Talk:List of people killed for being transgender

Requested move 19 October 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. By and large, there was clear consensus that something (whether it be a move or a change in scope) should be done here, but there was no consensus on where to move. A lot of this discussion boils down to what the scope of this article should be (or currently is) and whether the current or proposed title(s) better reflect the current or proposed scope. For that reason, I would suggest a discussion of the article's scope before any subsequent move requests, but I have no prejudice to a new RM being opened at any time. (closed by non-admin page mover) estar8806 (talk) ★ 18:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

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List of people killed for being transgender → List of unlawfully killed transgender people – The current title was established after a prior discussion from a few years ago. But as has become clear, the standard established with it does not serve the encyclopedia as it has established an impossibly high threshold since few people committing murders go out of their way to outright say "yes they did this because they wanted to commit a hate crime murder" and as such, the encyclopedia loses on a lot of valuable cases that have been argued against inclusion on this unreasonable standard and has gutted this article. This proposed new title was brought up by the above discussion by @Funcrunch. Please see this and this comment for more context. So creating this RM discussion to change the criteria to unlawfully killed transgender people (and with it, the inclusion criteria). Raladic (talk) 20:30, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Gender studies, WikiProject Human rights, WikiProject Discrimination, and WikiProject LGBTQ+ studies have been notified of this discussion. Raladic (talk) 20:30, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support per my comments in the preceding section, as mentioned by @Raladic. Funcrunch (talk) 20:46, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
• Support. As seen, for example in the case of Cherry Bush (see above), sources do discuss transgender victims of homicide as a topic in its own right, and thus it is perfectly appropriate to have a list about them. Raladic explains why we should prefer that inclusion criterion over the present one. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 20:55, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral Oppose. Would instead suggest a modification either to the header or title of the article, indicating that these are cases that are *reportedly* or *allegedly* killed out of transphobia. This would hopefully relax the insanely strict standards and mind-reading, while keeping the list focused and encyclopedic.

Explanation:

Generally, I think that a list specific for those killed with transphobic motive is useful for people wanting to do research and to single out those cases, and it would be hard to maintain such a sub-list in a larger list. Additionally, I think that maintaining a list of that scope seems like it would be astronomically more difficult -- to the point that we would certainly be heavily under-reporting the actual numbers and the problem might look smaller in scope than it is. This is compounded by the fact that many of these murders do not make major non-local news. Even some of the cases that are rightfully included in this article did not make major news -- they are relevant because the victims were killed specifically because of their transgender status. The skew in representation in the list towards exclusively recent events (with very limited ones pre-21st century) would also certainly get worse; reporting on those cases was almost non-existent or at the very least often obscured trans status until pretty recently. I think that the systemic devaluing of trans people's lives is often reflected even in treatment and murders without verbally expressed transphobic motive, but am not certain that simply covering all murders is feasible or preferable to the current state.

However, I think the current state of the list -- where victims are removed even with a preponderance of evidence indicating killers' transphobia, if there is not a confession of transphobic motive or specific "hate crime" conviction (many countries do not even have such a category, let alone included transgender status under that protection) -- is fraught and frustrating. I think an ideal world would have a happy medium, with a list dedicated specifically to victims of transphobia, but without the overzealous purging of records, would be ideal. While I don't love the idea of adding fuzz -- I wonder whether something like List of people reportedly killed for being transgender would be productive, a la List of alleged Georgia election racketeers includes those whose cases are still in-process. Alternatively, a change in header, like how List of Israeli assassinations notes itself as "a list of alleged and confirmed assassinations" and includes additional details in the list about cases where responsibility was denied but is still alleged by numerous parties. AmityCity (talk) 21:25, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Eliminates the ambiguity around cases which may not have been charged as hate crimes. Rylee Amelia (talk) 21:56, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
• Support. I don't exactly love it but if it nails down the ambiguity and stops the circus of kvetching then it's worth it. --DanielRigal (talk) 00:59, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
• Support because it takes the mind-reading part out of it. Mathglot (talk) 02:19, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
• Neutral but I have some comments:

1) A list of unlawfully killed transgender people would be less significant than a list of people killed for being transgender.

2) It should be easier to establish whether someone was transgender and was unlawfully killed, than that someone was killed for being transgender. So the list would probably be more accurate. And there would be fewer discussions on this page.

3) I think that if the article was changed to ‘List of unlawfully killed transgender people’ there would be an invisible problem that many readers would interpret the article as being a ‘List of people killed for being transgender’ . So the article could, unintentionally, become a source for misinformation. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:06, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

Sweet6970, thanks for adding your points, to which I would say: 1) yes; 2) yes; 3) no, because I see no evidence of that, but even if true, we cannot control how readers misinterpret information that is accurately portrayed. Your point 3 might argue in favor of adding an explanatory sentence in an introductory section explaining what the scope of the article is and addressing your concern directly, but we should not choose a less accurate or less precise title, simply because some reader might not get it. P.S. Please do not indent your sig separately from your comment, as it may interrupt proper reply threading. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: The "unlawfully" seems a bit odd; it would seem to exclude people or at least raise the question in the minds of readers about whether there is a group of people who were lawfully killed for being a transgender person. There is also the question of people who were killed for some reason that is clearly completely unrelated to their transgender status. I suppose the latter issue, and possibly the former as well, could be handled with some explanation in the lead section of the article. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 17:11, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

  I commented in the above section that while "unlawfully" is a bit awkward, it would include homicide as well as murder, but exclude death by illness or accident. Funcrunch (talk) 17:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

  It worries me a bit that "unlawfully" might exclude death by execution or other government-approved killings, since official government actions are presumptively lawful within their jurisdictions. The killings in Nazi Germany and 1960s Indonesia might need to be removed. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:12, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah, this is one great reason why I would oppose the "unlawfully" portion of it. If a person is executed for being transgender (historically in Nazi Germany or Indonesia, or someone being killed today in a country where being transgender is illegal) I think they should certainly be on this list. AmityCity (talk) 23:48, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• Broaden the scope to Acts of violence against transgender people, but limit to only notable cases. We can also present estimates of the total number of transgender people killed per year, both here and in the parent article Violence against transgender people. I don't think it's practical to maintain a comprehensive list of non-notable cases. Oftentimes (especially outside the English-speaking world) the only sourcing is a local news article saying that someone had been found dead, with no follow-up indicating whether the death was ruled a homicide or anyone was charged. gnu57 17:57, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

  Generally would support this if and only if we were to count any individual killed expressly for their transgender status as Notable and worthy of the list by default. After all, the parent article and list both attempt to document trends of transphobic violence -- it would seem that a specifically transphobic murder, even if it does not make national news, is at least as relevant and noteworthy for that list in particular as wouild be the case of a notable trans person being killed without transphobic motive. AmityCity (talk) 23:54, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  I think that alternative is good and fits as the sister sibling to the Violence against transgender people article as you linked it.

  I think since this is inherently a list article, the name List of acts of violence against transgender people as @LesbianTiamat suggested below would be more fitting to keep the "List of" syntax.

  I think the "limit to notable cases" can be achieved since we need RS to report on it in the first place and obviously have to require any new cases have RS citations. We can refine the notability criteria if need be after the move. Raladic (talk) 15:43, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Comment so if this is moved the scope would just become any transgender person killed in any context? If so, oppose, because that seems indiscriminate. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:24, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

No, as I mentioned in the above section we could add additional criteria, such as mentions in major news sources. Funcrunch (talk) 21:02, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

I oppose this then because grouping murdered people purely on their demographic when it has no tie to the motive is unencyclopedic. We don't have any other article like that for any other demographic - when it is the motive yes, when it is not firmly the motive, no. PARAKANYAA (talk) 01:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

add additional criteria, such as mentions in major news sources

How often does that ever happen? Let's be real: No one cares about us, except for us. Adding additional criteria would worsen the core issue.

Broadening the scope without additional criteria is fine, because Wikipedia's general notability policies and guidelines already apply to every page. ----LesbianTiamat (troll/pester) 12:07, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose as it would be restrictive and exclude several cases in which law was or is conivent/complicit, or neglectful, or even when the state punishes them with death penalties. --MikutoH ^talk! 00:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

  Do you have an alternative naming/scoping suggestion? Maybe the proposal from @gnu57 above?

The point of the RM was to broaden the scope, not make it more restrictive. Raladic (talk) 15:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• STRONG OPPOSE, EXTREMELY strongly. The proposed title will make it even worse in terms of inclusion, rather than better.

The law is 100% irrelevant to the point of the article. For example: It was nationally-legal for Nazi Germany to round up and gas transgender persons. It was also legal in Nazi Germany to burn the leading transgender research center in the world to the ground along with all its scientific archives. All of them.

Instead, I support broadening the scope to "List of acts of violence against transgender people" or "List of violent acts against transgender people", similarly to @gnu57 ----LesbianTiamat (troll/pester) 11:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I'd be okay with the alternative suggestion. The point of the RM is that the current criteria being used is being held to an impossible standard, which is unachievable in most cases and has led to removal of many notable cases.

The point wasn't to make it more restrictive and the argument that some jurisdictions made it legal to murder people is a good point, which we should include in the scope. Raladic (talk) 15:37, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Strong oppose - per original move to this name and prior move discussion almost identical to this one. This change MASSIVELY broadens the scope of this article with the only criteria being the overlap of "being transgender" and "unlawfully killed" (circumstances which may have NOTHING to do with each other and so has no encyclopedic value), and turns it into a WP:MEMORIAL with almost no limits. OP is wrong in that we do not judge inclusion on this list based on whether those committing the crimes say they did it for this reason... we go by what the sources say, and that makes this list relatively easy to scope and keep to its limited purpose. -- Netoholic @ 12:34, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not wrong on the assertion that the current inclusion criteria is being upheld too strongly, because despite RS often having allegations of this being the motive, several editors here have removed exactly such inclusions because they argued "no, not until they have been convicted under a hate-crime statute", despite many jurisdictions not even having such. So, if you're contending that such cases should be included, then they are in fact not currently because some editors continue to remove them, which is why the current article list is very piecemealed. Literally right above this RM is two such cases on the current talk page, refer to this comment here on Cherry Bush, as well as from this one here on Kesaria Abramidze here being the same. Arguably it is actually just one editor who is doing a lot of this removal, but in any case, the current criteria is being held up to an absurd standard, which is why this RM is trying to rectify it.

  Or that notable cases such as Rita Hester, whose murder was the cause for the inception of the Transgender Day of Remembrance to commemorate murders of transgender people is missing from this article because editors have claimed that it doesn't satisfy the current criteria of the article (which is particularly egregious as at that time of the murder, even the police misgendered her).

  So the contention is that the current overly strict criteria does not serve the encyclopedic purpose if we can't include some of the most notable cases. Raladic (talk) 15:35, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  If the most notable cases don't have any proof that they were killed for being transgender then we should not include them no matter how notorious they are.

  We don't have lists of every gay person who has ever been a homicide victim, or every black person who has ever been a homicide victim, or every jewish person, or every Muslim. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:12, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  Well, actually we do have RS that is even linked on Rita Hester's article, such as the City of Boston's news story on the mural they installed - "Rita Hester was a Black trans woman and beloved Allston community member who lost her life as a result of transphobia and anti-trans violence - but that is precisely the problem with the current inclusion criteria and why Rita's murder is missing from this current list (and this is just one of many such examples), because the current criteria is too narrow and some editors argue "no it doesn't matter that there's RS that links it to being a transphobic motive, there's no conviction, so it doesn't count", which is why this current list is so unencyclopedic, because it's missing such notable cases, despite RS clearly linking it.

  So hence, the expansion of the criteria proposed here will help rectify this. Raladic (talk) 02:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  Have you ever heard hard cases make bad law? You're debating the merits of inclusion of two hard cases by trying to change the list's scope to include potentially thousands more cases... many hundreds more of which will likewise necessitate long discussions about inclusion. This is a terrible reason for making this change, and completely unencyclopedic. Let me propose the opposite... that deep discussions prove that this list is maintained at high quality. There have been three deletion discussions centered on this list, and the consensus of them is that the list named like proposed is too broad and has weak inclusion criteria. The current name of the list is literally saving it from deletion. -- Netoholic @ 04:28, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  Under that scope, the article would be WP:INDISCRIMINATE and should probably be deleted. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  Generally inclined to agree with these objections. I would support maintaining the current name, but perhaps adding a note allowing for "reported" or "alleged and confirmed" motive like is used in List of Israeli assassinations. I think the "hate-crime-conviction" standard that some editors have attempted to enforce for this article is untenable for various reasons discussed above, but limiting it to cases with specifically transphobic motive makes it more relevant and useful as an encyclopedia article. AmityCity (talk) 23:30, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  It doesn't have to be a hate crime conviction, but it should be stated by the criminal investigators or law enforcement that the motive was related to the transgender status. Or alternatively retrospective scholars/serious researchers (not advocacy groups) overwhelmingly call it such. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:31, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  In many cases and jurisdictions, the law and its enforcement does not care whether a case was motivated by prejudice, and rarely take a stance on it. Nor are research papers that wouldn't be classified as written by "advocacy groups" writing about the vast majority of cases. If there are serious and well-founded allegations that it was driven by transphobic motive, made by people who are familiar with the case and that are reported on in reputable media sources, it is worthy of inclusion on a list like this, and I think we should adjust the wording to reflect that.

  Under this standard, the Cherry Bush case discussed above would be included in the list, while Yampi Arocho (who has previously been removed from this list), would not, as there has only been a request to investigate whether it was a crime of transphobia, not any allegation or evidence that it was so. That is a reasonable and accurate standard and a middle ground that takes out the mind-reading and reports only on the facts and accounts as relayed by reliable sources. AmityCity (talk) 00:56, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

  There are ways to dismiss the overly harsh censoring and the need for mind-reading in editing, without massively broadening the scope of the page. There is no requirement that the current criteria need to be interpreted as "hate crime conviction," even if one editor has decided as such; in fact, making absolute statements of motive in WikiVoice is a challenging task regardless. Including mention of "reportedly" or "allegedly" to the title or to a sentence in the header would serve the purpose of eliminating overly-skeptical editing while also pivoting the article to focus on how the events have been reported by *other reputable sources*, rather than requiring Wikipedians to make their own judgment calls on motive. AmityCity (talk) 23:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

  You've hit on what the major problem will be in trying to put "unlawfully" into the title of this article - it makes the inclusion criteria even more tightly tied to the legal status of the case. But that is a violation of WP:PRIMARY/WP:SECONDARY because it is up to our editors evaluation of that legal question. With the current title, we instead simply need to have reliable, third-party sources which connect the killing to the victim's transgender status. Of course, in the case of alleged or suspected connections, the number and quality of sources will need to be evaluated. There is simply no fast and simple way around this while keeping this list encyclopedic. -- Netoholic @ 08:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

• Strong oppose as proposed though I don't have a better solution. The proposal turns the article into a wasteland where every single murder victim anywhere ever who is transgender should be listed. There's no encyclopedic reason for that article to exist. You quite literally might as well have List of unlawfully killed people named Fred or List of unlawfully killed people between the ages of 23 and 42 or List of unlawfully killed people who liked Star Trek. There's no connection, no nexus between what happened to them and why that happened. It's not encyclopedic. If this article is moved to the proposed title, I will likely bring it to AFD, since it will have to become an unorganized mess of people who died for scads of unrelated reasons. Red Slash 18:36, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Semi-protected edit request on 11 November 2024

Please add the following entry in 2023, or an equivalent summary. Sources follow:

2023 - Cashay Henderson, a 31-year old African American transgender woman, was shot twice in the head by Cordell Howze before he set her and her apartment on fire on February 26th in Milwaukee, WI. Howze had searched for "trans women" on his phone preceding the murder, recorded voiced-over video of Henderson's body, and gave confessions to witnesses that all indicated the motive was transphobia.

https://www.wisn.com/article/milwaukee-transgender-woman-murdered-man-convicted-first-degree-homicide/61059668

https://www.wisn.com/article/milwaukee-cashay-henderson-murder-opening-statements-cordell-howze/60994283

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LhJJTqgIIuA

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2024/06/10/neenah-man-accused-in-black-transgender-womans-death/73988718007/ 2600:1700:9270:D200:6CEE:7B97:8E99:BBEA (talk) 23:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I cannot access the first and second references, and the Milwuakee Journal Sentinel does not mention transphobia as a motive. Youtube is not a suitable source. Can an American editor assist with verifying the sources? Sweet6970 (talk) 23:14, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Neither of the first two references say that Henderson was killed for being trans. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 02:50, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this information. So Henderson cannot be added to this article. Sweet6970 (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2024 (UTC)