A vigil is being held in Norway for trans-identified persons murdered in gender-identity based hate crimes despite the fact no such murders have been recorded in the country in over 10 years.
“Transminnedagen” will take place on November 20, and be observed by a march in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. According to the Facebook Events page, the vigil is intended to “remember all trans people who have been killed in the past year, and highlight the violence and discrimination trans people experience in Norway.”
The event is being sponsored by five different Norwegian activist groups, including the Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity (FRI ā foreningen for kjĆønns- og seksualitetsmangfold), which has been influential in directing Government policy.
FRI, which originally focused on advancing the rights of the gay and lesbian community, shifted its campaigning towards destigmatizing fetishes as it began to take up the cause of transsexual lobbying.
Since 1996, FRIās activism has focused on pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to declassify fetishes and paraphilias as mental health disorders. In 2018, the organization, which often displays the āBDSM prideā flag, was successful in their campaign to have sadomasochism, transvestic fetishism, and general fetishism re-classified as variants in sexual arousal both in Norway and abroad.
Since news of the Trans Day of Remembrance has spread, many Norwegian women’s rights advocates have pointed out that no trans-identified people have been murdered in the country on the basis of their gender identity in over 10 years.
According to Tansrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT), there has been no murders of trans-identified people in Norway since they began logging data in 2008. TvT is a trans activist-run collective which records the murders of trans-identified people worldwide. The project collects data through internet searches in collaboration with trans rights organizations.
Since news of the event has spread, trans activists involved in the organization of the vigil have scrambled to find examples to justify the event, pointing to a single case of a trans-identified person being murdered from 2019. But it has been established that the victim’s gender identity was not a factor in the crime.
Oscar AndrĆ© Ocampo was a 15 year old female who was murdered in 2019 by her adopted father after she revealed to her adopted mother that he had been sexually abusing her. One year prior to her death, Ocampo had changed her legal name in the national register as she had allegedly begun identifying as a boy. The tragic murder was unrelated to the child’s trans identity, and was instead understood to be motivated by the abuser being confronted by his wife over the assaults.
Violence against women and girls is a pervasive issue in Norway. Seven women have been murdered by male partners in the country since April of this year. 166 women have been murdered by a partner since 2000, compared to only 16 men.
Despite the low rates of gender-identity based crimes in the country, Norwegian officials have brought in broad “transphobia” hate crime laws which have been used to target women’s rights campaigners.
Christine Jentoft, an FRI advisor who has been promoting the Trans Day of Remembrance vigil, filed criminal charges against a representative of a feminist organization for not validating his self-declared identity as a “lesbian.”
Jentoft filed a hate crime report with police after Christina Ellingsen of Womenās Declaration International (WDI) Norway said that males like Jentoft should not call themselves lesbians. Ellingsen is currently under criminal investigation for a series of tweets and statements she made on biological sex. If convicted, Ellingsen could face up to 3 years in prison.
On Twitter, Jentoft slammed women’s rights advocates who correctly noted that no trans-identified people had been murdered due to their gender identity in Norway as “transphobic.” He also suggested that there may be some “hidden” deaths, claiming murders are not discussed due to Norwegian cultural etiquette. Though Jentoft continually asserted that anyone claiming there had been no transphobia-motivated murders in the country was “wrong,” he was unable to provide any examples.
Jentoft and other activists ultimately switched to claiming the event was to honor international deaths, as well as general “hate crimes” against transgender people within the country.
Norway introduced āgender identityā into its hate crime legislation in January of 2021.
At the time, WDI Norway (formerly WHRC Norway) warned that the introduction of the concept into law wouldĀ result in the prosecution of womenĀ for stating biological facts. WDI observed that the law could be used to criminalize women’s rights advocates for accurately sexing males, especially in situations of male violence against women.
In December of 2021, a Norwegian man became the first to be convicted under the revised hate crime legislation after “misgendering” a trans-identified individual during a Facebook messenger conversation. The man was sentenced to 21 days in prison, suspended, and a 15,000NRK ($1,400 USD) fine.
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