People on the Left are accusing conservatives of inciting violence by attacking gender activists. Criticisms of “drag queen story hours,” teachers who recruit children to secret communities for gay and transgender students, librarians for putting pornography aimed at children in school libraries abound.

I and others point out the obvious: what they are doing is exhibiting all the behaviors of sexual groomers, recruiting children to participate in sexualized activities inappropriate for their age. They encourage children to “transition,” get mutilating surgeries, sterilize themselves, and perform sexualized shows for adults.

Is our criticism of these activities inciting violence? And if so, is that criticism unacceptable?

It is a legitimate question. If people are getting hurt or killed, what responsibility lies with people who are taking on the groomers? Is there any?

And since many of the victims of these crimes are not engaged in the activities we are criticizing, what level of responsibility do we have for violence against totally innocent people? I and nobody I know wants any part of violence, or to spark it.

Twitter account *notices* things happening

Journalist – "this is targeting" https://t.co/EuPsY9SRsd

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 21, 2022

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way: the vast majority of homosexuals and transgender-identified people are not engaged in grooming children. Many gay people have stood up and critiqued the transgender ideological movement’s recruitment and propagandizing of children. They understand that there is a vast difference between what is appropriate for adults and what is inappropriate for children.

Gays Against Groomers is a coalition of gay people who oppose the recent trend of indoctrinating and sexualizing children under the guise of “LGBTQIA+”.

THREAD 🧵

— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) June 29, 2022

I know plenty of gay people, and I suspect none of them of harboring pedophilic tendencies, or of anything besides having different sexual preferences than I. I know two transgender people, and I can say the same thing about them. I don’t get it, but I don’t fear them either. They should not live in fear of violence, and as far as I know they don’t.

Although the local gay nightclub here is a local hotspot for violence, it has nothing to do with targeting gay people. This is Minneapolis, and violence is the norm downtown.

With that out of the way, let’s get down to facts and arguments: there is actually no vast expansion of violence being aimed at transgender people. It is simply not there in the statistics.

The murder rate for transgender-identified people is actually lower than the national average. The epidemic of hate and violence toward transgendered folks is a myth. I would expect that they, as with any group outside the mainstream, get more than their share of nasty words thrown at them, but violence and murder? The evidence is not there.

According to the Williams Institute at UCLA there are 1.6 million people who identify as transgender in the United States. The Human Rights Campaign claims that 57 people who are transgender were murdered last year. The murder rate in the US is 6.52 people per hundred thousand. Hence the expected number of murders out of a population of 1.6 million would be 104, or almost twice as many people as identified by the HRC.

That is remarkable, and seems implausible to me. I would have expected the murder rate to be above average, given the basic demographics of the transgender population in terms of location, income, and other “comorbidities” too numerous to mention. Certainly below average murder rate is good, not evidence of an epidemic of hate.

Other kinds of violent crimes do appear to occur more often to transgendered people, but it is difficult to know how the demographics shake out in terms of race, income, drug use, where people live, etc. Without knowing those factors it is difficult to say to what extent being transgender itself impacts likelihood of being subject to violent crime.

What we can say is that murder rates are lower than average for transgendered folks than cisgendered folks, and that rates of other violent crimes are higher for them. Both stats need explanation beyond “transgender.”

In short, as awful as some hate crimes indeed are, the statistics don’t indicate any wave of violence being sparked by criticisms of transgender individuals. America is a violent country compared to some.

Leftists are using a mass shooting to try and blackmail us into accepting the castration and sexualization of children. These people are just beyond evil. I have never felt more motivated to oppose everything they stand for, with every fiber of my being. Despicable scumbags.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 21, 2022

Further, we have other evidence that the claim that criticizing the transgender ideological movement has not sparked unusual violence: hundreds, perhaps thousands of teachers, students, doctors and others have advertised and celebrated their activities on TikTok and other social media platforms. Many of them gleefully describing their grooming activities or participation in transgender-related recruiting.

These people have not been targets of attacks. They parade around, are easily accessible, are not hiding, and are, to borrow a phrase, “out and proud.” There are no lynch mobs. There is a debate about what they are doing, and anger that they are doing it. If these people are afraid of “stochastic terrorism” they have a funny way of showing it.

You can find thousands of videos of people bragging about their activities, giving loving descriptions of pronouns, moral lectures and preening sessions. There clearly is not an epidemic of fear, but a love fest for such people. They get vast amounts of approval, including special attention from the President of the United States.

Teacher says she asks students for names and pronouns and is careful when communicating with parents so she doesn’t “out” a student.

A kid can be living a double life, identifying as transgender or non-binary only in school and it will purposefully kept a secret from parents. pic.twitter.com/rSS7zrCJtm

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 17, 2022

As an “out and proud” Republican I can assure you that I have gotten more than my share of criticism, and when I was an identified public figure I got death threats. There are crazy people who do obnoxious things. Ask any celebrity–most of the big ones have a lot of security. Even minor ones get threats.

The local schoolteacher with the transgender pride flag on TikTok doesn’t have security, and doesn’t need it.

Chaya Raichik, AKA “Libs of TikTok,” does get death threats all the time. Such is the life of a person in the public eye. As far as I can tell you are much more likely to be the target of threats–including from the FBI itself–if you critique the gender ideology movement than if you are transgender.

Being subject to criticism is not the same as being subject to violence, and it shouldn’t be characterized as such. The whole, and wholly new, “stochastic terrorism” accusation is ridiculous.

It’s so implausibly stupid I had to write it out.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 20, 2022

In short, my answer to the question of whether critics of gender ideology are sparking or responsible for violence is pretty simple: the epidemic of violence is not in evidence, and unless somebody is inciting violence directly they cannot be held responsible for the behavior of insane people.

Critics of the public school system are not responsible for school shootings; critics of Republicans were not responsible for the baseball field attack on Steve Scalise and other Republicans; and critics of drag queen story hours are not responsible for shootings of gay nightclubs. Maxine Waters is responsible for the harassment of Trump Administration officials in restaurants because she directly called for it.

Calling for violence makes you complicit, even responsible. Criticizing people makes you a participant in public life.

Easy peasy. Not hard at all to understand this.

The suspect in the shooting that killed five at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub late Saturday night was previously arrested in 2021 on suspicion of making bomb threats.https://t.co/QFYfnMVtHk

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) November 20, 2022

If we want to reduce violence in America a good start would be putting all these “known wolves” in jail when they commit crimes, rather than let them roam free to commit more, and more violent crimes. So many of the vicious killings in the US recently were committed by criminals known to be violent by law enforcement. The people–other than the criminals themselves–most responsible for their latest crimes are the prosecutors who just let them walk free.