September 19, 2024 - 10:55am

A new work of art has been unveiled to great fanfare in London. Hundreds of masks of human faces are suspended on a metal frame on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, where they will remain for the next 18 months. The installation, by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, has echoes of a macabre Aztec artefact, a 15th-century tower of skulls discovered in Mexico City. But that isn’t the most striking thing about it.

According to the Guardian’s review yesterday, Mil Veces in Instante (a thousand times in an instant) is “a memorial to all transgender victims of violence”. There are countries where high numbers of transgender people are killed, and Mexico is one of them. The UK most definitely is not, with some research suggesting that trans individuals are less likely to be murdered than the rest of the population. That’s not the impression created by the 726 faces posed eerily above the fourth plinth, all of them belonging to “trans and non-binary communities in Britain and Mexico”.

It’s pure propaganda, bolstering the zombie claim — it’s been debunked many times — that transgender people are disproportionately at risk of murder in this country. It’s a foundational tenet of gender ideology, which holds an international transgender day of remembrance each November, making emotional claims about the number of people murdered as a result of “transphobia”. Politicians accept such claims uncritically, especially in the US where the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, marked last year’s day of remembrance with a statement about people who have been “targeted and killed for living authentically and courageously”.

In an atmosphere where people live in perpetual fear of causing offence, the notion that transgender individuals are braver and more vulnerable than the rest of us is rarely questioned. It ignores the fact that in countries where high numbers of trans people are murdered, the victims are often involved in the incredibly dangerous commercial sex trade. A report in 2019 suggested that 90% of trans-identified males in Brazil depend on prostitution to survive, exposing them to the jaw-dropping levels of violence associated with selling sex.

In Mexico, 52 trans people were murdered in 2022-23, the most recent year for which figures are available. But 11 women are killed every day in a country where the failure to protect women is a national scandal. In May alone, 335 women and girls were murdered, suggesting that this year’s total could reach 4,000. Thousands of Mexican women and girls are missing, their fate unknown.

The UK has its own problem with violence against women, with police chiefs finally recognising it as a “national emergency” a couple of months ago. Two or three women are killed by a current or former partner each week. One in 12 women will experience male violence every year, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

There’s no mention of that in Trafalgar Square. Women never asked to be put into a demeaning competition with transgender people, and every victim of violence should be able to obtain support and justice. But the hyperbolic claims of trans activists have created a situation where the latter feel more at risk in the UK than they really are. In a triumph of rhetoric over reality, we now have a prominent memorial in the heart of London to hundreds of people who haven’t been murdered in this country.


Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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