A Boston Globe opinion column is drawing attention after arguing that violence against transgender Americans is declining, challenging warnings from LGBTQ+ organizations about anti-trans violence.
The September 22 column, written by David Mastio and titled “In Trump’s America, violence against transgender people isn’t going up – it’s going down,” points to declining numbers of documented violent deaths among transgender people. Mastio cites Advocates for Trans Equality, which recorded 53 violent deaths in 2023 and 27 during its 2025 reporting period.
Those numbers are real. What they mean is considerably more complicated.
A4TE itself cautions that its count is “almost certainly incomplete.” Its 2025 report identified 27 violent deaths, 63% of whom were Black transgender women, while noting that misgendering, incomplete reporting, and other problems make transgender deaths difficult to track.
Mastio also cites FBI data showing reported hate crimes declined between 2024 and 2025. But that decline occurred during a dramatic nationwide decline in crime. The FBI reported murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell 18.1% nationally in 2025, while reported hate-crime incidents overall declined 7%.
Looking beyond a single year produces another picture. A Williams Institute review found reported anti-transgender and anti-gender-nonconforming hate crimes increased from 184 in 2018 to 527 in 2024. National Crime Victimization Survey data for 2022-2023 also estimated transgender people experienced violent victimization at 93.7 incidents per 1,000 people, compared with 21.1 among non-LGBT people.
The Globe column additionally points to a Manhattan Institute analysis arguing that intimate-partner violence, rather than anti-trans hatred, explains many transgender homicides.
But those categories can overlap.
Research involving transgender women of color has documented cisgender male partners concealing relationships because they feared stigma if their attraction became known. Participants connected that secrecy and fear of being “outed” with violence against transgender partners.
The murder of Dime Doe provides a stark real-world example. Daqua Ritter had a secret sexual relationship with Doe and became upset when rumors about it circulated. Federal prosecutors proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ritter murdered Doe because of her gender identity, resulting in a federal hate-crime conviction.
The available evidence therefore supports something narrower than the Globe headline: documented transgender homicides have declined from previous peaks.
Whether that means anti-transgender violence itself is disappearing or that transgender Americans have become substantially safer is a much harder question for the available data to answer.
