Hate crimes against LGBTQ people have risen. Just check my inbox.

The email I received in late September was short and shocking, but the message was so violent, I forwarded it to my attorney, asking him to send a cease and desist letter to the sender — not a no-name incel on the internet trolling from mom’s basement, but an executive at a financial services company. It consisted of one line, in which the sender said they hoped that I would be sexually assaulted by a group of men. “Die whore,” it concluded, before adding the complimentary close: “Yours in Christ.”

These threatening emails have landed in my inbox with increasing frequency in recent months. While antisemitism and Islamophobia have been grabbing headlines, hate crimes against trans people and queer people like me are way up — and continuing to get worse.

According to the FBI’s annual crime report released last month, hate crimes against LGBTQ people have risen significantly — a 19% rise in 2022 over 2021. Hate crimes motivated by an anti-transgender bias rose more than 35%. The number of reported hate crimes is the highest since the FBI began tracking such crimes in 1991.

Hate crimes include everything from threats — like the email I received — to slurs to physical attacks. More than 20% of all hate crimes are now motivated by sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity.

Yet as alarming as the new FBI report is, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the numbers indicate that this kind of hate is disturbingly persistent: Experts estimate an average of 250,000 hate crimes took place each year between 2004 and 2015 in the United States. Most were never reported to law enforcement.

I did not report that email, nor any of the dozens I have received in recent months. Nor did I report any of the threatening tweets I’ve received on Twitter/X, like the one that was just two long guns propped up by the doorway of the man’s house with a simple message: “Coming for you.”

The reasons behind the increase in attacks against queer people aren’t hard to decipher. In response to the FBI’s 2022 report, Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, noted that “hostile rhetoric from fringe anti-equality figures” as well as passage of anti-LGBTQ laws have “created an environment where it was sadly foreseeable that individuals with violent tendencies might respond to this rhetoric.”

A recent joint report from the Anti-Defamation League and the LGBTQ organization GLAAD describes some of the rhetoric and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community, including demonstrations against drag shows, bomb threats against hospitals that offer health care for LGBTQ people, and, of course, the mass shooting that occurred one year ago and took the lives of five people at Club Q in Colorado.

The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 506 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S., including three in Pennsylvania and six in New Jersey. In 2022, Pennsylvania was behind only Texas and Florida among states with the highest number of school districts that have banned books. A Central Bucks School District policy bans “sexualized content” in its libraries, which targets LGBTQ books; This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson and Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe were among the books removed. Last fall, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was forced to increase security because of threats targeting the hospital’s clinic for gender-affirming care.

That vile rhetoric has, in fact, turned deadly. In August, O’Shae Sibley, a dancer and Philadelphia native who was gay, was killed in an alleged hate crime in Brooklyn. Just weeks later, Lauri Carleton was fatally shot for refusing to take down the Pride flags that adorned her clothing store in Southern California.

That vile rhetoric has, in fact, turned deadly.

The cumulative effect of all this rhetoric, and the micro- and macroaggressions that so many LGBTQ people are experiencing, is painful and traumatizing. Back in April, I wrote on Twitter/X: “I spent my entire PTSD therapy session talking about how under threat I feel due to all the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and hundreds of anti-LGBTQ laws being promoted and passed. I could feel my [blood pressure] rising as we talked. My therapist warned me it was only going to get worse.”

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We have to combat the hate. In order to do that, we have to get better reporting on the breadth of the problem — and people like me have to report these crimes to the police, even though it’s uncomfortable and law enforcement has not, traditionally, made LGBTQ people feel heard with regard to crimes against us.

As Robinson, of the Human Rights Campaign, noted, we can’t combat the hate if we don’t have a full picture of what’s happening. “If we’re going to bring a stop to that violence,” she said, “we need a full accounting of just how many hate crimes are taking place.”

Taking these attacks seriously is essential — and that includes those of us who are victims stepping up as well and making our voices heard. People must stop targeting us — whether they are politicians or people on the internet.

A singular message that contains obscene or threatening language like the one I received is also illegal. So the next violent email I receive won’t just go to my lawyer — I’ll also send it to my City Council member, to the Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs, and to my local district police station.

It’s hard to carry all this animus alone. Allies are needed. The Human Rights Campaign offers a downloadable guidebook to help LGBTQ people, their families, and allies. The Trevor Project has a series of resources available to manage the impact of so much hate.

But as with any form of terrorism — and make no mistake, that’s what all this hate is — if you see something, say something. Report anti-LGBTQ attacks on social media. And most importantly, tell the queer and trans people you know — and love — that you are indeed an ally. Then be one.

Victoria A. Brownworth is a local writer and reporter. She is the recipient of the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for Journalist of the Year from the NLGJA Association of LGBTQ Journalists and the Curve Foundation Award for Excellence in Lesbian Coverage.