Why Sex-Based Analysis Still Matters for Transmen
The statistics below are not included to reduce transmen to vulnerability. They show a pattern. Across several datasets, transmen and transmasculine people report forms of disadvantage that remain linked to female embodiment, social positioning, and gender nonconformity. These patterns are difficult to explain if sex disappears from analysis altogether.
Sexual Assault
Across several datasets, transmen and transmasculine respondents report high rates of sexual violence. Abern et al. found that 362 of 729 transmasculine respondents, or 50%, reported a history of sexual assault, compared with 72 of 193 transfeminine respondents, or 37%. The Trevor Project reports a similar pattern among LGBTQ+ young people: 49% of transgender boys and men and 45% of nonbinary respondents reported forced sexual contact, compared with 33% of transgender girls and women. These figures come from different samples and should not be treated as directly interchangeable. Still, they point in the same direction.
Westbrook’s review of violence against transgender people helps explain why these distinctions should not be flattened. Studies that group all transgender people together can obscure differences by gender identity, gender presentation, and type of violence. Westbrook notes that risk varies by form of violence: transwomen are especially visible in data on homicide and some forms of physical violence, while transmen and female nonbinary respondents show higher rates of sexual assault and intimate partner violence in some datasets. The point is not that one group is simply “more oppressed” than another. The point is that different groups experience different patterns of harm. For that reason, data on transgender people should be disaggregated wherever possible. Reported sexual violence is especially high among groups whose experiences often remain associated with female embodiment, including many transmen and nonbinary respondents.
Income and Poverty
Economic disadvantage is a persistent issue for transmen. A Williams Institute analysis of BRFSS data found a poverty rate of 33.7% among transgender men. The same report found a poverty rate of 29.4% among transgender people overall, compared with 21.6% among LGBT people collectively and 15.7% among straight men and women. The authors note that the transgender subgroup differences were descriptive rather than statistically significant, so the transmen figure should be read cautiously. Even with that caution, the pattern is clear: transmen are part of a broader transgender population marked by substantial economic vulnerability. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey similarly found high levels of economic hardship among transgender respondents overall, with 29% living in poverty and 15% unemployed.
Different Patterns of Violence
Closson et al.’s 2024 study of adults in California provides one of the clearest recent examples of why transgender data should be disaggregated. Using the 2023 California Violence Experiences Survey, weighted to provide state-representative estimates, the study compared women, men, transwomen, transmen, and nonbinary respondents. The authors examined past-year physical violence, sexual violence, and intimate-partner violence. Their measure of sexual violence was broad, including verbal sexual harassment, homophobic or transphobic slurs, cyber sexual harassment, physically aggressive sexual harassment, quid pro quo sexual harassment, and forced sex.
The differences were striking. Past-year physical violence was reported by 43% of transmen, compared with 24% of transwomen and 14% of nonbinary respondents. Past-year sexual violence was reported by 42% of transmen and 56% of nonbinary respondents, compared with 14% of transwomen. Closson et al. also found that transmen had elevated risk of intimate-partner violence relative to women in general, and the authors concluded that transmen faced especially high levels of past-year violence, with particularly high levels of intimate partner violence (IPV).
These figures should not be treated as a simple hierarchy of suffering. They show why disaggregation matters. Transwomen, transmen, and nonbinary people may all face serious vulnerability, but the forms of violence are not distributed in the same way. For transmen, the high rates of sexual violence and intimate-partner violence are especially important for any analysis of female embodiment, gender nonconformity, and sex-based vulnerability.