An update to the Transmasculine Suicide Remembrance blog- Data Reality of the community in 2022

An update to the Transmasculine Suicide Remembrance blog-  Data Reality of the community in 2022

(content warning: discussion of suicide, transphobia)

Almost a year ago, I published the first edition of my blog in remembrance of the transmasculine people that we have unfortunately lost to suicide. It's a vigil that I keep now by updating the blog with the names of people who have passed since I last updated it- though it is a strange thing to do, it's something very close to my heart as a trans man who has survived suicidality myself. 

The transmasculine community is comprised of trans men and nonbinary people who self-define their genders (and transitions if applicable) as masculine. This blog focuses on them as neither group really enjoys much visibility in society. As such, our deaths (and especially our suicides) are very important to be aware of so that we can help to prevent more of them from happening in the community. 

As a result of trawling the records of the website TDOR and listing the names of the transmascs that we've lost to suicide, I have accrued data about these deaths which may be important to look at and be aware of. Though this does come with several important caveats: 

1) The data that is available on TDOR is far from the true extent of all trans deaths. The site only lists the deaths that they are aware of. This means that any data we do have is a minimum number. The actual number is likely to be much higher. 

2) TDOR does not always list explicitly if the deceased identified as a trans man, trans woman, or nonbinary person etc. However, the site entries refer to those who have died with their preferred pronouns. In order to prevent false positives, those using the pronouns they/them were not included in this list due to the ambiguity of whether they identified on the masculine spectrum or not. Entries that specifically referred to trans women, transfeminine people or used she/her pronouns were also excluded. Some entries do refer to individuals as trans men/trans women/nonbinary people and so those trans male entries have been included with a high degree of certainty. 

This data is in no way intended to be comprehensive and I do not claim to be a professional statistician. I am simply a trans man gathering data on people like me who have unfortunately passed away. The lack of data on the suicides of transmasculine people means that any and all data could be useful. And so here I have recorded what I have in case it proves useful. If not, then nothing is the worse for it. The data can be found in a table here.

Without further delay, here are some pieces of information gathered from my data:

Out of the 52 recorded suicides between 2015 and 2022,

• Age demographic: 40.4% of suicides were by transmasculine people in their twenties, 36.5% of them by those in their teens, 3.8% by those in their thirties and also 3.8% by pre-teenage children. The remaining 15.4% of suicides were by people whose age was unknown. 
• Nationality: 30.8% of suicides were by transmasculine citizens of Brazil. French, British and American citizens account for nearly half of the suicides with 48.1% in total. Their individual percentages are 9.6%, 15.4% and 23.1% respectively. 5.8% of the suicides were by Spanish transmascs, while Italian, Australian, Chilean, Bulgarian, Jordanian and Portuguese transmascs all accounted for 1.9% of the suicides each. Argentinian transmascs accounted for 3.8% of the suicides. 
• Location: 30.8% of suicides occurred in Brazil. 51.9% of suicides took place in France, the UK and the USA. Their individual percentages are 11.5%, 17.3% and 23.1% respectively. 5.8% of the suicides happened in Spain. While Portugal, Chile, Australia, and Italy all accounted for 1.9% of the suicides each. 3.8% of the suicides happened in Argentina. 
• Time: 27% of suicides happened in March and May. Both months had 13.5% of suicides occur within them. December accounted for 11.5% of the suicides. January, February and September had 9.6% of the suicides happen within them each. April and June both had 5.8% of the suicides happen in them. July and October had 7.7% of the suicides happen in them, while August had 3.8%. November had 1.9% of the suicides happen within it. 
• Name: 9.6% of the suicide victims are unnamed. 
• Year: 11 suicides occurred in 2020. 10 have occurred so far in 2022. 9 happened in 2018. There were 8 in both 2021 and 2019. The numbers for 2017 and 2015 are 4 and 2 respectively.

I'm not a statistician, so I've opted for simply listing the data and not doing anything really fancy with it. But with this, there are some things we can speculate about (though I must add a disclaimer that this is purely conjecture and very much subject to change as more data is added to the blog). But as things stand right now? Here's my takeaways:

- On age, most of the victims were between 12 and 29 years old. The Teen demographic and the Twenties demographic collectively account for 76.9% of the suicides (which is around 41). But is there complexity here? Keeping in mind the data we have has drawbacks (which is the best way we can examine this data fairly) such as the data being reliant on reports to TDOR), could the skew in ages be due to a decreased likelihood that older transmasculine individuals' friends and family would be aware of TDOR in order to report a suicide to it? I've reported two individuals to the site before- a transmasculine schoolchild in the UK and a nonbinary person from Sweden. I did not know the two personally, but my knowledge of TDOR enabled me to report their deaths as being trans deaths. But what is the likelihood of older, less tech literate individuals knowing where and how to report trans deaths? If such individuals were more tech literate or aware of TDOR, would the age statistics be more even? 

-On Nationality, I made a specific decision to record nationality and location separately, based on information from the reports. This is because some transmascs who committed suicide were of a different nationality to the country they died in. For example- Nicolas, a Jordanian trans man, ended his life in France. As will be explained in a minute, there is a Euro-American skew to the nations recorded in this data. In order to preserve the knowledge that a Jordanian trans man ended his life, separating by nationality was crucial. This principle also applies to the death of Marty Dragonov, a Bulgarian transmasc who ended his life in the UK.

-On Location, over half of the suicides recorded happened in the UK, USA and France. While other Western countries such as Australia, Spain, Portugal and Italy accounted for many suicides as well. The remaining suicides happened in Southern America, in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. No suicides elsewhere are recorded. As mentioned before- if suicides of transmascs occur but family and friends are unaware of TDOR, or if there's age, language, nationality or other barriers to reporting, this could create a skew in which some countries have no data.  

-On Time, not too much to say here except that it could be possible that the higher percentage of deaths in the Holiday Season (December-January) are as a result of spending time with family or friends who may be intolerant of someone's transmasculine status. However, there is no way to verify or be certain of this.

-On Name, again, not much to say here other than that many of those whose name is unknown were children at the time of their deaths. Data protection may prevent their name from being shared. In other circumstances it may be that a deadname is known, but a chosen name is not. 

-On Year, TDOR as an online site did not exist until 2017- as a result, records from before then are often patchy. It may be useful in some analyses to use data from 2017/18 onwards if consistent data is required. The average (mean) amount of transmasculine suicides per year since 2015 is 7. The average amount of transmasculine suicides per year since 2018 is 9. 

And for this year, that concludes my blog on the Data Reality of the community in 2022.