Counting the Transgender Community

[marmar]

from the American Prospect:




Counting the Transgender Community
A new initiative provides real numbers, for the first time, on how transgendered Americans are discriminated against -- and they're startling.

Nancy Goldstein | February 4, 2011 | web only


Transgender people live with a bull's-eye on their back. Anyone who denies this fact -- so hard for some to swallow in the wake of recent victories on marriage equality and "don't ask, don't tell" for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people -- is due for a wake-up call. Today, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) released "Injustice at Every Turn," a report based on the results of what is by far the country's largest transgender discrimination survey to date -- with 6,450 participants to the next largest study's 700.

This is important. Currently most surveys -- including the census and epidemiological studies -- contain zero questions about sexual orientation, never mind gender identity and expression. The consequences of not being counted, of being invisible, is that no one knows who constitutes the transgender community, what its members experience, or what their challenges or needs are. The many costs to transgender people include the fact that they are allotted little if any funding or resources on the state or federal level. That's even true of resources spread within an LGB community that often forgets the "T."

The organizations responsible for the new survey are working to correct for that. As Mara Keisling, NCTE's executive director says, "A lot of people think the plural of anecdote is data, but that's not true. Some of what we got supported what we always assumed. Some of it is very new." She referred to the 41 percent of respondents who had attempted suicide as "the most shocking number in the report," noting, "That's 26 times the national average." It's higher even than rates among members of the military and people diagnosed with chronic depression.

The rest of the report's clear, cold numbers illuminate what happens when discrimination in everything from health care, employment, housing, and education is pervasive -- and often, perfectly legal. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=counting_the_transgender_community

[jaxx]

1. Thanks for posting this article.