(PresidentialWire.com)- Despite only a single incident of anti-trans harassment in two years, the Washington DC Metro launched an ad campaign to fight “transphobia.”
In May, the DC Metropolitan Area Transit Authority pledged to make the “Metro safer” by placing advertisements at stations across DC warning that “transphobia” is not acceptable in the Metro.
One poster featuring the words “NOT IN OUR HOUSE” shows a white man yelling “transphobic slurs” at a person of indeterminate gender. The ad encourages Metro riders to report incidents of “transphobia” to the DC Metro Police.
But analysis from the Washington Free Beacon found that “transphobic” incidents rarely if ever occur on the DC Metro. Not one incident of harassment or violence based on race or gender has been recorded by Metro police in 2022 or 2021. In 2020, there was one incident of “transgender bias.”
According to federal data, of the anti-transgender incidents over the last decade, 99 percent were perpetrated by people of color. Anti-transgender hate crimes accounted for less than 3 percent of all hate crimes recorded by the FBI in 2020. Of those, the most common offenders were blacks.
In Washington DC, there were 28 anti-transgender hate crimes in 2020. None of the offenders were white. Over the last decade, white people were responsible for only two of the 217 recorded anti-transgender hate crimes in the nation’s capital.
So why make a poster showing a white guy harassing a gender-ambiguous Metro rider?
Well, the Washington Free Beacon was unable to get an answer as requests for information about the ad campaign and its costs went unanswered.
However, one employee from the Metropolitan Area Transit Authority told the Free Beacon that the agency keeps records on the incidents of harassment, but the employee refused to provide them. The Free Beacon also spoke with the agency’s anti-hate crime task force who said he wasn’t allowed to speak to reporters.
In April the DC government announced it was increasing police presence at Metro facilities after a spike in violent crimes. From April 2021 to April 2022, aggravated assaults at the Metro doubled.
