A man has been arrested for the murder of a trans woman in India, after a piece of her body was found in his home.
Warning: this story contains graphic content.
Zoya Kinnar, a trans woman in the city of Indore, India, had been missing since Sunday (28 August), according to the IANS news service.
Parts of her mutilated body were discovered on Tuesday (29 August), and on Thursday (1 September), police said officers had arrested a man named Noor Mohammad for her murder.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Sampat Upadhyay said that Mohammad had been questioned by police based after a part of Kinnar’s body was discovered at his house.
Upadhyay said that Mohammad had befriended Kinnar on social media in the hope of having a sexual relationship with her, and had invited her to his house.
But when he discovered that she was transgender, he got “furious and hit Zoya badly”, before strangling her to death.
He “cut Zoya’s body into pieces” before attempting to dispose of them in various locations. But before he could completely dispose of her body, he was identified by police based on CCTV evidence.
LGBTQ+ rights have advanced in India over the last decade, including the decriminalisation of gay sex in 2018, the 2014 Supreme Court decision in National Legal Services Authority v Union of India, which ruled that discrimination based on gender identity was unconstitutional and allowed trans folk to legally register as a “third gender”, and the banning of conversion therapy in 2021.
However, there is much further to go before LGBTQ+ people in India have true legal and social equality.
The country does not recognise same-sex marriage or joint adoption by same-sex parents, and LGBTQ+ people are not able to serve openly in the military.
Stigma relating to queer identities is widespread, with one 2018 studyshowing that a third of gay men in India are married to women, and a 2021 study revealing that one in five people believe that same-sex couples “should not be allowed to marry or obtain any kind of legal recognition”.
A Virginia school district adopted a policy this week potentially requiring transgender students to submit a significant amount of evidence, including “disciplinary” or “criminal” records, to school administrators in order to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.
The Hanover County School Board approved the new policy in a 5-2 vote on Tuesday, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In order for transgender students to use restrooms, locker rooms or changing facilities that align with their gender identity — as opposed to those that match their sex assigned at birth — they must submit a number of documents to the principal of their school.
Trans students are now required to produce a statement specifying their gender identity and expression and have their parent or guardian submit a letter as well. They may also be asked to submit a signed letter from a physician, therapist or counselor verifying that they’ve been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, as well as additional information “related to the privacy and safety of other students.”
After reviewing the documents, the school principal will write a summary of the request that will go before the school board for final approval, the policy states. The board has the final authority over whether to approve or deny the request.
Prior to adopting the policy, one board member, Bob Hundley, attempted to drop the portion about requiring disciplinary or criminal records, referring to the stipulation as a “criminal background check,” according to the Times-Dispatch. That attempt failed.
In an interview with the Times-Dispatch after the meeting, Hanover County School Board Chairman John Axselle III said part of the purpose of the new policy is to ensure that students who wish to use facilities that align with their gender identity don’t have “ulterior intent.”
In an email to NBC News, Axselle declined to comment on the policy beyond what was discussed at Tuesday’s meeting.
A coalition of LGBTQ advocacy organizations in the state decried the policy and called the new requirements an “undue burden” that will force transgender students in the district — which oversees about 17,000 students — to “earn” the right to use public school facilities.
“By adopting the restroom and locker room policy, HCSB has shown it continues to fail the students of Hanover County,” said Narissa S. Rahaman, the executive director of the LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality Virginia, in a press release, adding the policy will “further stigmatize transgender and non-binary students who are already at risk of bullying and discrimination.”
According to Equality Virginia, the school board approved the policy despite what the organization characterized as “overwhelming opposition,” including nearly 40 public comments objecting to the measure.
Last week, the Hanover NAACP called on Axselle to resign. He told the Times-Dispatch he has no intention of stepping down.
This is not the first time the Hanover County School District has been in the spotlight over its policies — or lack thereof — regarding transgender students.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia filed a lawsuit against the district’s school board in December, alleging that it failed to comply with a statewide law passed in March 2020 requiring districts to enact multiple protections for transgender students by the start of the 2021 school year, including access to bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.
The suit, which was filed on behalf of five families with transgender children in the district, is still pending in Hanover County Circuit Court.
Marsha P. Johnson — a towering figure in the Stonewall Rebellion — would have celebrated her 77th birthday this week. Johnson was an outspoken advocate for gay and trans rights, and the “P” in her name stood for “Pay it no mind” — her response when asked about her gender.
In honor of the late activist’s birthday, the Blade sat down with Elle Moxley, founder of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, to discuss how Johnson’s legacy lives on.
BLADE: When and why did you found the Marsha P. Johnson Institute?
ELLE MOXLEY: The Marsha P. Johnson Institute launched in 2019, and my founding of the organization was in response to the consistent murders that were being reported of Black trans women across the country. I have spent many years working as an organizer and activist, and I saw that there was a gap in social justice spaces — in terms of the solutions that were being generated in response to those murders, but also to the systemic and structural violence that existed around Black trans people and Black people period.
The organization was named in honor of Marsha P. Johnson to affirm the movement that Marsha spearheaded and to create a space where the movement of today had a place to live, without disregarding the history of so many that came before.
BLADE: Can you tell me about the spirit of Marsha P. Johnson that you see in the Institute?
MOXLEY: The fight for equity is something that we see as an evolvement of Marsha’s belief in equality, and we recognize that Marsha was very visible in a movement that did not always reflect faces that looked like hers, in terms of what we understood about LGBTQ rights or LGBTQ people. Knowing that Black trans people exist outside of our deaths and outside of our murders is really where we see the evolvement of our work at the Institute, but that evolvement would not even be possible if Marsha had not made herself visible on the front lines of her activism. It is in that regard where we see ourselves very much mirroring a model that she created for the movement, and we have certainly held up the torch and are carrying it forward.
BLADE: The Institute’s Starship Artists Fellowships are set to begin soon — what are your hopes for the new program?
MOXLEY: With all of our new programming, it really is our hope that we are changing the culture of global societies — that we are not only making Black trans people visible, but we’re making the full humanity of our existence visible. The artists’ fellowship was created to pay homage to the visionaries that exist in the Black trans community. There’s a Black trans renaissance that certainly is underway, and we want to continue to support that function of movement. A lot of people assume that movement is literally about protesting — and that certainly is a big part of it — but there are other ways that you can resist but also practice your joy. We really want it to mirror that Black trans people are joyful — we have joy, and murder is not the only thing we expect to happen to us. Our artists’ fellowship creates space for artists to imagine a bigger picture, a bigger world, for Black trans futures.
I am an artist myself, so that was also a big part of it. Activism is something that Black trans people often have to choose to survive, and we are mad and angry about our circumstances, but we actually are people who have other dreams and desires outside of just fighting for our lives. Marsha P. Johnson again served as an amazing model for movement — her participation in street art and in theater troupes is a reflection of the joy that so many people find outside of their activism.
BLADE: In honor of Black Philanthropy Month and Black August, are there any understudied or underreported causes and freedom fighters that people should be more aware of?
MOXLEY: Just several weeks ago, we lost one of the most important freedom fighters and political prisoners of our time — Albert Woodfox, who was held in solitary confinement for 44 years, the longest solitary confinement in U.S. history. I would say that Black August is always an opportunity for people to understand the structural inadequacies that exist not only in prisons, but in the world. It’s real people who are being housed in prisons, and I say real people because the atrocities of life are often happening to the people who are in cages. I think Black Philanthropy Month creates a space for more investments to happen to organizations who are leading the fight against the apartheid and the segregation that certainly exist in America.
To celebrate the freedom fighters of our time, we are uplifting Black trans freedom fighters who have given their lives to movement, who have given their lives for others. And that’s happening in and outside of prisons — those who are on the inside of prisons are always still advocating for the people in the communities that they believe in, and we are so grateful and thankful to those folks.
BLADE: It seems like most of the recent news about reproductive rights and trans rights has been dismal. Are there any bright spots on your radar, in terms of legislative progress on these issues?
MOXLEY: Anytime a human right is interrupted or taken away, it is such a negative for so many people who are looking for legislation that gives them hope. I will say that I’ve just been hopeful about the future of democracy and of our humanity. I think there are so many activists who have been activated to lead to more generative resolutions around legislation, especially when we think about piecemeal legislation actually being the thing that’s being abolished. That’s the beautiful juxtaposition of what happens when we lose a law — the thing about laws is that they can go away, and they can always return.
If we lean into the positive, we have an opportunity to create more than we originally started with. And that’s the thing that gives me so much hope — we can create more foundational legislation that accounts for the human rights of all people and not just a specific kind. With reproductive justice being at the center of so many of our political conversations, what we are seeing is an expansion of what reproductive justice means and who reproductive justice applies to. And that is what gives me great hope, that we will now be able to account for more than just the abortions of trans men, that we’ll be able to think about the reproductive rights of Black trans women and nonbinary people in ways that we’ve never been able to consider before.
The cost of living crisis is forcing queer young people out of safe homes and into potentially dangerous situations.
The economic crisis is hitting young people in the UK especially hard as landlords demand higher rents and inflation hits more aspects of everyday life.
Melissa Gilpin, marketing and communications manager at LGBTQ+ youth homelessness charity akt, told PinkNews the looming crisis is “undoing years of work” in helping young people at risk of homelessness – especially trans youth.
The cost of living crisis is “pushing” many queer youth “out of safe spaces” because they “can’t afford rent in private housing”.
“If you’re under 35, the government can give you £300 a month in Manchester towards rent, and you’re supposed to be in shared housing,” Gilpin said. “But at the moment, rent can be up to £600 to £1,000. Where are you getting the rest of the money – especially if you factor in that unemployment is a massive issue?”
Gilpin said akt has seen young people being “pushed further away from their support networks and communities” as a result of the cost of living crisis and lack of trans-friendly housing. While many couch surf, there is a concern that some queer youth could be forced to return to unwelcoming family homes.
“A lot of parents [of these young people] say: ‘You can move back home, but you’re not allowed to out as trans or as queer,’” Gilpin said.
“Trans youth get rejected from a lot of housing, like for instance single-sex or women’s-only hostels,” Gilpin added. “They then don’t accept trans women, which is an issue anyway.”
LGBTQ+ groups have condemned EHRC guidance excluding trans people from separate or single-sex spaces. (Getty)
It went on to say that such spaces – which include single-sex or separate toilets, refuges, changing rooms or hospital wards – can “prevent, limit or modify trans people’s access to the service” if it achieves a “legitimate aim”.
Gilpin said trans youth are being rejected a “lot more often” since the guidance was issued and that there is a lack of hostels that are trans-friendly to begin with.
Many young trans people are forced to “choose between eating and getting gender-affirming care” due to lack of funding.
LGBTQ+ advocates have protested against the Tory government’s rollback on promises to the queer community and long waitlists for gender-affirming healthcare via the NHS. (Getty)
Increasingly, trans people are accessing such healthcare privately and crowdfunding for affirming treatments due to the years-long waitlists through the NHS.
“For trans youth, getting gender-affirming services and care is a huge priority for how they spend their money,” Gilpin said. “At the moment, they’re not able to afford hormones so a lot of people are choosing between eating and getting hormones.”
She added: “We’re seeing this at the moment where people are having to come off their hormones because they need to pay their bills, and this triggers huge gender dysphoria and mental health issues.
“They have no way to budget for the future. This is undoing a lot of their gender-affirming care they’ve been putting their money into which became a cycle of maybe substance abuse, having breakdowns, getting back onto the street and getting into sex work to be able to afford hormones again.”
Gilpin said the charity is only able to do “contingency planning” at the moment. As such, akt is seeking help from the public to support LGBTQ+ youth impacted by the lack of government support and the cost of living crisis.
“The barriers to accessing safe, affordable housing for queer trans youth are exasperated a lot more by the cost of living crisis, but the barriers existed before that and affect trans people a lot more because it’s harder for them to find jobs, get into any space or housing,” Gilpin said.
Gilpin added it was “nearly impossible” at the moment for trans youth who are “rejected by their family to get into long-term safe, private housing” given these barriers.
She said it was essential for the Tory government to commit to a strategy to end homelessness and include a “specific call out to queer youth” within it.
“They can’t just be lumped in with the homelessness population because they have specific needs to access housing and employment services,” she said.
A federal court of appeals judge ruled Tuesday that transgender people are protected from discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
As The Hill reports, the ruling stems from a 2020 lawsuit filed on behalf of a transgender woman who was incarcerated in a Virginia men’s prison despite the fact that she had been receiving hormone replacement therapy for nearly two decades.
Kesha Williams spent more than six months incarcerated alongside men and was periodically denied hormone therapy. After she was released in 2019, she sued Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, as well as a prison nurse and a deputy, alleging that the prison had violated both the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act in failing to treat her gender dysphoria.
While the 1990 law specifically excludes “transvestism,” “transsexualism,” and “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments,” the American Psychiatric Association has since replaced gender identity disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders with gender dysphoria, which is the distress a person feels when their gender identity doesn’t align with their sex assigned at birth.
In an amicus brief, attorneys for the GLBT Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) explained that, “In short, the gender dysphoria diagnosis recognizes that incongruence between a person’s identity and birth sex is not the problem in need of treatment—the clinically significant distress associated with that incongruence is.”
“Reflecting this shift in medical understanding, we and other courts have thus explained that a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, unlike that of ‘gender identity disorder,’ concerns itself primarily with distress and other disabling symptoms, rather than simply being transgender,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote in her opinion.
“This is a thorough, well-reasoned opinion recognizing that the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against individuals with gender dysphoria,” National Center for Lesbian Rights legal director Shannon Minter said in a statement. “This decision sets a powerful precedent that will be important for other courts considering this critical issue.”
GLAD Transgender Rights Project director Jennifer Levi called Motz’s decision a huge win. “There is no principled reason to exclude transgender people from our federal civil rights laws,” Levi said. “It’s incredibly significant for a federal appeals court to affirm that the protections in our federal disability rights laws extend to transgender people. It would turn disability law upside down to exclude someone from its protection because of having a stigmatized medical condition. This opinion goes a long way toward removing social and cultural barriers that keep people with treatable, but misunderstood, medical conditions from being able to thrive.”
The right-leaning group Parents Defending Education (PDE) has sued the Linn-Mar Community School District of Iowa because its policies protect transgender students from transphobic parents and students. PDE supports banning LGBTQ books and curricula about institutional racism from schools. The organization has also previously partnered with the anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty.
The Linn-Mar Community School District allows students (grades seven and up) to create a “gender support plan.” The plan requires school staff, students, and school documents (including ID cards and yearbooks) to address students by their self-assigned name and gender identity. The policy also allows these students to enter the locker room, bathroom facilities, and sports teams matching their gender identities.
PDE’s lawsuit takes particular issue with part of the policy that withholds details of a student’s gender support plan from a student’s parents, even if they specifically request it. The lawsuit also says that because parents are notified by the school about “lesser matters” like “schoolyard tussles, missing homework, and social events,” the school should notify parents about a kid’s gender identity, otherwise parents won’t be able to properly support their kid.
The lawsuit omits the fact that nearly 50 percent of trans people in the U.S. experienced familial rejection for coming out as trans, something which dramatically increases their likelihood of attempting suicide, becoming addicted to drugs, or experiencing homelessness, according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
“Parents are completely and purposefully left in the dark. The Policy plainly violates parents’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also claims that the district’s policies against transphobic speech – like deadnaming and misgendering – are a violation of students’ First Amendment free speech protections because the policies punish them for “expressing their sincerely held beliefs about biological sex.” The lawsuit omits the fact that misgendering is a form of anti-trans harassment banned by most social media platforms.
“Nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent makes two things clear: parents have a constitutional liberty interest in the care, custody, and control of their children, and students do not abandon their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit’s true biases become apparent, however, in a section describing the complaining parents being represented by PDE.
One of the parents has a middle-school-aged child on the autism spectrum and worries that their kid’s “difficulty distinguishing between male and female characteristics” will get them placed on a gender support plan, pressuring them to identify as trans or nonbinary even though the child may not have a firm grasp of what these identities entail.
Another parent mentioned in the lawsuit worries that their “extremely impressionable” daughter will follow the lead of LGBTQ-affirming teachers and queer classmates and start identifying as trans or nonbinary.
“Some of Parent B’s daughter’s special-needs classes are held in a classroom that also functions as the meeting location for the LGBT student club,” the lawsuit says. “The teacher in that classroom is the faculty advisor for the club. Thus, the classroom walls contain several posters with information about various gender identities, gender ‘social transitions,’ and ‘referred pronouns.’ Parent B’s daughter is extremely impressionable and often follows the lead of other students.”
The lawsuit mentions “research” showing that more teens are identifying as trans due to peer pressure, but it doesn’t actually mention which research it’s referring to. A recent study suggested that worries like this are completely unfounded.
Two other parents represented by PDE say they basically want their kids to be able to misgender and openly disagree with the gender identities of trans kids without facing any consequences. Yet another parent said they didn’t want their kid to be exposed to the acknowledgment of trans people because it will cause the parent “emotional and psychological suffering.”
The lawsuit seeks to block the district’s Gender Support Plan from going into effect, essentially eliminating the district’s support of trans youth, something that will worsen mental health outcomes for trans students in the name of “free speech” and constitutional freedoms.
On Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign filed the lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the child, identified as D.H., and her parents.
Under the 2021 law, which allows cisgender public school students and their families to sue if they’re not given a “reasonable accommodation” by their school if they don’t want to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities with trans people, D.H. was forced to use single-occupancy restrooms at school.
According to the lawsuit, D.H. stopped using school restrooms entirely and began limiting her food and water intake to minimize her need to use school facilities. She also developed migraines, reflux, and recurring nightmares of school.
“These restroom ‘accommodations’ provided to D.H. by the elementary school are not accommodations at all,” according to the complaint. “They reinforce the differential treatment and trauma associated with living under the [Accommodations for All Children Act], violating D.H.’s constitutional and statutory rights.”
The suit argues that the Tennessee law, signed by Gov. Bill Lee (R) in 2021, violates D.H.’s constitutional rights under the Equal Protection Clause and violates Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education. In June, the Biden Administration announced changes to the legal interpretation of Title IX which would help prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Last month, a federal judge blocked the Education Department’s new guidance.
“It is unfortunate that Tennessee lawmakers are using their authority to attack some of our nation’s most vulnerable: our children,” said HRC litigation director Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver.
“Years ago, I chose to move to Tennessee because it was known as ‘the Volunteer State,’ whose citizens cared for their neighbors without hesitation – not a state that legalizes discrimination against helpless children,” D.H.’s mother said in a statement. “Now I am embarrassed to say that I live in a state that refuses to see anything beyond my child’s gender.”
“By filing this lawsuit, I am showing my volunteer spirit – because I’m fighting to not only affirm my child’s existence, but also the thousands of transgender and nonbinary children who live in Tennessee.”
This is the second lawsuit the HRC has filed against the Tennessee law on behalf of a transgender child. A previous suit, filed last year, was dismissed after the plaintiffs chose to leave the state.
The study also found that the proportion of adolescents who were assigned female at birth and have come out as transgender also has not increased, which contradicts claims that adolescents whose birth sex is female are more susceptible to this so-called external influence.
“The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents,” study senior author Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, director of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, said in a statement.
The “social contagion” theory can be traced back to a 2018 paperpublished in the journal PLOS One. Dr. Lisa Littman, who at the time was a professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University, coined the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which she described as adolescents experiencing a conflict between their birth sex and gender identity “suddenly during or after puberty.” These adolescents, she wrote, “would not have met the criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood” and are experiencing dysphoria due to social influence.
Littman also hypothesized that adolescents assigned female at birth are more likely to be affected by social contagion and, as a result, are overrepresented in groups of adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria when compared to those who were assigned male at birth.
After intense debate andcriticism, PLOS One conducted a post-publication reassessment of the article, and issued a correction that included changing the headline to clarify that Littman did not survey transgender or gender-diverse youth themselves, but actually surveyed their parents. The correction also noted that, “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is not a formal mental health diagnosis at this time.”
To test the social contagion theory, researchers used data from the 2017 and 2019 biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collected gender identity data across 16 states from ages 12 to 18. In 2017, 2.4%, or 2,161 of the 91,937 adolescents surveyed, identified as trans or gender diverse. In 2019, that percentage dropped slightly to 1.6%, or 1,640 of 105,437 adolescents surveyed.
Researchers concluded that the decrease in the overall percentage of adolescents identifying as trans or gender diverse “is incongruent with the (rapid-onset gender dysphoria hypothesis) that posits social contagion.”
The study also found that the number of transgender adolescents who were assigned male at birth outnumbered those assigned female at birth in both 2017 and 2019, providing additional evidence against a “notion of social contagion with unique susceptibility” among those assigned female at birth.
The social contagion hypothesis, by assuming that youth are coming out, for example, because their friends are, asserts that there’s some social desirability to being trans. Some supporters of the theory, according to the study, also believe that more youth identify as trans or gender diverse because those identities are less stigmatized than cisgender sexual minority identities, or those who identify with their birth sex and are lesbian, bisexual, gay or queer, among other sexual identities.
To evaluate these claims, researchers examined rates of bullying among adolescents who identified as trans and gender diverse, and those who did not.
They found that, consistent with other surveys, trans and gender-diverse youth were significantly more likely to be victims of school bullying (at 38.7% in 2017 and 45.4% in 2019) compared to cisgender lesbian, gay and bisexual youth (at 30.5% in 2017 and 28.7% in 2019) and cisgender, heterosexual youth (at 17.1% in 2017 and 16.6% in 2019).
“The idea that attempts to flee sexual minority stigma drive teenagers to come out as transgender is absurd, especially to those of us who provide treatment to [transgender and gender diverse] youth,” study lead author Dr. Jack Turban, incoming assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a statement. “The damaging effects of these unfounded hypotheses in further stigmatizing transgender and gender diverse youth cannot be understated. We hope that clinicians, policymakers, journalists, and anyone else who contributes to health policy will review these findings.”
They wrote that despite the methodological flaws in Littman’s study, the concept of rapid onset gender dysphoria “has been used in recent legislative debates to argue for and subsequently enact policies that prohibit gender-affirming medical care” for trans and gender diverse adolescents.
An increasing number of states have also tried to ban or restrict trans youths’ access to gender-affirming medical care through legislation. The number of bills seeking to restrict gender-affirming health care for transgender youths has grown from one in 2018 to 36 this year, according to an analysis by NBC News. Governors in three states — Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee — have successfully signed such restrictions into law, though judges have prevented those measures from taking effect in Alabama and Arkansas.
The study lists several limitations, including that the data were collected through a school-based survey and, as a result, youths who don’t attend school were not represented. It also noted that youths were asked, “What is your sex?” and that response options were limited to female and male. It didn’t ask about respondents’ “sex assigned at birth” and didn’t include an additional question about their “gender identity,” which is an established research method for asking about gender identity. But the researchers creditedseveralstudies that found trans and gender-diverse youths are aware of the differences between their sex assigned at birth and gender identity.
A new draft report from the California Attorney General’s office indicates transgender people in the state are stopped by police at vastly different rates than cisgender men and women.
The report is based on data reported from 58 of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies and shows transgender people were stopped because of “reasonable suspicion” alone —instead of a specific violation or clearly unlawful behavior — in nearly half the stops.
For transgender people, the proportion of “reasonable suspicion” stops was 44%, or four times the ratio for cisgender people.
The data includes all people stopped by police, regardless of whether the officers were responding to a potential offense they observed or to a call for service.
California requires police departments to report the demographic data of every driver, bicyclist, or pedestrian they stop, including perceived race, gender, and approximate age.
The new state data shows that transgender women are stopped due to an officer’s “reasonable suspicion” in more than 45% of encounters when they were stopped in 2021. Trans men were stopped for the same reason 43% of the time.
Interactions with police officers were also more likely to lead to more drastic outcomes – with transgender people more likely to be searched, handcuffed, and arrested – and to have lethal and non-lethal force used against them.
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard that requires officers to articulate why they believe a person is likely engaged in a crime. Probable cause, the standard required to arrest someone, has a higher bar.
Under the 2015 Racial and Identity Profiling Act, or RIPA, law enforcement agencies with 334 or more officers were required to report data to the state for 2021. The reporting requirement expands to all police agencies for data collected this year.
Alex Binsfeld, legal director at the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project, an advocacy group in San Francisco, told the San Francisco Chronicle that gender biases result in officers focusing on transgender people because they don’t fit their notions of how a woman or man ought to look.
“It’s in effect a way to enforce Western gender binary norms on appearance, that you will be punished if you are not gender binary in your appearance,” they said. “Policing of trans folks at these disparate rates has led advocates to argue it’s a status crime.”
Cisgender people, who made up the overwhelming majority of the total number of stops statewide, were stopped for traffic violations the majority of the time. Cisgender women were stopped because of an officer’s “reasonable suspicion” in less than nine percent of encounters; cisgender men were stopped because of an officer’s suspicion in 11% of encounters.
Out of 3.2 million total stops, transgender people accounted for 4,740.
Transgender advocates scored a major victory in July when Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed S.B. 357, a bill repealing a notorious “walking while trans” law. Effective January 1, the bill repeals a 1995 law that prohibits loitering in public places with the “intent to commit prostitution.” The voided statute allows police to cite people they find suspicious due to factors like how they dress or where they stand on the street.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat who sponsored S.B. 357, said the sweeping loitering law causes innocent people to get swept up in the criminal justice system and makes sex workers less safe because they fear seeking out law enforcement.
“Even one arrest can have such profound implications for someone’s life,” Wiener said. “It’s one step; there’s certainly more work to do.”
Nearly 50 percent of transgender people travel outside of their state of residence to get gender-affirming genital surgeries, according to a new study from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). The percentage could increase as more states put bans against gender-affirming healthcare for trans people in place, the study’s authors say.
The study, published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery, looked at 771 transgender patients who had a vaginoplasty or phalloplasty between 2007 and 2019. It found that 49 percent left their state of residence to get the procedure. People who lived in southern states were more likely to have to leave their home states in order to receive the surgery.
That’s because there’s a lack of surgeons who provide such care in the South. A 2020 studyfound that just 11 doctors in the South could provide such surgeries, and four of the doctors resided in Florida.
The number of such doctors could decrease as more Southern states ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. Genital surgeries aren’t typically performed on young trans people, but some doctors could choose to locate their practices outside of states with such bans in place because the bans increase doctors’ legal and financial liabilities if they treat young patients.
Of additional concern, the OHSU study found trans people who left their states to get surgery ended up paying up to 50 percent more in out-of-pocket medical expenses than those who were able to obtain surgeries in their home states. This included costs for post-surgical visits and foll0w-up care.
Only one of the 771 patients included in the study had their surgery paid for by their commercial health insurance provider, The Hill noted. This suggests that the life-saving surgical procedures may not be affordable for many trans people. Trans people living in transphobic states will face even greater financial and time costs just to receive gender-affirming care.
“We already knew that traveling for health care requires patients to take time off work and pay for travel and lodging on their own, and that it can make receiving follow-up care from qualified providers who are familiar with each patient’s unique needs challenging,” Jae Downing, the study’s lead author, said in a press release.
“This study helps quantify how severely we need more gender-affirming surgeons,” Geolani Dy, an assistant professor of urology and plastic and reconstructive surgery at OHSU School of Medicine, added.
