The Erasure of Trans Men of Color is Undermining Anti-Violence Advocacy--Here's Why That Matters

In the fight against anti-trans violence, one group remains consistently overlooked: trans men, especially trans men of color. While advocacy campaigns and media coverage have made leaps in highlighting the brutal realities faced by trans women—especially Black trans women—the near complete absence of trans male voices from these conversations is more than a representational gap. It’s a systemic and structural failure that distorts public understanding, weakens policy responses, and leaves entire communities vulnerable.

Let’s be real: advocacy often gravitates toward the most visible narratives, but visibility is not the same as completeness. When campaigns and media spotlight only certain trans experiences, others are pushed into silence. Trans men of color, in particular, are frequently erased from these conversations, despite facing significant risks of violence and discrimination. As Dean Spade argues in his 2024 article for the Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, erasure itself is a form of violence—one that “undermines intersectional resistance and distorts the legal frameworks meant to protect trans people.' By failing to recognize trans men of color, advocacy not only overlooks their lived realities but also weakens the broader movement for justice.

The Florida Times--Union

It must be stressed that while the data doesn’t lie—it doesn’t include everyone. The Human Rights Campaign’s 2024 report, An Epidemic of Violence, tracks fatal violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people. But even in this comprehensive effort, trans men are barely visible. The report notes that underreporting and misidentification–often by law enforcement or media–lead to skewed statistics that fail to reflect the true scope of violence against trans male individuals. This data gap has real consequences. Funding decisions, policy priorities, and legal protections are often based on these numbers. When trans men are missing from the data, they’re missing from the solutions.

Media coverage reinforces the silence. A 2025 report from Media Matters titled "Corporate broadcast and cable news ignored fatal anti-trans violence in 2024” reveals that major networks like ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News devoted a combined total of just three minutes to covering fatal violence against trans people in all of 2024. The report highlighted that the violence against trans men was almost entirely absent from these segments, reinforcing a dangerous narrative that only certain trans lives are worth mourning. This erasure isn’t accidental-it’s cultural. As C. Riley Snorton explores in Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, the historical invisibility of Black trans men is rooted in dominant narratives that fail to recognize their existence, let alone their vulnerability.

Advocacy that doesn’t include everyone isn’t advocacy. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, found that trans men reported high rates of physical and sexual violence, particularly in schools, healthcare settings, and interactions with law enforcement. One respondent described being beaten by classmates while teachers looked away, another recounted being denied medical care after revealing his identity. Yet a decade later, these findings are rarely cited in public discourse or policy debates. When advocacy campaigns fail to include trans men, they fail to address the full spectrum of the trans experience. This makes it harder to build inclusive coalitions, harder to push for reforms that protect all trans people, and harder to challenge the systems that perpetuate this violence.

The consequences of exclusion ripple outward. Policy makers rely on data to allocate resources, but when trans men are invisible in statistics, they are invisible in funding priorities. Advocacy organizations often tailor campaigns to the stories most visible in media, which means trans men rarely see themselves reflected in outreach or support services. This invisibility also weakens coalition-building. Communities fractured by selective recognition struggle to unite against shared systems of oppression. As one organizer from Black Transmen Inc. has emphasized, “We cannot fight for liberation if some of us are erased from the fight.”

Some argue that centering trans women–especially Black trans women–is necessary because they face the most urgent threats. That’s true. But inclusion is not a zero-sum game. We can–and must–center those most at risk while also acknowledging the violence faced by trans men of color. Ignoring them doesn’t make advocacy stronger; it makes it incomplete. Erasure doesn’t just silence individuals–it distorts the entire narrative. And when our understanding of anti-trans violence is distorted, our solutions are too.

Inclusion doesn’t mean dilution--it means accuracy. Media outlets must commit to covering trans male experiences with the same urgency and depth they bring to other trans narratives. Advocacy organizations must ensure their campaigns reflect the full spectrum of trans identity, including trans men of color. Policy makers must demand better data collection practices that accurately reflect gender identity and race. Without these changes, trans men of color remain vulnerable to both violence and erasure.

Trans men of color are not footnotes in the fight for trans equality. They are central to it. Their stories—of misidentification, of violence, of resilience—must be heard alongside those of trans women. Until they are fully seen, heard, and protected, our advocacy remains unfinished. To erase them is to weaken the movement itself. To include them is to strengthen it, making resistance truly intersectional and justice truly comprehensive.