Understand the LGBTQIA+ news: 350 Transgender People Murdered - a "significant" increase from last year

We refuse to give more energy, data or traffic to Elon Musk - last night, we archived our X account.

Twitter was once a source of news that no one else was talking about. A place for the LGBTQIA+ community to coalesce and build movements. Somewhere for the queer sector to get their news out. That Twitter is long gone.

Since Musk bought the platform, it has moved from a platform with standard issues to one that has fuelled the most pervasive of hate campaigns. Campaigns that may seem grassroots but are instead run by bots and right-wing think tanks that have promoted the most fringe views into the mainstream. A far more sinister agenda is at play. 

We've been preparing for this shift for some time, but the election - and Trump appointing Musk to a murky quasi-government role sealed the deal.

So last week, we launched our Bluesky account with furvore, and my goodness, it popped off. Growing faster than any account we've had before, it tells me just how much of a difference it makes to be on a platform prioritising safety and wellbeing.

Rather than having to monitor replies, the handful of hate comments we've got so far have been labelled as such and hidden from view. Blocks actually mean blocks. You can unlink quote posts to reduce the impact of pileons.

The platform is far from perfect and not as open as other platforms on the federated web - but for now, we're embracing our role as the only verified LGBTQIA+ publisher on the platform's news feed.

Understand the LGBTQIA+ headlines and keep track of the latest queer content and perspectives. The QueerAF newsletter is written by Jamie Wareham and a different queer creative each week.

💬 This week:

• Murdered: The annual list of names of the transgender people murdered in the last year has been released. We help you understand the increasing numbers.
• Nex Benedict: A report has found the non-binary teen's school failed to intervene in the bullying they were facing.
• Hope from History: This trans awareness week, we look to Trans+ History for a lesson that not only have we always been here, we're survivors even in the most difficult of times. This week's Queer Gaze is in collaboration with Trans+ History Week.

Skip the doomscrolling and support queer creatives instead. We are QueerAF – and so are you.

350 Transgender people were murdered this year in a "significantly" increasing cycle of violence

TL:DR: The numbers are likely only the tip of the iceberg, but this year's Trans Murder Monitoring project has tracked 350 murders of transgender people in the last year, which the report’s authors say is a "significant increase" since last year.