“Black trans bodies are under attack”: gender non-conforming homicide victims in the U.S. 1995-2014

As argued by transgender actress and activist Laverne Cox (2014), black transgender bodies are under attack. This multi-level attack is happening through high rates of interpersonal and institutional violence, discrimination and dehumanization. It is also happening at the level of state violence, and the devaluation of black trans bodies. In this thesis, I explore each of these levels of attack, and see how this is reflected in one particular arena of the transgender experience in the United States: the homicide of transgender women. As I will show in this thesis, based on content analysis of 629 news article discussing the deaths of 259 transgender and gender non-conforming individuals between 1995 and 2014, African American transgender individuals are more likely to be killed, and with extreme violence, compared to their counterparts, and the rate may be increasing over time. This study demonstrates evidence of interpersonal, institutional and state devaluation of black trans bodies.