Disproving the Transphobic Response to the Nashville School Shooting

CW: mention of mass school shootings, transphobia

    

    Republican members of Congress disparaging the trans community is not a novel phenomenon. But there has been a recent increase in anti-trans rhetoric following a mass shooting in a Nashville school on March 27th, 2023, in which the mass shooter is suspected to have been transgender. On the day of the shooting, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/RepMTG?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Greene here implies that hormone replacement therapy causes people to become mass shooters—an implication that clearly lacks scientific and logical foundation. But such claims about trans individuals are spreading like wildfire, and Greene is evoking similar logic as that of legislative proposals nationwide which threaten access to gender-affirming care. As of April 10th, over 18,000 people have retweeted Greene's commentary. Donald Trump Jr. made similar allegations on Twitter, writing on the day of the shooting:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

It was this claim I was most intrigued by, as Donald Trump Jr. here states that trans and non-binary individuals have a disproportionately high propensity for mass violence. And, as that second Tweet indicates, he provides no statistical support for his damning slander; rather, he ignores actual statistics in an attempt to call out hypocrisy. While this is particularly ironic coming from someone who mocks gendered pronouns in his very Twitter bio, I was interested in refuting such statistically unfounded claims—especially once I noticed that, as of April 10th, over 77,000 people had liked it, with over 15,000 people retweeting it and spreading it to even more people: 3.1 million in total, it appears.

    Unfortunately, while arguments like this are easy to construct without statistical support, they are not especially easy to deconstruct with the available evidence. As ironic as it is that he does so, Trump Jr. is correct when he notices an important disparity: the data collected thus far accounts for sex assigned at birth, not for gender identity. However, the rhetoric around school shootings does not analyze either sex or gender as potentially causal factors most of the time. That is, no one considers the role of gender when a mass shooter is a cisgender man.

    Part of the difficulty in coming to causal conclusions is extremely lacking data. Experts cannot make statistically significant findings on why people assigned female at birth are less likely to commit a mass shooting because so few have done so; that is, they cannot sufficiently compare perpetrators of different sexes because almost all of them are male. University of Alabama criminal justice Professor Lankford analyzed "292 public mass shooters worldwide from 1966 to 2012 and found that only one of those was female" (Howard & Park, 2019). Forensic clinical psychologist Dewey G. Cornell states that, "Men commit the overwhelming majority of mass shootings" (Howard & Park, 2019). This gets at a significant point of confusion, though. Here, Cornell appears to be referencing sex assigned at birth when he labels the vast majority of perpetrators "men."

    This fault in the data is a critical one. By focusing on sex assigned at birth and not investigating the gender identity of mass shooters, researchers have created a paucity of data to refute clearly unfounded claims like Trump Jr.'s. Some researches are addressing this problem, though. Ohio State University Professor Laura Dugan analyzes the "four widely cited examples" of transgender mass shooters, stating that those four "translat[e] to 0.11% [of mass shootings since 2016] being perpetuated by someone who is not cisgender—a very low number relative to the number of mass shootings total" (Tulp, 2023). This interview was conducted and reported on in direct response to Trump Jr.'s Tweet, but I find that it misses one key aspect of his argument; his claim is not that trans individuals commit most or many mass shootings, but that a disproportionately high number of mass shooters are trans relative to the share of the US population that is. He reiterated that claim more specifically the next day:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

And the next day:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

    But, if we assume that Trump Jr.'s "statistics" refer to the four mass shootings that Dugan references (the four listed in the above Tweet by Benny Johnson, which Trump Jr. retweeted), this argument is finally easily refutable. Not only does the "0.11%" that Dugan calculates comprise a very low percentage of all mass shooters, but it is also very low in relation to the overall percentage of trans Americans; a 2022 Pew Research Center survey "finds that 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary" (Tulp, 2023; Pew Research Center, 2022). While this is a higher percentage than Trump Jr.'s Google search result yielded, even if his statistic is right—even if only 0.8% of the US population is trans or non-binary—it is clear that trans individuals are not even close to being disproportionately represented amongst those who commit mass shootings. If any conclusion could be drawn from this, it would be that trans people are less likely to be mass shooters.

    Ultimately, research is lacking on all fronts, and it is essentially impossible to truly, accurately quantify how many cisgender or transgender mass shooters there have been; unfortunately, those just were not the questions that researchers were asking until recently. But if one makes a few simple deductions using the available data, it is abundantly clear that there is no "incredible rise" in transgender mass shooters. Donald Trump Jr.'s allegations are wholly unfounded. 

    Statistically insignificant and unfounded as claims such as Trump's and Greene's may be, however, these circulating claims in recent conservative rhetoric have accomplished their goals: they have simultaneously harmed the trans community and ignored both the victims and legislative demands for gun control. Podcast creator and trans woman Imara Jones comments on the transphobic response: 

"This disinformation, one of the things that it is doing is further isolating, stigmatizing and demonizing trans people, allowing us to be targeted by all forms of violence, both from the state and from individuals" (DeMillo, 2023). 

This violence from the state is evident in Tennessee itself, which is home to some of the most "stringent" laws, including proposed "restrictions on drag show performances and a ban on gender affirming care for minors" (the former has been stricken down by a federal judge) (DeMillo, 2023). And, "64% of trans adults say they have been verbally attacked because of their gender identity, gender expression or sexual identity, and 25% say they have been physically attacked" (DeMillo, 2023). Rhetoric like this—from some of the loudest figures in the Republican Party—has a measurable, notable increase in violence against trans individuals. Tweets bashing hormone replacement therapy and accusing trans people of mass violence may be statistically unfounded, but, unfortunately, they are not insignificant.

References:

DeMillo, A. (3 Apr. 2023). Trans people face rhetoric, disinformation after Tennessee school shooting. News Channel 9, abc. Retrieved from https://newschannel9.com/news/local/trans-people-face-rhetoric-disinformation-after-tennessee-school-shooting-transphobia-tennessee-covenant-school-audrey-hale-lgbtq-trans-empowerment-project.

Howard, J. & Park, M. (2019). Why female shooters are rare. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/08/health/female-shooters-rare/index.html.

Pew Research Center. (7 June 2022). The Experiences, Challenges and Hopes of Transgender and Nonbinary U.S. Adults. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/07/the-experiences-challenges-and-hopes-of-transgender-and-nonbinary-u-s-adults/.

Tulp, S. (30 Mar. 2023). FACT FOCUS: No 'incredible rise' in transgender shooters. abcNEWS. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/fact-focus-incredible-rise-transgender-shooters-98243366.

Tweets:

Donald Trump Jr.'s Twitter - https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Marjorie Taylor Greene's Twitter - https://twitter.com/RepMTG?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Vulenrable communities in Morocco: those living on the margins of sexual minorities

YouTube can be a space where people can express themselves freely. Unfortunately, its liberal institutions are also sometimes used to perpetuate hatred in already vulnerable communities, such as the Moroccan trans activist Eden Ghali who was a victim of such attacks.

https://www.fandmglobalbarometers.org/countries/morocco/

Ghali, 28, has been open about his journey as a trans man from Morocco, where the trans community is neither criminalized nor put at risk by the state. For Ghali, making his story public is a way to help like-minded people feel less alone.

But a vicious cyber attack by Abdelouahed Benomar and his millions of followers about two weeks ago pushed him to the limit. B3a9li — posted three videos targeting Ghali and the transgender community. In the videos, B3a9li compared gay people to dirt. It stated that people like Ghali who identify or support the LGBTQIA+ community “are against Muslim and Moroccan values” and are part of a conspiracy to destroy society. Then, B3a9li accompanied his content with screenshots of Ghali's social accounts, prompting his viewers to start a boycott and flooding Ghali and his supporters with messages of hate.

(Those videos are deleted by this blogger)

Not to be outdone, Ghali saw this and launched his counterattack: He used social media profiles to rally allies. People posted pictures and retweeted his story under #Ghali, and more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling for B3a9li's video to be removed. "It's very frustrating to know that such an attack can happen to anyone, and there's very little that can be done about it," Ghali explained in an interview with Al-Monitor.

It took YouTube two weeks to respond to the report and eventually removed three videos from B3a9li's account. But the deletion of the video does not mean that the problem has been solved; Ghali received many physical threats or abuse when the video was not deleted, which made him very frustrated at one time. And YouTube just deleted the video without directly apologizing to Ghali. A 2022 study by the Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) specifically ranked platforms based on how safe they are for LGBTQ users, with YouTube at 45%. The platform's official policy is to protect users from "hate speech, harassment, and cyberbullying based on protected attributes, including sexual orientation and gender identity."

However, SMSI said YouTube has never claimed to train staff on the needs of LGBTQ users. In response, the Index recommended that the platform develop a policy against "targeted necromancy and sexism." Despite YouTube's policy against hate speech, SMSI said there was limited information about the options available to users to "control the company's handling of information related to their sexual orientation and gender identity." Therefore, there is a loophole in the way content is monitored. From the moment a video goes live, vulnerable groups have no control over what is posted about them — as in Ghali's case.

Reference

1. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2023/03/morocco-youtube-one-tool-attack-lgbtq-vulnerable-communities

2. https://www.fandmglobalbarometers.org/countries/morocco/

Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, Gay is Human Wrong, not Human Rights

 In the book “My African Journey”, Winston Churchill wrote his trip to Uganda in 1907. He wrote that “for Magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life—bird, insect, reptile, beast–for vast scale—Uganda is truly “the pearl of Africa”. He was enthused about the diversity of the biological species in the nation. However, the Uganda government does not allow its citizens to be as diverse as the natural species. While they are making efforts to retain the magnificence and diversity of the species, they are also making efforts to eliminate the diversity of citizens. 

A Traceback:

Uganda, as one of the most homophobic nations on earth, has never changed its position. The GBGR score kept constant at an average of 10.2% from 2011 to 2019. Regardless of its current low score, the history of homophobia in Uganda can be traced back to its colonial history. When it was under British colonial rule, the Penal Code Act 1950 stated that same-sex marriage is prohibited by law and will be committed as felonies. 

(Screenshots from https://www.fandmglobalbarometers.org/countries/uganda/)

After Uganda declared its independence, existing law of the Ugandan penal code, penalizes "carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature" with imprisonment of up to 14 years, but it was rarely enforced. However, the situation remain negative. As early as 2006, the magazine Red Pepper published a “hit list” of allegedly homosexual men, including individuals who have not identified themselves as gay. Several of those individuals named reported that they had suffered from subsequent harassment and ostracism. The magazine continues to publish the list until 2014.

(Image from https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-26345304)

 Cleo, who was outed by Red Pepper, as Uganda’s first transgender woman to openly transition, was forced to flee to other countries to avoid attacks and possible arrest. Her story was documented by von Wallström, who documented the life of Cleo, and her partner,  being marginalized and persecuted living in a country that is hostile to homosexuality. 

 “In my dreams, my body decays, my skin crumbles and falls away. Beneath I am feminine and free. But I step out of my dream, I wake to this body, and carry on through hell.”

(Image from IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5128790/)

Predecessor：

In 2009, Member of parliament David Bahati submitted the Anti-Homosexual bill, which later is named the “kill the gay” bill, further broadening the criminalization of same-sex relationships in Uganda. The bill proclaims that the objectives are to

 

“ prohibit and penalize homosexual behavior and related practices in Uganda as they constitute a threat to the traditional family” and “prohibit the licensing of organizations which promote homosexuality”(2009). 

It also set provisions for “aggravated homosexuality”, indicating that offenders who are HIV-positive and have intercourse with people of the same sex whether consensual or nonconsensual, as well as those who have sex with juveniles, could be sentenced to the death penalty. The result was that this pernicious bill won the majority of support from the parliament. Parliament members view anti-gay stances as “expected and politically beneficial”(Englander, 2011). 

"Certain provisions in this bill are illegal; they are also immoral," said Kate Sheill, Amnesty International's expert on sexual rights. "They criminalize a sector of society for being who they are, when what the government should be doing instead is protecting them from discrimination and abuse."

In addition, the bill potentially abets social persecution of homosexual groups, sparking national wide homophobia. Media have made public accusations against those they believe to be gay or lesbian. The most extreme case would be that, later in 2010, another Uganda publication institution Rolling Stone published an article titled "100 Pictures of Uganda's Top Homos Leak” to call upon boycotting homosexuals. The publication included at least 100 homosexuals in Uganda with their photos and names, which is absolutely a violation of personal privacy and violation of human rights. The publication also later lead to the death of David Kato, an activist in Uganda, outed in the article, who was murdered in his home by an intruder. 

(Image from https://chapterfouruganda.org/timelines/anti-homosexuality-bill-timeline/rolling-stone-tabloid-publishes-full-names-100-allegedly) 

Even if the bill led to strong public discontent, and it was the serious violation of the protection of privacy, the officials ignore that. Later in 2014, President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill. Anti-homosexuality was officially legitimated in the country. According to the government, his decision was based on a report by "medical experts" who said that, "homosexuality is deviant from social norms". Furthermore, the act also criminalizes a person who "aids, abets, counsels, or procures another to engage in an act of homosexuality". In general, the government attempt to eradicate almost everything associated with homosexuality. The 2014 Act is not the end, but a start. The Uganda lawmakers want more.

What is happening now?

 Now, on March 9, 2023, Asuman Basalirwa, a member of parliament, introduced the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Parliament, as an amendment to the 2014 Anti-homosexual Act. The bill is considered one of the toughest pieces of anti-gay legislation in Africa. Provisions in the bill include the following elements but not limit to: 

1. Reinforcement of imprisonment posed to homosexuality, “aggravated homosexuality” will lead to the death penalty. 

2. LGBTQ+ people will be sentenced to up to ten years in prison for disclosing their identity or touching someone with homosexual intent. 

3. People, publicity, and any kind of social platforms, in support or promotion related to homosexuality will be imprisoned. 

4. Property owners whose premises are being utilized as a place for any homosexual acts will be at risk of imprisonment. 

The speaker of the parliament stated the reason as “ For us it's about our morals and our culture. And I want to urge members of parliament, please don't get intimidated. Never get intimidated, we are doing all of this for humanity”. 

This house will continue to pass laws that recognize, protect and safeguard the sovereignty, morals and cultures of this country,” Anita Annet Among, the speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, said after legislators finished voting

Human Rights Watch said the new legislation was "a revised and more egregious version" of the 2014 bill. Now, even though it is in the 20th century, people are at risk of being in jail for self-identify as gay, lesbian, or transgender. It also makes it an offense to “touch another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality” and the “promotion of homosexuality.” In addition, the law will effectively declare all same-sex conduct as non-consensual regardless of factually consensual for both parties. If the law is passed, sexual and gender identity that is “contrary to the binary categories of male and female”  will be further criminalized on the basis of its worse situation. 

After the passing of the 2014 bill, LGBTQ+ people in Uganda suffered a noticeable increase in arbitrary arrests, police abuse and extortion, unemployment, evictions, and homelessness. The bill is now awaiting the president’s signature. The future of the LGBTQ+ community, as a vulnerable minority group in Uganda, cannot be pictured. The new bill will further institutionalize repressive acts, discrimination, and hatred against homosexual groups within the country.  In addition, the government has already violated many of the basic human rights of Ugandans: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to privacy, equity, freedom from discrimination, and most importantly, the right of being who they are. The bill, again, as a signal of increased repression, also raises the question of how can LGBTQ+ community, as well as other vulnerable groups, survive in Uganda. 

Ugandans have already sacrificed many of their rights under government repression. Nations are supposed to protect the basic human rights of their citizens. We are still in hope that the international community can pressure the president not to sign the bill, and provide necessary asylum for the vulnerable groups being persecuted.

(Ugandan activists attend a conference to promote homosexuals’ rights, in Kampala, Uganda, February 14, 2010. © 2010 Benedicte Desrus/Sipa Press via AP Images)

                                                               "Aluta Continua"

Reference 

Amnesty International. (n.d.). Uganda: Anti-homosexuality Bill passed in Parliament. Retrieved March 24, 2023, from https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/afr590042013en.pdf 

Athumani, H. (2023, March 10). Ugandan Parliament introduces new Anti-Homosexuality Bill. VOA. Retrieved March 17, 2023, from https://www.voanews.com/a/ugandan-parliament-introduces-new-anti-homosexuality-bill-/6999149.html 

Bill No. 3 the anti-homosexuality bill - jurist.org. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.jurist.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/03/Anti-Homosexuality-Bill-2023.pdf 

Churchill, W. (n.d.). My African journey.

 Englander, D. (2011). Protecting the human rights of LGBT people in Uganda in the wake of Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill, 2009. Emory International Law Review, 25(3), 1263-1316. 

Harrison, N. (2016). A transgender love story in The shadows of uganda. The Lancet, 388(10057), 2229. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(16)32069-4 

Oliver, M. (2019). Uganda's anti-homosexuality Bill. Routledge International Handbook of Heterosexualities Studies, 316–325. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429440731-20 

Uganda: 'anti-homosexuality' bill threatens liberties and human rights defenders. Human Rights Watch. (2020, October 28). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/10/15/uganda-anti-homosexuality-bill-threatens-liberties-and-human-rights-defenders 

Uganda's Parliament threatens to criminalize homosexuality. Human Rights Watch. (2023, March 7). Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/06/ugandas-parliament-threatens-criminalize-homosexuality

Examining LGBTQ+ Human Rights in Palestine and the Occupied Territories

On October 7, 2022, the severed head and decapitated body of 25 year-old Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh was found in the city of Hebron in the West Bank.

Abu Murkhiyeh was found near his family home, nestled in a conservative community which he tried to escape from two years prior. After his death, Israel provided a shaped narrative on his story, citing the Palestinian territories. Rita Petrenko, the founder of Al Bait Al Mokhtalef, an Israeli organization for Arab gay rights, recalled meeting Abu Murkiyeh and depicted a picture of how he was treated.

Abu Murkhiyeh was banned from working until last July when Israel finally began granting work permits to Palestinians who have sought refuge due to violence and persecution for their sexual orientation. While his story has been co-opted by several pro-Israeli activist groups, the discourse following his death depicts a picture of the current state of LGBTQ+ rights and activism in the West Bank.

Currently, nearly 92% of the population in the West Bank identifies as Muslim while the remaining identifies as Arab Christian. Homosexuality is still a taboo topic in the region and is often brushed aside in discourse, replaced by conversations pertaining to the relative Palestinian struggle. While we can all agree that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights, first and foremost, and must be part of the discussion no matter the circumstance, it is imperative to contextualize the status of this conversation in the events occurring within the region. As Palestinians are being uprooted from their homes, forced to flee and seek refuge in neighboring countries, the discourse regarding homosexuality is pushed to the back burner which is incredibly dangerous for the LGBTQ+ population within the region.

Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law, but Israel continues to expand them, without criticism or repercussions from the international community. Palestinians living in these areas face regular harassment and violence from settlers, and their homes and property are often destroyed. Additionally, Palestinians living in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories face discrimination in various forms, including restrictions on their freedom of movement, unequal access to services such as healthcare and education, and discrimination in employment and housing as well as restrictions on practicing their religion freely. Even during Ramadan, we can see the restrictions imposed on Palestinians to practice their religion freely, including restricting their access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holiest month of the year.

As we develop an understanding of the current state of Palestinian rights, we can begin to understand the life of the LGBTQ+ community in Palestine and how the occupation has affected their livelihood. Rhetoric employed by the international community has an immense impact on the way Palestine is perceived internationally and has implications for foreign assistance. Pinkwashing can be defined as the intentional misrepresentation of human rights through an allusion of the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights as evidence of democracy. Often utilized by Israel in promoting anti-Palestinian rhetoric, it portrays a dishonest view of the current status of LGBTQ+ rights. 

This connects to a broader issue of Israel, as well as other countries, exploiting the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in order to gain political gain while hiding their oppressive policies in violation of international law against Palestinians. The right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu appropriated LGBTQ+ rights to advance its own agendas against Iran and the Palestinian Territories at the United Nations, depicting a picture of Israel as a gay-friendly, progressive, democratic country that protected human rights, as opposed to the other homophobic Middle Eastern nations, completely ignoring the immense atrocities LGBTQ+ community members have faced in Israel as well. Netanyahu also supports a myriad of parties and organizations internationally that infringe upon the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

While Israel is often depicted as a safe country for the queer community, recent instances of hatred or violence may demonstrate how that might not be the full picture. On July 30 2015, Shiri Banka, a 16-year-old high school student, became one of six people stabbed at the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade by an ultra-Orthodox Jew named Yishai Schlissel, who had carried out a similar attack on a gay pride parade in 2005. Banka’s death demonstrates the ongoing struggle for acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in a country proclaiming they are a safe haven for the community.

This discourse begs the question of what is the lived reality of LGBTQ+ individuals in the occupied territories and whether or not it is relatable to the rest of the Arab world. In "This Arab is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers" published by Saqi in 2022, editor Elias Jahshan attempts to give agency to 18 queer Arab writers by entrusting them with the task of narrating their own stories and experiences. This anthology represents an effort to reclaim control over the subject matter and challenge prevailing stereotypes and misconceptions of the single story that the Arab world does not accept homosexuality.

Jahsan’s work delves deeper into the queerness of people and culture in the Arab world which has been historically present but concealed by feelings of guilt and shame brought about by colonialism, the impact of which is felt in most formerly colonized countries. 

Throughout the last few decades, Palestine and the occupied territories have seen a slow but steady effort to support the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community, while rising against the occupation. In July 2020, Julia Zaher, CEO of Al Arz tahini company, made an announcement stating that a portion of the company's profits would be contributed towards the establishment of an LGBTQ helpline for Arabs. This initiative was to be undertaken in collaboration with Aguda, which is Israel's LGBT Task Force. While she received backlash from conservative communities, much of the discontent was from the LGBTQ+ community themselves, who disagreed with the fact that Zaher had donated to an Israeli group. They contended that she should have contributed the funds to Al Qaws, an organization in Jerusalem that promotes the rights of the Palestinian LGBT community across the Green Line. 

Al Qaws offers assistance to queer Palestinians who do not desire to engage with Israeli non-governmental organizations, and adopts a firm political stance against the occupation while supporting the Palestinian national movement. This sparks the discourse of how Palestinians can uplift the LGBTQ+ community while resisting the occupation and subjecting themselves to the pinkwashing that plagues the international community.

Currently, the city of Haifa has fostered an LGBTQ subculture with a Palestinian nationalist demeanor, where Israelis are not welcomed, demonstrating a resistance to the occupation while advocating for the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community.

The 2020 data of the Global Barometers of Gay Rights for Israel classifies the country as a C with a grade of 78% while the Global Barometer for Transgender Rights is at 65%. As we look at the GBGR and GBTR data for Israel, we can recognize that the score is significantly higher than the regional score of the MENA region. But do these protections really apply to Palestinians in the occupied territories?