Almost a decade ago, when I was working in queer community health services, a trans woman elder told me that she was afraid to be seen walking by the local elementary school. “Nobody wants to see me there,” she said. “No one wants to see someone like me around kids.” I still remember the way she said it. How her voice got quieter, how her eyes glistened. I think I will remember it forever.
The spectre of the sexual predator has haunted trans communities since the sex panics of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Mainstream films such as The Silence of the Lambs and The Crying Game have enshrined the image of sexually deceitful trans women and violently depraved, cross-dressing serial killers in pop-culture consciousness for decades. Today, anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans legislation continue to surge around the globe, largely hinging around the notion that trans people—and particularly trans women—are sexually dangerous.
In December 2021, infamous anti-trans rights figure and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling made a post on the social media site X asserting that, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Written in reference to the fact that some individuals charged with rape identify as trans women, the post appears to mock trans identities while dismissing the possibility that “real” women are capable of perpetrating sexual assault. These sentiments have been repeated by others over and over again.
That trans people also experience sexual violence seems not to figure into Rowling’s post at all. This is one of the foundational premises of a transphobic social system: trans people are to be perceived always as violent and never as victims, always as dangerous and never as vulnerable, always as predators and never as people. The result is that the trans victim or survivor does not really exist in the imagination of the dominant culture—in the eyes of the world, we are monsters, and a monster cannot be raped.
Yet social science research tells a very different story. Since the 2010s, when large cohort studies of trans life experiences became more common, the consensus has been that trans people are significantly more likely than cis people to experience sexual assault in our lifetimes. Multiple studies show that almost 50 percent or more of all trans adults report being survivors of some form of sexual violence. Sadly, similar statistics have been found among trans youth. Trans people are also four times more likely than cis people to experience violent crime, including rape. Racialized trans people, particularly those who are Black, Latinx and Indigenous, are even more likely to be subjected to sexual violence than their white peers according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
The dissonance between mainstream attitudes towards trans survivors and the prevalence of survivorhood among trans people leaves a disturbing gap in the social fabric in which trans people live our lives—a memory hole in the collective consciousness. If so many of us have been sexually assaulted, where do all our stories go? Almost a decade ago, when I was working in queer community health services, a trans woman elder told me that she was afraid to be seen walking by the local elementary school. “Nobody wants to see me there,” she said. “No one wants to see someone like me around kids.” I still remember the way she said it. How her voice got quieter, how her eyes glistened. I think I will remember it forever.
The spectre of the sexual predator has haunted trans communities since the sex panics of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Mainstream films such as The Silence of the Lambs and The Crying Game have enshrined the image of sexually deceitful trans women and violently depraved, cross-dressing serial killers in pop-culture consciousness for decades. Today, anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans legislation continue to surge around the globe, largely hinging around the notion that trans people—and particularly trans women—are sexually dangerous.
In December 2021, infamous anti-trans rights figure and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling made a post on the social media site X asserting that, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Written in reference to the fact that some individuals charged with rape identify as trans women, the post appears to mock trans identities while dismissing the possibility that “real” women are capable of perpetrating sexual assault. These sentiments have been repeated by others over and over again.
That trans people also experience sexual violence seems not to figure into Rowling’s post at all. This is one of the foundational premises of a transphobic social system: trans people are to be perceived always as violent and never as victims, always as dangerous and never as vulnerable, always as predators and never as people. The result is that the trans victim or survivor does not really exist in the imagination of the dominant culture—in the eyes of the world, we are monsters, and a monster cannot be raped.
Yet social science research tells a very different story. Since the 2010s, when large cohort studies of trans life experiences became more common, the consensus has been that trans people are significantly more likely than cis people to experience sexual assault in our lifetimes. Multiple studies show that almost 50 percent or more of all trans adults report being survivors of some form of sexual violence. Sadly, similar statistics have been found among trans youth. Trans people are also four times more likely than cis people to experience violent crime, including rape. Racialized trans people, particularly those who are Black, Latinx and Indigenous, are even more likely to be subjected to sexual violence than their white peers according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
The dissonance between mainstream attitudes towards trans survivors and the prevalence of survivorhood among trans people leaves a disturbing gap in the social fabric in which trans people live our lives—a memory hole in the collective consciousness. If so many of us have been sexually assaulted, where do all our stories go? Almost a decade ago, when I was working in queer community health services, a trans woman elder told me that she was afraid to be seen walking by the local elementary school. “Nobody wants to see me there,” she said. “No one wants to see someone like me around kids.” I still remember the way she said it. How her voice got quieter, how her eyes glistened. I think I will remember it forever.
The spectre of the sexual predator has haunted trans communities since the sex panics of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Mainstream films such as The Silence of the Lambs and The Crying Game have enshrined the image of sexually deceitful trans women and violently depraved, cross-dressing serial killers in pop-culture consciousness for decades. Today, anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans legislation continue to surge around the globe, largely hinging around the notion that trans people—and particularly trans women—are sexually dangerous.
In December 2021, infamous anti-trans rights figure and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling made a post on the social media site X asserting that, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Written in reference to the fact that some individuals charged with rape identify as trans women, the post appears to mock trans identities while dismissing the possibility that “real” women are capable of perpetrating sexual assault. These sentiments have been repeated by others over and over again.
That trans people also experience sexual violence seems not to figure into Rowling’s post at all. This is one of the foundational premises of a transphobic social system: trans people are to be perceived always as violent and never as victims, always as dangerous and never as vulnerable, always as predators and never as people. The result is that the trans victim or survivor does not really exist in the imagination of the dominant culture—in the eyes of the world, we are monsters, and a monster cannot be raped.
Yet social science research tells a very different story. Since the 2010s, when large cohort studies of trans life experiences became more common, the consensus has been that trans people are significantly more likely than cis people to experience sexual assault in our lifetimes. Multiple studies show that almost 50 percent or more of all trans adults report being survivors of some form of sexual violence. Sadly, similar statistics have been found among trans youth. Trans people are also four times more likely than cis people to experience violent crime, including rape. Racialized trans people, particularly those who are Black, Latinx and Indigenous, are even more likely to be subjected to sexual violence than their white peers according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
The dissonance between mainstream attitudes towards trans survivors and the prevalence of survivorhood among trans people leaves a disturbing gap in the social fabric in which trans people live our lives—a memory hole in the collective consciousness. If so many of us have been sexually assaulted, where do all our stories go? Almost a decade ago, when I was working in queer community health services, a trans woman elder told me that she was afraid to be seen walking by the local elementary school. “Nobody wants to see me there,” she said. “No one wants to see someone like me around kids.” I still remember the way she said it. How her voice got quieter, how her eyes glistened. I think I will remember it forever.
The spectre of the sexual predator has haunted trans communities since the sex panics of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Mainstream films such as The Silence of the Lambs and The Crying Game have enshrined the image of sexually deceitful trans women and violently depraved, cross-dressing serial killers in pop-culture consciousness for decades. Today, anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans legislation continue to surge around the globe, largely hinging around the notion that trans people—and particularly trans women—are sexually dangerous.
In December 2021, infamous anti-trans rights figure and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling made a post on the social media site X asserting that, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Written in reference to the fact that some individuals charged with rape identify as trans women, the post appears to mock trans identities while dismissing the possibility that “real” women are capable of perpetrating sexual assault. These sentiments have been repeated by others over and over again.
That trans people also experience sexual violence seems not to figure into Rowling’s post at all. This is one of the foundational premises of a transphobic social system: trans people are to be perceived always as violent and never as victims, always as dangerous and never as vulnerable, always as predators and never as people. The result is that the trans victim or survivor does not really exist in the imagination of the dominant culture—in the eyes of the world, we are monsters, and a monster cannot be raped.
Yet social science research tells a very different story. Since the 2010s, when large cohort studies of trans life experiences became more common, the consensus has been that trans people are significantly more likely than cis people to experience sexual assault in our lifetimes. Multiple studies show that almost 50 percent or more of all trans adults report being survivors of some form of sexual violence. Sadly, similar statistics have been found among trans youth. Trans people are also four times more likely than cis people to experience violent crime, including rape. Racialized trans people, particularly those who are Black, Latinx and Indigenous, are even more likely to be subjected to sexual violence than their white peers according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
The dissonance between mainstream attitudes towards trans survivors and the prevalence of survivorhood among trans people leaves a disturbing gap in the social fabric in which trans people live our lives—a memory hole in the collective consciousness. If so many of us have been sexually assaulted, where do all our stories go? Almost a decade ago, when I was working in queer community health services, a trans woman elder told me that she was afraid to be seen walking by the local elementary school. “Nobody wants to see me there,” she said. “No one wants to see someone like me around kids.” I still remember the way she said it. How her voice got quieter, how her eyes glistened. I think I will remember it forever.
The spectre of the sexual predator has haunted trans communities since the sex panics of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Mainstream films such as The Silence of the Lambs and The Crying Game have enshrined the image of sexually deceitful trans women and violently depraved, cross-dressing serial killers in pop-culture consciousness for decades. Today, anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans legislation continue to surge around the globe, largely hinging around the notion that trans people—and particularly trans women—are sexually dangerous.
In December 2021, infamous anti-trans rights figure and Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling made a post on the social media site X asserting that, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. The Penised Individual Who Raped You Is a Woman.” Written in reference to the fact that some individuals charged with rape identify as trans women, the post appears to mock trans identities while dismissing the possibility that “real” women are capable of perpetrating sexual assault. These sentiments have been repeated by others over and over again.
That trans people also experience sexual violence seems not to figure into Rowling’s post at all. This is one of the foundational premises of a transphobic social system: trans people are to be perceived always as violent and never as victims, always as dangerous and never as vulnerable, always as predators and never as people. The result is that the trans victim or survivor does not really exist in the imagination of the dominant culture—in the eyes of the world, we are monsters, and a monster cannot be raped.
Yet social science research tells a very different story. Since the 2010s, when large cohort studies of trans life experiences became more common, the consensus has been that trans people are significantly more likely than cis people to experience sexual assault in our lifetimes. Multiple studies show that almost 50 percent or more of all trans adults report being survivors of some form of sexual violence. Sadly, similar statistics have been found among trans youth. Trans people are also four times more likely than cis people to experience violent crime, including rape. Racialized trans people, particularly those who are Black, Latinx and Indigenous, are even more likely to be subjected to sexual violence than their white peers according to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
The dissonance between mainstream attitudes towards trans survivors and the prevalence of survivorhood among trans people leaves a disturbing gap in the social fabric in which trans people live our lives—a memory hole in the collective consciousness. If so many of us have been sexually assaulted, where do all our stories go?
