WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC), the educational arm of the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization, and its Public Education and Research program published “The Epidemic of Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in the United States: The 2023 Report” a report released on Trans Day of Remembrance to memorialize the lives of the transgender and gender nonconforming people killed this year.
Since 2013, HRC has recorded the deaths of 335 transgender and gender non-conforming victims of fatal violence–including at least 33 deaths in the last 12 months (from after Transgender Day of Remembrance 2022, or November 21, 2022, through November 20, 2023). We say “at least,” as many deaths often go unreported or misreported, or misgendering of victims leads to delays in their identification. What we do know, however, is that the 33 people we lost in the last year were overwhelmingly young and people of color, with Black trans women disproportionately impacted. A plurality of victims were killed by a friend, family, or romantic/sexual intimate partner, and guns were involved in the majority of cases.
In the last 12 months:
- Nine in ten (90.9%) trans and gender non-conforming victims were people of color
- Seven in ten (69.7%) were transgender women
- More than six in ten (61.8%) were Black transgender women
- Three-quarters (78.8%) were under the age of 35
- Among those with a known killer, almost half (45.5%) were killed by a friend, family member, or sexual/romantic intimate partner
- More than half (51.5%) were initially misgendered by the police or in news reports
