Let's give the numbers: the victims of homotransphobia in 2024

Reflections by Massimo Battaglio del homophobia.org project

2024 ends with two ugly episodes of homophobia that occurred in the last days of the year, in Turin and Rome respectively:

Turin, 12/29/2024: Leaving a gay evening, two boys are surrounded by six thugs and beaten to death. One also had the two cell phones he had with him stolen. The boys, in a video, don't talk about homophobia but name the place they went to. It's clear that the matrix is ​​that.

Rome, 31/12/2024: Sthepano, 26 years old, and her boyfriend Matteo, 22, are returning home from a New Year's Eve party with friends. From the first floor, 10 very young thugs come down and, to the sound of homophobic insults, beat them to death: broken nose, head trauma, various bruises.

There are a total of registered victims 144less than previous years. The average of the last twelve years is in fact 156 victims per year. We reiterate, however, that it is better: there are fewer registered victims. This does not mean at all that the phenomenon of homophobia is decreasing. On the contrary, perhaps we have regressed to the times when we didn't report it for fear of retaliation or we didn't pay attention to the phenomenon.

Let us now look at the data broken down by type (single attacks, group attacks, murders, suicides, attempted suicides, other types of homophobic acts). The suspicion is confirmed that our research has only reached a small fraction of the people involved.

In fact, it is noted that, in the vast majority of cases, the victims have suffered acts of physical violence, ranging from attacks on a single person (which rose from 27% on average to 29.2% in 2024) to multiple attacks (which increased by seven percentage points compared to the average, i.e. from 21.9% to 28.5%). Suicides are back in the spotlight. They go from an average of 2.9% to 4.2%. On the contrary, the percentage of non-physical acts, which are more difficult to detect because they require the involvement of the victim, fell from 45.8% to 37.5%. It turns out that only the undeniably more serious facts, impossible to pass over in silence, come to light. Only homicides are decreasing.

The same comparison between the data relating to the 12 years of research and that of the last year carried out for genders and gender identities once again confirms the suspicions. In fact, the proportion of male victims once again becomes a large majority. It is a sign that women find it more difficult to report - while the percentage of people with a non-cisgender sexual identity remains perfectly constant.

It must be said that the data examined here does not yet include those that will arrive in a few days from the various shelters for LGBT+ people with housing difficulties. However, it will be difficult for them to reverse the trend. In fact, some of the guests of these centers have already publicly denounced the wrongs they suffered before arriving there. Therefore, their stories are already present among those examined so far.

It seems that, in the political climate that Italy is experiencing, homotransphobia is no longer a priority and therefore is no longer newsworthy.

It is necessary to refine the research tools, not so much on the analysis side but on the data collection side and, even before that, on the interception of the stories. In this regard:

• It is good to invite all the listening centers of Italy (specialized and not, partly or not of the network of the la Tenda di Gionata) to evaluate with special attention any history in which they recognize the imprint of homotransphobia and communicate its extremes to homophobia.org
• It is good to awaken the attention of all political operators (MPs, regional, municipal and district councillors) by sending them an email as already done - very usefully - at the time of the discussion of the Zan DDL.
• It is a good idea, to the extent possible, to identify at least two people per region who take it upon themselves to check the local news on a weekly basis, which are usually more attentive to the phenomenon, and report it to homophobia.org

We underline that, however, our research has often proved very useful in the fight and debate on homotransphobia. Indeed:

• In the current year, the undersigned has carried out three public initiatives on the subject, organized by three different municipal administrations, in which he illustrated the research "Chronicles of Ordinary Homophobia".
• Over the course of the twelve years of research, around twenty similar initiatives were carried out, organized both by public bodies and associations, both in person, in the form of videoconferences and in television broadcasts.
• In Vigils for overcoming the violence of homotransbiphobia, the material collected has always been fundamental.