The trans and gender diverse community is now at a greater risk of violence than ever before, a NSW inquiry into historical LGBT hate crimes has heard.
The special commission of inquiry is investigating suspected hate crime deaths in the state between 1970 and 2010, and is this week focusing on legal, social and cultural issues during the period.
Writer, advocate and academic Eloise Brook today told a public hearing in Sydney trans people were "swept up" in the increasing violence which was a reaction to queer visibility in the '80s and '90s.
Dr Brook said the delineation between different groups within the broader LGBT community was far less during those decades.
"No one took the time to find out whether someone was trans, a trans woman, or gay, when they were perpetrating violence against them," she said.
Dr Brook, who is also the Health and Communications Manager at the state's main support service The Gender Centre, expressed concern about transphobic or discriminatory media reports.
She said while there has always been a degree of media interest in trans people, it is now "unparalleled", with another article targeting the community published every week, whether it be over sport, children, or other topics.
"It is important to recognise that violence against the LGBTIQ community is not a purely historical phenomenon," Dr Brook wrote in her statement to the inquiry.
"In some ways the trans and gender diverse community is now at a greater risk of violence than ever before."
Since 2008, an international advocacy organisation, Transrespect vs Transphobia Worldwide, has collected the names of trans and gender diverse people murdered each year.
Dr Brook said Australia had contributed only two names to the list, which she said was in no way an accurate reflection of the true number.
During her evidence, she explained how the "bureaucratic process of death" can be harmful, because it focuses on protecting the victim's families or loved ones and any information a coroner may have excludes gender diversity.
"So we frequently have people who, perhaps were trans women, trans men, who have been killed, who in death are misgendered towards their birth gender," Dr Brook told the hearing.
"We don't have a clear way of being able to identify those community members that we lost."
Official data like that which is collected from Australia's Census every four years is also problematic, she said, because the processes still "struggle to identify anything outside of a binary gender — male or female".
"There have been moves since 2016 to try to address or to change this, but those attempts have been somewhat laughable," Dr Brook said.
In 2016, the Census recorded there were 1,263 people who were part of the trans or gender diverse community.
When asked if that was accurate, Dr Brook replied: "It sounds like The Gender Centre's Facebook group".
The inquiry continues on Friday.
