At this time of year the media publish the lists of the great and famous who have died in the past 12 months …… including two Queerguru favorites : Dame Maggie Smith and Iris Apfel There is however sadly scant coverage of non-celebrities who lost their lives and were a crucial part of our queer community.
Last year, 350 transgender people were killed, a figure that has risen since last 2023’s total of 321.
Today FORBES Magazine published TGEU’s annual Trans Murder Monitoring project whose authors say this marks a “significant increase” in comparison with the previous year of violence against gender-diverse people. One in four of those murdered were aged between 19 and 25. There were also 15 recorded murders of trans youth under the age of 18, representing 6% of those killed. It gets worse, as it adds, since it launched nearly two decades ago, the project has tracked the murders of over 5,000 transgender people.
This is a global issue as the majority of the murders were committed in Latin America and the Caribbean. For the 17th consecutive year, Brazil has seen the highest number of murders, accounting for 3 in ten (30%) cases. Nine in ten (93%) of the reported murders were of Black or Brown trans people, a 14% increase from last year.
