Trans

Journalist suspended from Twitter after simultaneously insulting black and trans people in Chelsea Clinton tweet

Andy Ngo

Andy Ngo was suspended from Twitter for violating rules against hateful conduct (The Post Millenial/Twitter)

A conservative journalist has been temporarily suspended from Twitter after responding to Chelsea Clinton with a tweet that managed to offend both the trans and the black communities.

Andy Ngo is the editor of The Post Millennial and has been variously described as a “perfidious pseudo-journalist” and a “right-wing provocateur“.

On November 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, he responded to a tweet from Chelsea Clinton raising awareness of the shockingly high rate of trans murders in the US.

“Since 2013, more than 150 trans people have been murdered in the U.S., the majority Black transgender women,” Clinton wrote. “On , we remember and honour the lives lost, hold their loved ones in our hearts and must commit to doing all we can to end this epidemic of violence and hate.”

This epidemic of transphobic violence has become so bad that the average life expectancy for a black trans woman in the US is just 35 years old.

This terrifying fact was lost on Ngo, who sought to minimise the issue with his reply.

“The US is one of the safest countries for trans people. The murder rate of trans victims is actually lower than that for cis population,” he said. “Also, who is behind the murders? Mostly black men.”

The US is actually far from the safest country for trans people, and was recently ranked 24 on the LGBTQ+ Danger Index.

Andy Ngo’s tweet was deemed to have violated the Twitter rules against hateful conduct and his account was temporarily suspended.

Ngo replied: “Stating a verifiable empirical claim with no value judgement attached is determined to be ‘hateful conduct’ by Twitter. The platform most used by journalists to communicate and counter ‘fake news’ also actively punishes individuals for communicating truths when they are deemed politically inconvenient.”

Transgender Day of Remembrance

LGBT protesters on the Transgender Day of Remembrance in West Hollywood, 2006. (Hector Mata/AFP/Getty)

While on the surface the trans murder rate does appear lower than that of the cis population, this is not an equivalent comparison as the lack of accurate and reliable data makes it impossible to know exactly how widespread anti-transgender violence really is. A large number of trans murders are not reported and many more are misgendered in police reports.

However, it is generally estimated that transgender women face 4.3 times the risk of becoming homicide victims than the general population of all women.

Ngo’s critics pointed out that he is known for “spreading hate speech about the transgender community and people of colour”, and urged Patreon to stop his funding.

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