Many “gender critical” people on this website like to site a 2011 Swedish study to claim that trans women have the same rates of violence as cisgender men. This claim is a gross misreading and should be challenged whenever seen. Below I will be showing quotes from one of the researchers from the study showing exactly how wrong the “gender critical” claim is.
For starters the study found that women who transitioned from 1989-2003 did not even demonstrate a male pattern of criminality let alone anything close to the same pattern of violence. Which means that the claim of trans women being as violent as cisgender men is definitely false as a general statement for all the women who transitioned from 1989 onward.
The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.
However we also need to look at another key distortion of the facts that the “gender critical” camp manufactured. Pattern of Criminality does not mean the same thing as pattern of violence. Even the trans women in the 1973-1988 group were not shown to exhibit the same rates of violence that cisgender men do. What the study actually does show is that prior to 1989 trans women were being convicted at the same rate as cisgender men, not for the same crimes.
As to the criminality metric itself, we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk.
The idea that trans women are just as likely to rape as cis men is a lie. It is a lie which has become a central tenet of denying trans women access to life saving shelter and community and this lie needs to be confronted where ever it tries to take root. Whenever you see this lie, shine a light on it because it can only grow in the dark.
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If anyone tries to claim that trans women are as violent or dangerous as men, they are lying to your face.
Considering the sheer number of trans women forced to do sex work to survive (which is still criminalized even now in 2015), being arrested and convicted of a “crime” in 1989 is not a good metric for whether a group is violent.
@motherbychoice This was the article/study Jilly was using. Here’s like, more info on it (and how it’s shit).
we’ve been arrested at the same rates as men while committing far less crime. that makes more sense 
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