The Mythology of Transgender Violence

Where does violence come from?

Photo by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash

Over and over again, the right in America has tried to push a myth of trans people being an imminent, massively disproportionate, violent threat — as though it were a serious problem. In rare instances in which a trans person carries out a shooting or some other act of violence (or even when the person isn’t trans, such as in the case of Charlie Kirk’s shooter), the right rushes to blame trans people or trans “ideology”.

There are many problems with this narrative, chief among being that it simply isn’t true.

Even if we take all of their examples of so-called trans shooters at face value, they barely have more than a handful. Such sparse examples are certainly not proof of an imminent, existential threat to the national security of the United States, as the right is claiming.

I’ve covered why this narrative from the right is wrong before, but this time I want to explain the bigger problem I have with them pushing this narrative, that being the underlying and, frankly, naked dishonesty at the heart of what they are saying. Much of this is inspired by the recent events of a shooting by a trans woman, Roberta Esposito, who killed two family members and injured three other people.

In the wake of this horrific shooting, countless people on the right latched onto it as an example of what they’ve been saying all along, that trans people are a danger, and there needs to be legislation to tackle “trans ideology”. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh, who built a name for himself by being anti-trans, even used the shooting as an excuse to gloat about how he’s been warning people for years that trans ideology is a plague that needs to be destroyed.

Other people on the right jumped to list other shootings in recent years involving trans people, as proof of the apparent danger trans people pose to the rest of society. People on the left have responded by pointing to apparent hypocrisy from the right, specifically that they urge taking guns from trans people even though they staunchly oppose almost any other gun restrictions. The right even oppose ordinary red-flag laws that let judges disarm people after weighing evidence that they might pose a risk to the community. The right have even opposed such laws in the wake of horrific school shootings such as Sandy Hook.

All of a sudden, now that there are a handful of examples of shootings involving trans people, the right seems to think gun control should happen after all. I really dislike this pointing out this apparent hypocrisy, because it doesn’t get to the actual point. When conservatives in the US say they’re against gun control, they are arguing in favour of US gun culture, of loosely organised quasi-militias that exist to defend the status quo.

Despite what the Second Amendment says, US gun culture has never been about defending people from government tyranny. It has always been about armed reactionary people functioning as another arm of the state. This is why you seldom, if ever, see people scream about the Second Amendment rights of minorities to defend themselves from state violence.

The conservative defence of guns is not a true defence of liberty; it is a defence of the prevailing culture of gun ownership, which is predominantly made up of reactionaries who support conservative causes. If most gun owners were left-wing and anti-Republican, Republicans would not be so keen to defend the Second Amendment with the ferocity they do now.

This is why pointing to the “hypocrisy” of the right in calling for gun control in response to shootings by trans people is a pointless endeavour. They don’t care, they’re not trying to put forth a coherent political message, they’re trying to defend existing power structures and systems of oppression. Removing trans people’s ability to own weapons would make them easier targets of both vigilante and state violence. For what it’s worth, I’m not saying all trans people should go down a road of hyper-militarism or violence. I’m just contextualising the conservative calls for gun control for trans people.

Setting this point aside, we also have the problem of the right bringing up specific examples of shootings by trans people and how they are being fundamentally dishonest in doing so. At best, even taking all of the examples given by the right, such as Roberta Esposito, the Nashville shooter, etc, they have scarcely more than a handful of cases. There are shootings every single day in the US that do not involve trans people, and yet the right never seems to have a problem with this.

What’s more, and this is actually a point I saw someone make on Twitter quite brilliantly, in all of the examples given by the right of trans shooters, the shooters were also white. Surely then, we could look at this as an example of not necessarily trans violence but white violence? The answer, of course, is that the right will never do this because their entire outrage about trans shooters is simply faux outrage.

The American right doesn’t have a problem with mass shooters, just when the wrong people, i.e. minorities, carry them out. Just as Republicans don’t have a problem with rape or pedophilia. After all, their president and so many of their wealthy and powerful heroes are all over the Epstein files. The only time Republicans have a problem with these crimes is when the person who commits them is a minority.

Beyond this point, the right knows there isn’t a disproportionate amount of trans violence in the US, despite ostensibly claiming there is. After all, as I’ve already explained, only a tiny number of shootings have been carried out by trans people in the US in recent years, while literally thousands have been carried out by cis people. Transphobes are fully aware of this. It’s simply impossible for them not to be aware that their numbers don’t add up.

However, the crucial aspect of all of this is that transphobes are being deliberately dishonest.

They know there isn’t any credible evidence of a massive level of trans violence, but they just push this narrative because it justifies them going after trans people and trans rights. I bring all of this up because it’s important to point out how the right are so fundamentally dishonest in pushing anti-trans talking points. They know they’re wrong, they know they’re lying, they know their points don’t make any sense, and they don’t care.

Ultimately, transphobes aren’t making their arguments out of a desire for truth or learning, but in order to justify further state repression against trans people. This is what their argument(s) come down to, nothing more, and nothing less.