Asklemmy

People use to say that you cant lie with statistics, but is a common practice to use statistics to lie.

We can take the infamous 41% suicide rate for trans people. Transphobes throw that out like a killing move implying that trans people are inherently unhappy and being trans is a mental illness (which is not true).

The reality is that the suicide rate is so high because of transphobia, kids getting thrown out of home, homelessness, unable to find a job, staying at the closet to avoid social consecuences, etc.

Trans people who live in more open and accepting environments are way less likely to be depressed and commit suicide. In progresive areas where trans people are more accepted the suicide rate is nowhere near 41%.

One of my favorite Brian Regan bits kinda fits, maybe?

"In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. One thing led to another and the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on the sovereign nation of Japan."

The average human has less than 2 arms.

"Vending machines are more deadly than sharks".

While it's true that (at least for some years) more people are killed by vending machine accidents than shark attacks, your personal risk depends on what you do. If you're a vending machine factory worker who never goes into the ocean, you're far more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark. But if you live in a part of the world that doesn't have vending machines and you swim in the ocean every day, the reverse is true.

Women have smaller brains than men.

I mean, yes. Women as a population are physically smaller than men as a population.

Women have smaller fingers than men. Smaller eyes. Smaller lungs. There is no "gotcha" that smaller skeletal frames with smaller skulls contain, by volume, a smaller organ.

Doesnt mean every man's brain is larger than every woman's brain either.

Doesn't mean men are smarter than women.

It's just a statistic, that while true, doesn't imply what some people think it does.