The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has crunched the numbers and the data is now out concerning Hate Violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-affected Communities in the United States in 2011. That's a pdf, of course. I read them so you don't have to.
It is important to note the definition NCAVP uses for hate violence.
Hate violence: a bias incident and is any expression (spoken, written, symbolic, or other form) which is motivated by some form of prejudice-based racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, or gender identity or political affiliation. Hate violence does not necessarily constitute a crime.
The NCAVP collected and analyzed data from 16 local AVP's. So there has to be an attached caveat.
NCAVP’s data may particularly omit populations such as incarcerated people, people in rural communities, people who may not know about their local anti-violence program (AVP), people where the closest AVP is too far away to reach, people who are not out or are uncomfortable with reporting, and people who face other barriers to accessing services or reporting. Therefore, while the information contained in this report provides a detailed picture of the individual survivors, it cannot and should not be extrapolated to represent the overall LGBTQH population in the United States.
It is also the case that different local AVPs have differing financial and technological resources at their disposal for investigative purposes. Supported by the Arcus Foundation, NCAVP was able to work with the consulting group
Strength in Numbers to produce the report.
So enough of the meta. It's time for the numbers.
Reports of anti-LGBTQH hate violence decreased from 2503 in 2010 to 2092 in 2011 (16.4%). On the other hand, hate violence murders increased from 27 to 30 (11.1%).
There are some marked differences between the demographics of the survivors group and the victims group, some consistency as well. 46% of both victims and survivors were gay men, compared to 48% in 2010. 24% of survivors and victims identified as lesbians, compared with 26% in 2010. The percentage of bisexual survivors and victims was unchanged from 2010 to 2011, at 9%. Transgender survivors and victims increased from 16% to 18%. It should be noted that although 50% of survivors and vicims identified as men and 34% as women, 32% of the women also identified as transgender, as opposed to only 5% of the men. Of the 18% of the sample who identified as transgender, 73% also identified as women and 19% as men.
Non-transgender men and non-transgender women may make up the largest proportions of survivors because they may be more comfortable reporting violence to anti-violence programs due to their communities having long term histories with LGBTQH anti-violence programs. The decrease in reports from women may result from decreased outreach or diminished capacity from anti-violence programs to specifically target women. Despite these figures, transgender people are overrepresented within NCAVP’s data as compared to LGBTQH communities overall. This stems from the disproportionate impact of violence on these communities.
Out of the 30 murders, 26 of the victims were people of color (87%). Twelve were transsexual women (40%). Over 73% of the transgender survivors of hate violence had been victims of physical violence, discrimination, or police violence.
Six of the 30 murders (20%) were connected with sex work. One should note that the National Center for Transgender Equality has reported that 34% of Black transpeople and 28% of Latino/a transpeople live in extreme poverty, with the concurrent result that 50% of Black respondents and 34% of Latino/a respondents reporting that they had either engaged in sex work or sold drugs at some point in their lives.
Non-transgender men were 50% of survivors and they overwhelmingly identified as gay. They were forty-one percent more likely than the overall number of survivors and victims to require medical attention and 40% more likely to have experienced the violence on a public street.
NCAVP members often see public hate violence occurring with unknown offenders. This violence is frequently based upon the offender’s perceptions that survivors and victims are members of LGBTQH communities. Gay men hold some of the highest visibility within LGBTQ communities and are face discrimination based on a multitude of anti-gay stereotypes. For some gay men this visibility can lead to more access, but for others it also often can result in an elevated risk of violence.
The Williams Institute has found that gay men are more likely to report incidents of hate violence than the other constituent groups. But gay men of color and young gay men are in specific need of more protection.
Speaking of age, the NCAVP found that people under the age of 30 are more likely to be the target of physical violence, police violence, and sexual violence and more likely to require medical treatment than those over 30. People under 30 were 2.56 times as likely to be victims of sexual violence and 2.41 times as likely to experience physical violence than the sample as a whole.
Transgender people were 1.76 times as likely to require medical attention than the overall group of survivors and 1.67 times as likely to experience police violence. Transpeople of color were 2.38 times as likely to experience police violence and 1.85 times as likely to experience discrimination.
Only 52% of survivors reported their incidents to the police, a slight increase from 2010 (47%). Of those who interacted with the police, 18% reported that the police attitudes were hostile, remaining consistent with 2010 (16%). 55% of survivors who reported to the police received bias crime classification.
Police were 45% less likely to classify an incident as a hate crime if the victim was transgender.
In 2011 32% of survivors reported incidents of police misconduct. Fifty-two percent of those cases involved unjustified arrest, 27% of the cases involved excessive force, 17% concerned entrapment by police, and 5% were "police raids".
Survivors of hate violence were themselves arrested 39% of the time, were verbally abused by police 14% of the time, were subjected to slurs or bias language (which is somehow different from verbal abuse(?)) 14% of the time and were physically abused 9% of the time
There is no surprise that the majority of offenders in both 2010 and 2011 were non-transgender men. However there was a decrease from the 76% in 2010 to 60% in 2011. 51% of offenders were white and 18% were friends or acquaintances of the victim/survivor. 9% of offenders were police and 9% were family members. Only 4% were lovers/domestic partners. The majority of incidents took place in a residence.
Recommendations
End the root causes of anti-LGBTQH violence through ending poverty and anti-LGBTQH discrimination
- Federal, state, and local governments should enact non-discrimination laws and policies that protect LGBTQH communities from discrimination.
- Federal, state, and local governments should implement employment programs and economic development opportunities for LGBTQH people, particularly LGBTQH people of color, transgender people, and LGBTQH youth and remove barriers to access governmental assistance for these communities.
End the homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic culture that fuels violence.
- Policymakers and public figures should promote safety for LGBTQH people by denouncing homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic statements, laws, and programs.
- Policymakers should support alternative sentencing programs to encourage behavior change for hate violence offenders.
- Federal, state, and local governments should reduce reporting barriers for LGBTQH survivors and mandate trainings that increase first responders’ knowledge and competency on serving LGBTQH survivors of violence.
Collect data and expand research on LGBTQH communities overall particularly data and research on LGBTQH communities’ experiences of violence.
- Federal, state, and local governments should collect and analyze data on LGBTQH hate violence survivors and victims when it is safe to do so whenever demographic information is requested.
End police profiling and police violence against LGBTQH people.
- Federal, state, and local governments should enact polices that prohibit police profiling based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and race.
- Policymakers should ensure that police officers are investigated and held accountable for homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic harassment and violence.
Increase funding for LGBTQH anti-violence support and prevention.
- Federal, state, and local governments should fund programs that increase government support for LGBTQH anti-violence projects by including LGBTQH specific funding in all funding streams.
- Federal, state, and local governments should recognize that violence against LGBTQH people, particularly the communities at severely high risk of murder, as a public health crisis and support initiatives to prevent this violence.
- Public and private funders should support programs that provide training and technical assistance on serving LGBTQH survivors of violence to anti-violence grantees.
- Public and private funders should support community-based hate violence prevention initiatives to target programming within communities that are disproportionately affected by violence or underreporting their incidents of violence.
- Public and private funders should ensure that all anti-violence grantees are required to have nondiscrimination policies that include protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.
