As 2021 becomes the deadliest year on record, seeing at least 46 transgender and gender-nonconforming people violently killed, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has released “An Epidemic of Violence: Fatal Violence Against Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People in the United States in 2021,” a report honoring those 46 individuals and shining a light on data that HRC has collected on the epidemic of violence.
The report comes ahead of Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is meant to remember those trans and gender-nonconforming folks who have been last to fatal violence over the year.
“For the second year in a row, the trans community has seen a grim milestone: 2021 has become the deadliest year on record, just as 2020 was. Each and every name read and recognized on the Trans Day of Remembrance represented a full, rich life that did not deserve to be cut short,” says Joni Madison, Human Rights Campaign interim president. “The rhetoric and stigma aimed by anti-equality political leaders and public figures at transgender and nonbinary people have led to an unprecedented level of horrific violence against our transgender community. We must fight for change. We must dismantle this stigma. We must bring this epidemic of violence to an end.”
Tori Cooper, director of community engagement for HRC’s transgender justice initiative, adds, “On the Transgender Day of Remembrance, we must all reaffirm our commitment to fighting on every front necessary to ensure our transgender siblings’ deaths will not be forgotten. We will honor their lives and their memories with action.”
The report found that, of the at least 46 trans and gender-nonconforming people who have been killed in the U.S. this year, 29 were Black and eight were Latine. Since January 2013, when HRC first began tracking this violence, the Campaign has documented more than 250 transgender and gender-nonconforming people who were victims of fatal violence. Of those people, two-thirds have been Black women and nearly 60 percent involved a firearm.
It affects trans and gender-nonconforming people nationwide, with HRC and advocates showing that the cases of fatals violence have occurred across 113 cities and towns in 33 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
The report also details the realities that end up putting transgender folks at risk, along with federal and state actions that would collectively move the country closer to ending violence against trans and gender-nonconforming people.
