely willing to kill their own in the name of internet points, that doesn't change the fact that the group is currently marginalized, and 'wins' online don't actually translate to acceptance in the real world.
You needn't look far to find laws being passed that specifically target and exclude the trans community.
Painting a marginalized community as vicious enough to 'eat their own' paves the way for very ugly rhetoric that we've seen with other marginalized groups the world over. Chappelle especially is smart enough to know this.
And indeed, from reading the comments here and elsewhere, it seems that whatever empathy he attempted to bring to the special, the modal comments on his work looks like this:
'I prefer the old skinny Chapelle. Black white supremacist is a killer. However, I must confess, I agree with him and J.K. Rowling on this one. Being trans women doesn’t make you a woman.'
The HN sentiment above this comment seems to be 'wokeism' is destroying the fabric of America, trans folks on twitter are 'woke', and bullies, and the real problem.
I don't think anyone is disputing that trans people disproportionately struggle with mental health issues and suicide.
I don't dispute it, but also, I think being kicked out by your family, not being able to get a job, having poor access to (or being afraid to ask for) healthcare, or being assaulted, etc... e.g. the effects of being marginalized, have a dramatic impact on mental health even without considering what it's like to be trans in isolation. I've met many folks(trans and not) in situations like this and the despair can be palpable.
This review seems to be speculating in the same direction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7317390/
Furthermore, compared with trans men, the societal position of trans women is lower (31, 32).
In the Netherlands, between 1972 and 2017 suicide rates showed a fluctuating course. Our finding of a slightly decreasing suicide risk in Dutch trans women may confer some hope. Recent studies showed an increase in societal acceptance toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (31), and indications of an increase in social‐economic status over the years (33).
...
Although the literature on suicide risk factors is comprehensive, and particular suicidal risk factors like verbal victimization, physical and sexual violence, and the absence of social support (9, 34), may apply for transgender people in all stages of transitioning, it seems clinically highly relevant to understand and explore possible differences in motives and risk factors in the different stages of treatment.
Race and gender are fairly easy to track because they get marked down on various forms of ID
It's my understanding that changing gender and name on ids is quite common, but often legally fraught. That kind of change effectively serves as as 'trans/enby: Y/N' where it is allowed at all. But yes, I don't think putting that explicitly on an ID is a safe idea.
> This is a pet peeve of mine, but someone actually tell me which millionaire/billionaire actually remained 'cancelled' after being cancelled.
From what I gather, Louis CK and Garrison Keillor are still cancelled (e.g. reduced to releasing stuff on their own personal websites).
Also, the kind of people who get canceled are entertainers and academics, and few if any of those are billionaires. I'm not even sure how "canceling" a billionaire would even work.
I'm fairly certain that was primarily his coke? habit and the n-word fiasco was the excuse the board needed. Also he definitely was given interviews afterward while he was promising a very sweaty 'day of reckoning'.
2021 is looking to surpass that...
Part of his criticism was centered around how the 'alphabet people' have made rapid strides, but that conveniently forgets that black people can be gay or trans too, and also haven't made the same gains white LGBTQ folks have.
I'll gladly cede that America is more structurally and culturally anti-black than they are anti-LGBTQ, but that isn't the argument he was making.
This is a pet peeve of mine, but someone actually tell me which millionaire/billionaire actually remained 'cancelled' after being cancelled. As far as I can tell, the only people actually being cancelled are the trans people being fired from their jobs for finding the special distasteful and voicing that publicly.