Understanding causes of death of transsexuals is critical to advancing transgender public health. For example, understanding the actual risks of death by homicide—with an eye on creating preventive policies—is hampered by an inability to account for specifically transgender deaths (emphases added):
[There are] at least 3 reasons homicides of transgender individuals may be invisible as specifically transgender homicides, and thus the numbers I have presented are likely to be undercounted.
First, “Our institutions of recording death—coroners, death certificates, police reports, hospital records, obituaries—are unprepared to represent transgender. . . . Boxes labeled ‘Was transgender’ do not exist to be checked off or not.” Newspapers and other media outlets running obituaries are just recently coming to terms with noting surviving children with 2 parents of the same sex; editorial social conservatism censors and erases transgender deaths.
Second, the fact that a homicide victim was transgender, whether surgically or hormonally transitioned or not, is not necessarily apparent to those who record deaths. Even were the checkbox “Was transgender at time of death” present, how would someone recording a death for institutional reasons— almost certainly a stranger to the deceased— know to mark it?
Finally, the family of origin, because of transphobia—well documented in the United States—can seek to efface transgender identity and experience when contributing information about deceased transgender relatives.
Dinno, A. (2017). Homicide rates of transgender individuals in the United States: 2010–2014. American Journal of Public Health, 107(9):1441–1447.
“Causing difficulties for researchers” is, ahem, an anti-transgender researcher position. Researchers can and should do better.
