The Deadly Upward Trend of Anti Trans Violence in the US

When starting this DIY I wanted to choose a cause that pushed me out of my comfort zone. Oftentimes we choose topics which we can somehow relate to or because that certain issue may have a direct effect on your life. However when choosing a topic this time around I wanted to focus on a topic and a community that often gets forgotten by the mainstream. Therefore I chose to focus on the Transgender community and the discrimination they face. Any form of discrimination is potentially dangerous but for the transgender community living in the United States that danger is often fatal. With this infographic I not only wanted to shine a spotlight on the increasing levels of violence against trans people but I also wanted to show how the progression of discrimination can actually be fatal for many trans people.

I started with the population of Transpeople in the United States, which is 700,000 people. The reason I started here was to give an overview of the small population of people that are being targeted because of anti-trans discrimination. In that same section I highlighted that “71% of transgender people said that they hid their gender and gender transition to try and avoid discrimination”. The visual elements I used were the men and women symbols, and I changed the color of the men to blue and the women to pink to represent the gender binary in the population and beneath them I the same symbol just alternating blue and pink to represent the trans population.

I moved on to my third data point of highlighting the fact that one in four trans people have been assaulted in public as a result of discrimination. I used four people symbols with one significantly larger than the other three as a visualization. In this section my intention was to escalate the severity of the discrimination against trans people this time in the form of physical assaulted. In my next section while further increasing the level of violence, I also focused on the sub-group within the trans population that were of even higher risk than their peers, trans women of color. Of the trans people murdered in the past year 82% were transwomen of color. The imagery I used an ambiguous image of women of color raising their fist. I wanted to show that this issue crosses boundaries of just gender but is an intersectional issue. In my next and final data point section I highlighted how anti-trans murders and violence are on an upward trend. I used the image of a graph trending upwards with my own addition of knife and blood splatter to reiterate the severity of this problem.

My final section called on those viewing the infographic to help stop the trend by donating at transrespect.org and acknowledging when trans remembrance day is celebrated, November 20th. Overall I wanted my infographic to also trend upwards, showing for acts of discrimination can eventually be fatal. For example, transphobia or even misgendering someone on purposed are forms of discrimination. While my infographic touches on the larger picture one of my goals was to show how discrimination has the power to become something more deadly and that starts with the smallest act.