More Americans claim to see a ghost than a trans person

Trans activist Faye Seidler highlighted a startling, and hilarious, statistic about trans visibility.

Eighteen percent of Americans have claimed to seen or be in the presence of a ghost, according to a 2009 survey. However, only nine percent of US adults claim to have met a trans person, with just 24 percent saying they did not know what the word ‘transgender’ meant. A further five percent said they had never even heard the term before, according to a Public Religion Research Institute survey from 2013.

Alongside highlighting this statistic, Faye encourages trans people to speak up and talk about being trans, but only if it’s is safe to do so.

“As a trans leader, offering education and outreach for my community, I’m not afraid to fight,” she said in a recent profile in the New York Times. “And most importantly, that I will never give up the fight to be treated human.”

Of course, the statistic comes from 2013, and we’ve seen a lot of progress and trans visibility this year alone. With TV shows focusing on being trans, blockbuster movies highlighting trans stories, and Caitlyn Jenner making “transgender” a household term.

But the visibility also comes with a heavy price. Just as Faye encouraged, trans people should put their safety first. This year, a record number of transgender murders were documented, a depressing reminder of how rampant anti-trans violence is.

The FBI’s hate crime statistics for 2014 shows the lowest number of hate crimes since 1991. But, the same report shows the number of violent crimes motivated by the victim’s gender identity tripled from the year before. 2013 was the first year that the FBI compiled statistics on bias-motivated incidents based on gender identity, in accordance with the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. That year, 31 such incidents were reported, but in 2014 there were 98.

At least 21 transgender women have been murdered this year. The first seven weeks of 2015 saw seven trans women killed in the U.S. alone. By comparison, last year, 13 trans women were killed in the U.S. as a result of transphobic violence. And none of these somber totals include individuals whose deaths went unreported, or those who were misgendered or not respected as the women they are in death, either by police or media reports.

We need to stop turning our trans brothers and sisters into ghosts to see them.