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Evidence for the defence: trans right to exist as ourselves
A favoured tactic to attack trans people is a superficial use of data and evidence to state that trans people, trans women in particular, must be excluded for the good of society. Prison data is often cited without critical engagement as an example to show that trans women are predators in waiting, with the predator narrative now so baked in no amount of evidence appears to shift it. Evidence alone does not shift perception, it is the emotive use of evidence, and the propagandisation of that evidence to provoke that has been used by gender critics to attack trans people. Here I examine this, putting forward the argument that evidence alone is a flawed way of building or removing rights, especially when the proffered evidence is mired in ideology.
A common statistic used in support of trans people is that gender non-conforming people make up around 1% of a given population. This is entirely speculative because any survey of transness will invariably only capture those people happy to publicly state they are trans. Even with this base line, the number of transgender people in society is cited as around 0.1% who actively transition and seek to live affirmed lives. This is the data, or as close to the data as is viable given current data collection methods. Given this, trans people living affirmed lives are a fraction of a percent within society…
