Talk:Transgender genocide

United States Murder Rate

"The murder rate for transgender individuals is estimated to be lower than that of cisgender people, though the trend is reversed for young black or Latina transgender women.[25]" The source for this is broken, and most sources indicate the opposite: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cmenaster (talk • contribs) 19:55, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I fixed that today @Cmenaster - I found the article it was citing and I think the abstract on the article is very misleading, I can't say if I wrote the study myself that I would have reported the data that way, so I wrote out the actual data that is in the study. It seems incredibly dubious to extrapolate much of anything from the study due to the weird sample they chose but I just chose to report what it said. Computer-ergonomics (he/him; talk; please ping me in replies ) 00:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Issues with article

Thread started by blocked editor.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I was going to submit an edit request but I realized that there’s nothing that can be done to improve this article. Instead, I question why this article is on Wikipedia at all. Since there is no organized and systematic murder of transgender people, the reasonable conclusion is that there is no trans genocide taking place. This, then, would amount to having an article in an encyclopedia about a nonexistent topic. Obviously, if someone can present evidence from reliable sources that there is organized and systematic murder of trans people, then having an article on this topic would be justified. In fact, I would expect such an article to focus entirely on details regarding the organized and systematic murder of trans people. Regrettably, however, that is not the case. Abrolator (talk) 04:10, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Abrolator, you seem to be assuming that "genocide" means "organized and systematic murder". But pretty obviously, it's polysemous. So it may surprise that Merriam-Webster (generally regarded as a dictionary provided by and for thinking people) currently provides just one definition. This sole definition is: "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group". Note "the group", rather than "the members of the group", and note the non-mention of homicide, let alone murder. -- Hoary (talk) 05:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Even ignoring the definition - reliable sources do refer to the topic in the article as genocide, and therefore that's the term the article uses. To ignore the source material would be a violation of WP:V and WP:NPOV. Tollens (talk) 07:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Indeed. Abrolator, Wikipedia just summarizes what other sources have said. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 14:25, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Perhaps it should be clarified in the lead section of the article that there is no systematic and organized murder of trans people? Are trans people being sent to extermination camps or being murdered en masse and buried in mass graves? If not, I would suggest making that clear up front so as to avoid conflation with actual genocides such as the Holocaust. Abrolator (talk) 17:45, 17 September 2023 (UTC) @Abrolator: I think it's already pretty clear: The term is related to the common meaning as well as the legal concept of genocide, which the Genocide Convention describes as an intentional effort to completely or partially destroy a group based on its nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 17:57, 17 September 2023 (UTC) I see. Well, if that’s how genocide is now defined, then for the sake of a complete encyclopedia, I think there should also be an article on female genocide. Women do face discrimination and violence (astronomically exceeding that experienced by trans people in terms of murder rate). I’ll start a draft. Abrolator (talk) 18:53, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Do reliable sources discuss it? Remember, Wikipedia only summarizes what other people have said. Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 18:59, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Most definitely. I don’t think such an article would survive the onslaught of TRAs desperate to advertise their invented victimhood at the expense of real victims of violence and genocide, though. for more Abrolator (talk) 19:10, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Hm? What do you mean by "TRA"? Edward-Woodrow :) [talk] 19:12, 17 September 2023 (UTC) Edward-Woodrow, see TRA, including the "usage notes". And let's not encourage talk page soapboxing. -- Hoary (talk) 00:18, 18 September 2023 (UTC) I tend to agree with "it should be clarified in the lead section of the article that there is no systematic and organized murder of trans people". The fact that someone by digging around in dictionaries can find a vague definition that implies mass-murder, with the wording "destruction ... of a ... cultural group", but without quite saying it, does absolutely nothing to address the fact that genocide in the minds of most of our readers involves mass-murder. We should not be playing fallacy of equivocation games here. This article is apt to be highly confusing to many reader without such a clarification.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:23, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Eichert misrepresentation

Under 'International Law', this article cites Eichert [33] in its claim that "Some scholars have argued that the definition of genocide should be applied to transgender persons, or expanded to cover transgender persons, because they are victims of institutional discrimination, persecution, and violence."

Eichert's article should be removed from this list of references, as it misrepresents his argument. Eichert's article is in fact about trans (and other non-cis-women) victims of "genocidal sexual violence", which is an under-discussed element of these discussions of genocide. He does address the expansion of 'genocide' as a term to include trans people in a footnote on page 92, but while sympathetic to these activists who wish to expand the definition of genocide, he softly opposes this as a political tactic. "Given this near-universal repres-sion of queer bodies across most countries in the world, expending the energy to amend the Genocide Convention may not be the most effective use of political activism". Sophiefyfe94 (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template.

There are two illuminating paragraphs from the Eichert source. This first is from the Introduction:

In this Comment, I seek to challenge this narrow legal classification and expand understandings of GSV [genocidal sexual violence] to include acts against (1) cisgender & transgender men, (2) transgender women, and (3) intersex/non-binary/third-gender individuals. While it is absolutely true that genocidaires frequently attack the bodies and reproductive capacities of cisgender women, there are other forms of GSV that should not be discounted or ignored when assessing whether genocide has taken place. As such, future criminal prosecutions should take an expansive view of gender and GSV by seeking to describe more fully how sexual assault, mutilation, enslavement, and humiliation are used to destroy and terrorize targeted communities. (p. 160)

And this one is from the Conclusion:

In this Comment, I have discussed the concept of genocidal sexual violence, demonstrating how international lawyers and academics have overwhelmingly focused on the use of GSV against cisgender women. This focus is understandable, given the fact that genocidaires frequently target cisgender women with sexual violence. However, men, transgender women, and people outside the binary also experience sexual violence during periods of genocide, and these crimes are rarely labeled as "genocidal." As shown by my analysis of the FFM Sexual Violence Report, nearly identical acts of sexual violence—for instance, gang rape or genital mutilation—can be labeled as "genocidal" for cis-gender women and "non-genocidal" for other people. Such an omission discounts the suffering of victims and needlessly weakens attempts to identify, prevent, and punish the crime of genocide. (p. 199)

The Eichert source as a whole is specifically arguing that sexual violence against non-cis women, especially trans individuals, can qualify as one type of genocidal sexual violence rarely considered during investigations of genocide (because only sexual violence against cis women is considered in such investigations). Eichert 1) accepts a definition of genocide that includes sexual violence; 2) demonstrates that genocidal sexual violence is commonly only applied in cases where the victims are cis women; and 3) argues that the definition should be applied in cases where victims are, among others, trans individuals, thus expanding the definition of genocide. In my opinion, that lines up with clauses in the sentence for which it serves as a source: "Some scholars have argued that the definition of genocide should be... expanded to cover transgender persons[] because they are victims of institutional... violence". The source seems appropriately represented to me.

-- Pinchme123 (talk) 22:31, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOR violation

In the mid-1960s in South Sulawesi, an Islamic militia (Ansor) and an Islamic purification movement (led by Kahar Muzakkar) stigmatized, persecuted, and murdered many among the bissu, a transgender social group. The bissu were seen as objectionable under Islam and, in 1966, an Islamic "Operation Repent" targeted nonconforming Indonesian genders. Bissu rituals were violently suppressed, bissu heads were shorn, and bissu were ordered to conform to male gender roles or die. To demonstrate this coercive threat, a bissu leader was decapitated.

This section appears to be a violation of Wikipedia:No original research. By listing this event in the article on Transgender genocide, the article is implying that this is indeed a case of transgender genocide. However, I have checked all three sources cited and none of them make this assertion (the word "genocide" does not appear in any of the texts).

Without reliable sources that declare this event to be genocide, this section would be a better fit for articles such as Violence against transgender people, not this article which explicitly involves the use of a certain terminology. I will move it there unless there are objections. Astaire (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

As it stands the section needs work but a quick search found some sources using the term genocide so I think it should be kept and reworked slightly.

• THE URGENCY TO INCLUDE GENDER AS PROTECTED GROUP UNDER THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE (Purnomo 2020) Bissu, calabai, and calai are one of the victims of the purification process. They were hunted and arrested, because they were considered idol worshipers, guardians of ancient rituals and nurses of the tradition of feudalism.... In 1966 the transgender group recalled the times that were not as bad as the DI / TII period, in the year the crackdown on the Indonesian Communist Party surfaced, the transgender group was also targeted in Tallua's Tumbu operations and Mappatoba operations or Toba operations. This event can at least be considered to be a form of crime of genocide, because in fact this group was the target of purification.
• Marriage equality in Indonesia? Unruly bodies, subversive partners and legal implications (Weiringa 2013) In 2008, I witnessed a Kuda Lumping performance in Malang, East Java. It is a trance dance, in which some dancers cross-dress; it used to be very popular. The group hardly performs any more after their reputation was linked to communism in the heyday of the anti-communist genocide perpetrated by General Suharto.
• Contentious Belonging (Wieringa 2019) :Indonesia has experiences two major episodes of sexual moral panic in the post-independence period. The first occured in the mid-1960s in conjunction with an army-orchestrated campaign of sexual slander that helped to incite Indonesians to slaughter their neighbors. The massacre of up to 1 million people, which amounted to a genocide, ...
• Indonesia's foreign politics 1955-1965: Between decolonisation and beacon politics (Wibisono 2015) refers to the genocide of PKI members during 1966 and says the political and social construction of Communism in Indonesia changed and turned so that people who do not have a religion have been characterized as Communist. It is also happened to the Bissu when they were marginalized and considered as an atheist group, particularly when the Operasi Tobat was launched by Kahar Muzakar in the 1960s in South Sulawesi.

I also think the literature (including that which doesn't focus/mention on the bissu) seems fairly clear that the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 (which should be linked in the text) constituted a genocide. The bissu need not have been the only victims of the genocide to be noted as targets of it.

Best regards, Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 22:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

It is not at all clear that the attacks on the bissu were part of the Indonesian genocide during the mid-1960s, as you want to imply. In fact, the sources already in the article seem to contradict this claim, stating that:

• the attacks began more than a decade before the genocide,
• by a separatist group opposed to the government responsible for instigating the genocide.

Sutton (pp. 37-38):

During periods of Islamic radicalism in South Sulawesi, particularly the Darul Islam movement under Kahar Muzakkar from around 1950 to 1965, bissu were threatened with death and many, it is widely held, were killed.

Davies (p. 197):

In the last few decades in particular, Islam has provided a basis and justification for anti-bissu sentiment. Heather Sutherland (pers. comm. 2000) comments that there was a great deal of resentment towards bissu when Islamic support reached a peak in the area in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, in the 1960s, Ansor, an Islamic militia group, targeted and killed many bissu (Wendy Miller, pers. comm. 2000). This time period also witnessed the rising influence of the staunchly Islamic Kahar Muzakkar movement (Harvey, 1978), which was linked to the Darul Islam separatist rebellion that declared South Sulawesi an Islamic state. Kahar Muzakar authorized the violent persecution of bissu and other elements of society deemed against Islam, such as Communists (Boellstorff, 2005b: 39; Lathief, 2003, 2004: 79–82). In 1966, Operasi Toba (Operation Repent) was initiated to stop practices considered un-Islamic and many bissu ceremonies, customs and activities were forcibly stopped and sacred bissu instruments were burnt or thrown into the ocean.

Boellstorff (p. 39):

For several hundred years, bissu rituals coexisted with the Islamic faith now followed by virtually all Bugis. This changed radically with the rise of the Islamic fundamentalist movement of Kahar Muzakar in South Sulawesi in the mid-1960s. One element of this movement, "Operasi Tobat" (Operation Repent), took aim at practices considered un-Islamic, particularly bissu practices. It was also claimed that bissus were in league with the Communist Party of Indonesia, which was in the process of being eliminated by Soeharto's New Order government.

This notion (that the attacks began well before the genocide, and were independent of it) is also supported by your Source 1 (pp. 90-91):

On August 7, 1953, Kahar Muzakkar proclaimed the south-Sulawesi region as part of DI / TII. Starting that year, until around 1965, DI / TII Kahar Muzakkar rebelled against a legitimate government. That year, the rebellion went hand in hand with the purification of Islam. The Islamic Strait state imagined by DI / TII tends to be anti against everything that smells of culture and traditions of the people. Bissu, calabai, and calai are one of the victims of the purification process.

I also note that this source has significant reliability issues that have already been discussed in the talk page archive:

(1) I can't find any relevant academic credentials for the author; (2) being a "legal analyst" at "PT Netzme Kreasi Indonesia", a cashless banking startup (crunchbase) doesn't support the author being reliable for the topic of international law; and (3) I'm skeptical of the journal's peer-review rigor. Taken together, I don't think the paper is a reliable source for the topic of genocide and international law.

• Source 2 claims that the genocide was "anti-communist", and that the group was linked to communism, but it does not go so far as to state that the group was a target of genocide. There is a gap in the logical reasoning.

• The "sexual slander" referred to in Source 3 is not anything to do with transgender or LGBT individuals, but rather a rumor that some military generals were castrated before being killed. While it mentions "persecution" of the bissu (not genocide), it only mentions this in the context of their perceived political leanings, not their identity (p. 115):

Various popular art forms featuring transgender practices, such as the Reog dance and the Ludruk and Ketoprak theatrical performances, have waned because the performers were persecuted by anti-communist forces after 1965 on the basis of their alleged communist leanings.

• Source 4 only states that communist party members were the victims of genocide, and that the bissu were characterized as communist (by whom?). Again, there is a gap in the logical reasoning.

As it stands, the evidence is insufficient to include these attacks in an article on transgender genocide, unless a reliable and notable source can be found that supports one of the following:

1. The government-instigated Indonesian genocide in the mid-1960s included attacks on the bissu, and they were targeted on the basis of their transgender identity.
2. The attacks on the bissu during the 1950s and 1960s constitute a genocide.

There are currently no sources that support the first assertion, and only a single source (Purnomo) with serious reliability/notability issues that makes the second argument. Astaire (talk) 01:41, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I stand somewhat corrected on the timeline of events and the reliability of source 1, thanks for pointing that out! I was a little confused as the articles' text says mid-1960s and 1966.

• Wrt source 2, perhaps a better quote is A major event in this regard was the cleansing of the Indonesian society from all traces of communist and socialist influence, in the political context of the creeping coup of General Suharto in 1965-1966.44 In order to discredit President Sukarno, he wiped out the communist party and all its associations, including the cultural association.45 Transgender practices for instance in reog and kethoprak groups became suspect, their adherents murdered or imprisoned, their practices banned.
• Wrt source 3, you're right about the "sexual slander" bit. However, the quote above from the same author above clarifies transgender practices, not just coincidentally their performers, were alleged to be communist and states after 1965, Indonesia developed amnesia about its past, forgetting about the transgender practices and same-sex acts recorded in the colonial period and reinventing itself as a country that had always been strongly heterosexual
• Wrt source 4, I just want to clarify I cited that incorrectly it's Homosexuality in Indonesia: Banality, Prohibition and Migration(The Case of Indonesian Gays) (Adihartono 2015). Apart from that, my bad on including it, I'd thought the 1966 Operation Repent was part of the mass killings.

With that in mind, there are two sources (arguably one considering it's the same author), that state the government-instituted anti-communist genocide in 1965-1966 affiliated transgender practices with communism, such practices were banned, and adherents were murdered or imprisoned.

I think the material concerning the Islamist repression should be kept for context as well though, since a few of the sources here and in the article talk about the polarization in the decade before the government-backed killings as context for them. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 04:57, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

There is a clear pattern here of random actions of anti-trans violence being juxtaposed with statements that do mention a theoretical "transgender genocide" in order to make the latter seem to imply that the former is an act of trans genocide. The "United States" section does that a lot, with statistics of violence and statements by political activists (Trump and Knowles) being juxtaposed with paragraphs where some people say that maybe there is a transgender genocide in the US. The implication is obvious here, this article is falsely and baselessly implying that these actions are genocidal. Bolt and Thunder (talk) 17:56, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

NOR violations in the Criticism section

I had meant to address this a few days ago when I saw it but it slipped my mind: the recent expansion of the criticism section is chock-ful of WP:NOR and WP:RS violations. Reviewing the added sources

• Quillete is Generally Unreliable and just opinion pieces. The opinion of one random gender-critical activist is not DUE here in the slightest.
• Emily Gorcenski's blog post is a self published source
• The National Review is marked no consensus on reliability with a note about due weight - the fact it rants about the existence of this Wikipedia article, uses dogwhistles like "trans women" and "trans-identified males" doesn't speak to it being especially due.
• This scientific article and this one don't make any comment about genocide at all.
• Reem Alsalem's press release doesn't comment on whether or not genocide is happening/has happened, it's her complaining that gender-critical activists are branded as "genocidaires". Considering it has not been mentioned in any reliable sources, WP:SPS, and WP:PRSOURCE, I think it is completely undue.

Frankly I'm not sure we should have a criticism section at all. Prior to the above additions of dubious sources, it only contained Faber's criticism, which doesn't say "transgender genocide doesn't exist, never existed, etc", but says that the term is inapplicable to the context of the modern U.S. and Canada. I propose the recent addition of sources are removed and Farber's criticism be moved to the section on the United States. If we are to have a section on "Criticism", it should contain reliable sources that actually criticize the notion that transgender people can experience genocide, not just people saying the term doesn't apply to one specific context.

Best regards, Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 23:29, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Separate to the questions over the validity of the content in the section, criticism sections are generally discouraged per WP:CRITS. The best thing would be to remove any invalid content and then move the rest into more appropriate parts of the article. DanielRigal (talk) 01:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Pinging @Sumanuil, @David Gerard, and @Astaire to discuss this further. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 22:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

yeah, I just immediately thought "what on earth, this isn't WP:DUE", but the whole section does have the stated problems. Good one on doing the source review Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist - David Gerard (talk) 01:02, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Sadly I'm currently under a 0RR that probably applies to this article, so since there seems to be a rough consensus to remove the recently added content and move the criticism by Farber to the US section, I'd appreciate if you or someone else here could handle it. Best, Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 19:08, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 19:41, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

References

See also section

I removed a few repeated links per wp:seealso. If you want to add them back against MOS, that is fine , just maybe say why, thank you, Malerooster (talk) 16:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)