Violence Against Transgender People: First Article Review

Article Review #1

Alex Duncan
WGST 202h
Tues/Thurs 12:30-1:45
Dr. Currans
Blog Topic: Violence against Transgender People
Article Review #1

Stotzer, Rebecca L. "Violence against Transgender People: A Review of United States Data." Aggression and Violent Behavior 14.3 (2009): 170-79. Web

            The article “Violence against Transgender People: A Review of United States Data” by Rebecca L. Stotzer addresses the issues of viewing gender and sex as a binary with no deviation and no variation.  This article looks at data regarding violence, discrimination, and abuse of transgender individuals.  There are six sections to this article and the data focuses on sexual violence, physical violence, verbal abuse/harassment and other non-physical violences, as well as hotline calls, social service reports, and police reports.  The data shows the high risks of violence that transgender individuals face throughout their lives due to perceived gender nonconformity.

            The part of this article titled Section 2 talks about sexual violence. It also includes a table (Table 1) which documents self-report surveys from transgender people and the amount of abuse they have encountered.  The author uses these studies to delve into motives and results.  Of 248 participants being questioned, 43% stated that they were a victim of homophobia and 35% stated that they were a victim of transphobia (2.1.1).  It was found that FTM transgender individuals seem to more frequently experience sexual violence than MTF transgender individuals.  However, both numbers are far higher than the average cisgender individual.  Within this section we commonly see shockingly high statistics, which are used to reiterate the constant danger. This includes a focus on transgender sex workers, 35% of whom report being raped since entering prostitution (2.1.2).  Other than the fact that this article doesn’t differentiate between sexual violence and rape, the rest of it is very thorough and includes a lot of tables.

            Violence in the home often includes not only sexual abuse, but also domestic violence of both a physical and/or verbal nature.  When asked about whether or not one experienced physical abuse in the home, 67.3% of MTFs answered yes as opposed to 38.7% of FTMs (2.2.3). These results are quite different from the statistics regarding sexual violence seen in the previous section.  Interviews also show that a high amount of gender nonconforming people feel that they are unsafe when in public spaces due to the fact that they are transgender  and that FTM individuals were significantly more likely to feel unsafe (2.2.4).  The separation that the author puts between MTF and FTM transgender individuals has the potential to bring light to underlying misogynistic thought patterns in addition to homophobia and transphobia. 

            Sections 3 and 4 address hotline calls, social service reports, and police reports.  The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition reports that 51 gender nonconforming individuals under the age of thirty were murdered in the United States between 1995 and 2005 (3.2).  91% of these were people of color, most of whom were poor and lived in a big city, and 92% were biologically male with some form of feminine presentation (3.2). These statistics can also show racist and classist actions among perpetrators of crime and how those factors play into violence along with gender identity and expression.  Stotzer states that identifying the nature and extent of the violence is the first step in understanding the effect that violence has in the lives of transgender people.  She concludes that transgender people are highly at risk, and that self-report surveys indicate that most trans individuals are likely to experience at least one of the three main types of violence discussed in their lifetime.  She acknowledges some flaws in the methods of data collecting, but has the statistical evidence (such as significance tests) which show that it is highly likely that most of the data is accurate. 

            Even though this article refers to the term “transgender” as meaning any gender nonconforming individual, it still separates many of the statistics by MTF and FTM identifications.  This puts some focus on viewing biological sex as a binary concept and treats it as a necessary point of identification in the stories of transpeople.  This contrasts with many of the in-class readings which do not put quite as much focus on the biological sex of an individual, and rather focuses on gender roles or perception.  In the case of the interview with Judith Butler, it was about gender being performative.  People responded to actions before discussing biology.  However, her points regarding tomboys and “sissy boys” do tend towards the idea of assigned gender, but they don’t explore all aspects of nonconformity as much.  This separation, however, at least causes me to think more upon what someone’s misled motives may be when committing a hate crime, and knowing motives is one of the steps to preventing attacks.