Let’s call it what it is: Afratransfemmicide
Posted by Victor O
September 17, 2024
[Content Warning: This article mentions anti-Blackness, transphobia, transmisogyny, violence against Black trans women and femmes, and other instances of reproductive and sexual violence.]
Ten years ago, I began my medical transition. Perhaps it was the newness of my own journey that made me especially aware when, in 2015, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) began to release annual reports documenting the murders of transgender and gender-expansive people. These reports have been invaluable, but it’s crucial to remember that it was the late Black trans journalist Monica Roberts—who blogged under TransGriot—who first set the standard for investigative journalism on the murders of trans people. Since 2006, Roberts tirelessly sifted through deadnaming, underreporting, and anti-sex worker bias that obscured the deaths of countless transgender people of color.
Each year since 2013, has brought the grim news of yet another “most deadly year on record” for trans people. Years like 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, and 2021 were all declared the deadliest for transgender people. But activists know these numbers are severely undercounted due to pervasive deadnaming, flawed police reporting, missing persons cases, and a lack of centralized data. These issues combine to erase people and their stories from available statistics.
As I became more involved in transgender and gender-expansive circles, I encountered many trans people who shared anxieties about joining the ever-growing list of victims. On November 20th each year, Trans Day of Remembrance, I found myself helping organize or participate in vigils. Yet, I always felt that these events skirted around a harsh reality: the majority of names read at these memorials belonged to Black trans women and femmes. It became increasingly clear to me that this epidemic of violence needed to be recognized for what it was—a racially motivated, gender-based form of lethal violence targeting Black trans women and femmes.
This past summer in 2024, I’ve noticed a disturbing silence from mainstream feminist, and reproductive rights-based media regarding the recent murders of Black trans women and femmes. In July and August alone, five Black trans women were killed: Vanity Williams (34, Texas), Tai’Von Lanthan (24, Maryland), Monique Brooks (49, Florida), Kenji Spurgeon (23, Washington), and Shannon Boswell (30, Georgia). According to the HRC, 44% of all trans people killed in 2024 were Black transgender women—a staggering statistic that should demand urgent attention. It continues to become increasingly clear that this violence was not just gender-based but racially motivated—a deadly intersection of anti-Blackness and transmisogyny.
Naming the Violence: Afratransfemmicide
We need a more precise framework to name and understand the layers of violence, diminished life chances, and premature death that Black trans women face. While author Julia Serano coined the term “transmisogyny” to name the ways that trans women and trans feminine people are structurally impacted by the compounding forces of sexism and transphobia it does not fully encompass the specific racialized and gendered violence directed at Black trans women and femmes. What’s missing is a theory that recognizes the multiple levels of oppression these women and femmes face: structural racism, anti-Blackness, and transmisogyny.
To address this, we must turn to the concept of necropolitics, coined by scholar Achille Mbembe. Necropolitics describes how states exert control over life and death, determining who is left to die. For Black trans women, the intersections of state violence, healthcare discrimination, and economic marginalization create conditions where their lives are not just devalued, but actively diminished. In 2013, scholars C. Riley Snorton and Jin Haritaworn extended Mdembe’s reading call this phenomenon “trans necropolitics,” an ordering of life and death in which “poor and sexworking people of color . . . only in death . . . come to matter.” Black trans women and femmes deaths become further erased when we talk about violence against trans people, and do not name explicitly who is most impacted. The premature deaths of Black trans women represent the cruelest manifestation of trans necropolitical control.
However, necropolitics alone does not capture the full scope of this violence. We must coin a term that encompasses both the racialized and gendered nature of these deaths: Afratransfemmicide. This framework is an expansion from the term “transfemicide” coined by trans activists in the Carribean and Latin America to describe this violence occurring at even more lethal pace across these regions. Blas Radi and Alejandra Sarda-Chandiramani define transfemicide as the extreme end of a cycle of violence that excludes trans women from education, healthcare, and jobs. This cycle also involves constant risk of disease, criminalization, social stigma, pathologization, persecution, and police violence. However, it is critical to name this violence as a product of both transphobia and anti-Blackness. The long histories of enslavement, colonialism, and racial terror in the U.S. shape the particular ways in which Black trans women and femmes are targeted.
By naming this violence specifically as Afratransfemmicide, we refuse to abstract the experiences of Black trans women into broader categories that obscure the fact that Black trans women are being killed at rates not comparable with any other section of the transgender and gender expansive community. It acknowledges the violent realities that Black trans women and femmes face, especially in a society steeped in anti-Blackness.
Afratransfemmicides’ Link to Reproductive Justice
At the core of reproductive justice is the principle of bodily autonomy—the right to make decisions about one’s own body without fear, coercion, or violence. Black trans women, whose very existence challenges rigid societal norms, are often denied this basic right. The epidemic of Afratransfemmicide reflects a profound violation of bodily autonomy, one that is connected to broader struggles for reproductive justice. To achieve true bodily autonomy, we must confront the ways that anti-Blackness, transmisogyny, and state violence intersect to deny Black trans women their right to lives of dignity.
As revolutionary pioneers of transgender liberation like Stonewall Riots Veteran, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy have taught us, many Black trans women and femmes are also community caregivers and mothers. They are the foundation of many movements for justice, caring for others even as their own lives are devalued by the state and society. We owe it to them to call this violence what it is—Afratransfemmicide—and to fight for a world where their lives are not only mourned but celebrated and protected.
Bodily autonomy cannot be fully realized until we reckon with the violent realities of Afratransfemmicide. Only by naming and addressing this specific form of violence can we move toward a future where Black trans women are supported at the forefront of our fight for reproductive justice.
