Mick Hartley

I suggested, some time ago, that we should be putting up more plinths in Trafalgar Square – a fifth plinth, a sixth plinth, and so on – rather than debating what should go on the current plinths. We could even give them names rather than numbers: the Black Plinth, the Plinth of Wales, the Plinth of Darkness. Alas it never happened, and here we are: the latest fourth plinth addition is  “a memorial to all transgender victims of violence”. *Sigh*.

From the Guardian:

Margolles has created this artwork – called Mil Veces un Instante, or A Thousand Times in an Instant – at a time when femicide has reached a staggering scale in Mexico. “Eleven women are killed in this country every day,” the director of Amnesty in Mexico told the Guardian in 2022. “We have at least 20,000 women who are missing in Mexico.” Juárez, where Karla died, is one of the most dangerous places for women in the country. Shouldn’t the vulnerability of trans women in Mexico be seen as part of this wider onslaught on women? Yes, obviously…

No, obviously. Trans women are men, not women. This work, by depicting men, is a calculated insult to all those murdered and disappeared Mexican women who are, as per usual, ignored and forgotten. 

Joan Smith at UnHerd:

There are countries where high numbers of transgender people are killed, and Mexico is one of them. The UK most definitely is not, with some research suggesting that trans individuals are less likely to be murdered than the rest of the population. That’s not the impression created by the 726 faces posed eerily above the fourth plinth, all of them belonging to “trans and non-binary communities in Britain and Mexico”.

It’s pure propaganda, bolstering the zombie claim — it’s been debunked many times — that transgender people are disproportionately at risk of murder in this country. It’s a foundational tenet of gender ideology, which holds an international transgender day of remembrance each November, making emotional claims about the number of people murdered as a result of “transphobia”. Politicians accept such claims uncritically, especially in the US where the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, marked last year’s day of remembrance with a statement about people who have been “targeted and killed for living authentically and courageously”.

In an atmosphere where people live in perpetual fear of causing offence, the notion that transgender individuals are braver and more vulnerable than the rest of us is rarely questioned. It ignores the fact that in countries where high numbers of trans people are murdered, the victims are often involved in the incredibly dangerous commercial sex trade. A report in 2019 suggested that 90% of trans-identified males in Brazil depend on prostitution to survive, exposing them to the jaw-dropping levels of violence associated with selling sex.

In Mexico, 52 trans people were murdered in 2022-23, the most recent year for which figures are available. But 11 women are killed every day in a country where the failure to protect women is a national scandal. In May alone, 335 women and girls were murdered, suggesting that this year’s total could reach 4,000. Thousands of Mexican women and girls are missing, their fate unknown.

Once again it's the men who win out and get the attention and the sympathy, while the women get nothing.