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:
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:
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:
And the next day:
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
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