When I began this essay, I originally wanted to write a clear-eyed cultural analysis of the so-called “epidemic” of trans mass shooters.
I would use statistics, I thought, to debunk the myth that trans people are disproportionately likely to engage in random acts of violence. I would dissect the decades-old cultural trope of portraying trans women as predators and deceivers in mainstream media. I’d write a nuanced, persuasive argument about how important it is to resist moral panics—and the collective urge to scapegoat minorities—with clear arguments, convincing research and a moral commitment to humanizing all peoples. The piece would be clean and tightly written, coolly intelligent yet heartfelt.
Then I tried to write it, and all my best-laid plans fell apart. Something about it didn’t work—something about entering back into the debate, building a case for why people like me aren’t always (or even often) murderers just didn’t sit right.
It’s a strange situation, writing a defence of trans people’s humanity—my humanity, and that of so many people I love. It’s been done before, of course: Julia Serano’s seminal book, Whipping Girl, comes to mind, as do some of the essays in Kate Bornstein and S Bear Bergman’s classic Gender Outlaws anthologies. There were many articles in many major newspapers and online publications about this in the 2010s.
So many trans writers have done this very thing so many times, explaining that we’re not monsters who want to wear cis women’s skins like the fictional psychopathic killer in The Silence of the Lambs. We’re just people like everyone else, you know?
We ride the bus and go to the grocery store, where we can’t afford anything anymore, like everyone else. We eat too much junk and binge too much TV, like everyone else. We have depression and anxiety about the state of the economy and the environment and the impending collapse of modern society, like everyone else.
Yet since the early 2020s, the anti-trans rights movement has become increasingly vocal about how dangerous—and supposedly, prone to gun violence—we are, and so here I am, trying to find the right words not only to disprove this new spin on the old stereotype of the “dangerous, crazy trans person” but also to point out the equally old, inherently dehumanizing dynamic of having to explain to the public that one’s people are, well, people.
It is, ironically, a somewhat crazy-making situation.
(Though I suppose I have to clarify for liability reasons, not crazy-making enough to make me turn to public violence.)
For those readers still catching up on the latest trends in transphobia, the myth of the “trans mass shooter epidemic” is an extension of the anti-trans moral panic that has taken hold of the cultural and political spheres in the 2020s. That panic itself may be considered backlash to the expansion of legal rights and mainstream visibility trans people gained in the 2010s.
The trend appears to have been largely started by right-wing influencers and politicians in the U.S. such as Matt Wallace, Chaya Raichik of Libs of Tiktok and former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, all of whom engaged in a pattern of falsely blaming trans people for tragedies from plane crashes to public shootings.
Where previous decades saw trans people (and particularly trans women) characterized as sexual degenerates and perpetrators of child abuse, this right-wing talking point is relatively new: trans people are now also framed as armed terrorists and militant enemies of the state—a view spread by some of the most powerful right-wing figures in the world, including Donald Trump Jr. and billionaire Elon Musk.
When political commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated last September, many anti-trans public figures raced to put the blame on trans people before the identity of the shooter was revealed. Right-wing activist and media figure Laura Loomer, for example, stated on X that “It’s time to designate the transgender movement as a terrorist movement. Trans people are a threat to society. We can’t allow them to continue killing people. They need to be socially ostracized,” in a post that received over 15,000 “likes.” Notably, Kirk’s killer is not trans.
All this is to say, the cultural moment trans people find ourselves in is one of escalating intensity: The use of terms such as “terrorism” and “threat to society,” is a powerful ideological tool, and a well-documented part of the fascist playbook. The more a minority group is identified with danger to common, decent people, the more justifiable it seems to strip that group of human rights and freedoms.
Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly what is happening to trans people today—decried as a danger to children and cis women, trans people have been banned from using public washrooms that align with their gender in several jurisdictions in the U.S. Gender-affirming medical care for both children and adults is increasingly under legislative attack. It has become popular for conservative public figures to demand that trans people be banned or even eradicated from public space entirely.
I must admit, I have a sinking feeling that if one finds oneself in the position of having to persuade the public that one is a human being who should be treated with dignity and respect, it may already be too late.
It’s a tale as old as politics, really: a minority group becomes a scapegoat for all of the fears and injustices experienced by the majority. From there, it’s all too easy for unscrupulous leaders and public figures to take advantage of the situation to whip up support for themselves by putting themselves in the role of brave defenders of society and taking action against the so-called “threat.” All kinds of “emergency measures” that contravene values like privacy, freedom and protection from discrimination sneak into the law in moments like this—and once they do, that makes everyone more vulnerable to abuses of government and corporate power.
This pattern has played out many times in the recent past. After 9/11, for example, the so-called “War on Terror” put Muslims in the role of supposed threat to society, leading to not only increased, long-lasting and deeply damaging cultural prejudice against Muslims, but also the expansion of institutions like the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and the practice of torture, mass surveillance and human rights violations.
Today, we are seeing similar patterns play out through the vehicle of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against migrants in the U.S. As migrants are increasingly demonized by conservative political leaders, they are being treated with surging brutality. Simultaneously, the scope and reach of ICE have vastly increased, which has affected American citizens as well as migrants—including those citizens shot to death for legally observing or protesting ICE actions.
If examples like the above are any indication, we can expect that the growing move to demonize trans people as prone to gun violence and terrorism will result in not only increased transphobia in law and mainstream culture—it will also be used as an excuse to erode human rights and limits on the power of the state in general.
In Canada, we should be equally concerned as our neighbours south of the border. In February this year, Tara Armstrong, an MLA from British Columbia posted on X that there is “an epidemic of trans violence spreading across the west,” implying that trans people are “a danger to themselves and others.” She went on to use this “epidemic” as evidence that gender nonconforming children should be prevented from transitioning, a view that is currently spreading into law in many jurisdictions, in Canada and beyond.
What makes Armstrong’s comments particularly inflammatory, and also heartbreaking, is that they were in reference to one of the few mass shootings that was, in fact, perpetrated by a trans person. The shooting at Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, in which six people tragically lost their lives and twenty-seven others were injured. The shooter identified as a trans woman, though her motives remain murky as of this writing.
Here is an extra, painful complexity in the task of defending trans people, my people and myself, in our humanity: How are we supposed to respond to the fact that sometimes, the violence really is caused by one of our own? How do we simultaneously honour the tragic cost in human lives, condemn the violence, and also talk about the collective mental impact—the panic, the dread—that so many of us feel in moments like this? How do we hold the mental health impact of walking through the world as a hunted minority, constantly associated with depravity and death?
In mental health research, the negative impacts of living through stigma or prejudice associated with one’s identity group is called “minority stress.” Minority stress is associated with heightened levels of fear and anxiety, as well as shame and negative physical health effects. Perhaps unsurprisingly, minority stress has been shown to significantly impact trans populations, particularly trans youth.
I have been thinking lately about how much a community’s experience of minority stress increases in moments when the collective is blamed, and even punished, for the actions of one person. What happens to our communal experience of fear and shame? There is little research as yet on this topic. But what I do know is that for days after the Tumbler Ridge shooting, I felt more afraid of my neighbours. I was afraid of what they might be thinking about me. I was afraid that they were afraid of me, and what they might do if they felt really threatened.
The fact that the Tumbler Ridge shooter was trans means that she and all trans people will be forever linked in the eyes of the dominant culture. The moral stain of her horrific actions is, in a way, inked on us forever. Unfair though it may be—trans individuals make up less than 0.1 percent of mass shooters—defenders of trans people’s public image will have to reckon with her legacy, and that of the tiny number of other trans mass shooters in recorded history, for years to come.
There is a painful double standard at play here: when a member of a scapegoated minority commits an act of violence, all the other members of that minority must also pay a price. How many innocent Muslims have paid in some way for the actions of Islamic militants with whom they shared no real relationship beyond a shared religion? Yet even though the vast majority of mass shootings in North America are committed by white cis men, there is no collective punishment for them. There are no legislators calling for white men to be placed on a public registry and automatically banned from owning weapons.
When members of a majority group commit violence, it’s a tragic incident perpetrated by individuals, “bad apples.” When members of a minority group commit violence, it’s seen as proof of an epidemic, evidence of collective moral failing.
As I bring this essay to a close, I wonder if I have done it: debunked the myth, disproved the trope, brought some points onto the side of treating trans people as people, rather than the monster of society’s collective imagination. Have I put the words together well enough to deserve being allowed to live? Have all the words written by all the trans writers on this topic over the past century been enough?
I hope so, though sometimes my hope wavers. History shows us that scapegoating and fear are powerful forces. Still, like all people who live in the shadow of the role of monster, I feel compelled to say it over and over: I am a person, just like you. I am oddly comforted to know just how many communities have fought to be seen as something other than dangerous, how much courage and eloquence have gone into that fight.
There are people out there who love to tell stories about monsters living among us: They’ll get your kids, they say. They’re hiding in plain sight, they say. The people who tell stories always seem to get something out of it: Votes. Money. Influence. Power.
Maybe they’re the ones we should be afraid of.
