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Transgender topics |
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Violence against transgender people includes emotional, physical, sexual, or verbal violence targeted towards transgender people. [1] The term has also been applied to hate speech directed at transgender people [2] and at depictions of transgender people in the media that reinforce negative stereotypes about them. [3] Trans and non-binary gender adolescents can experience bashing in the form of bullying and harassment. [4] When compared to their cisgender peers, trans and non-binary gender youth are at increased risk for victimisation, which has been shown to increase their risk of substance abuse. [4]
Institutional discrimination against trans people due to transphobia or homophobia is a common occurrence for trans people. [5] [6] [7] Hate crimes against trans people are common, and "in some instances, inaction by police or other government officials leads to the untimely deaths of transgender victims." [8] Protections against violence for transgender people vary by jurisdiction.
Unlike gay bashing, anti-trans violence is committed because of the target's actual or perceived gender identity or gender expression, not sexual orientation.
At least since the Stonewall riots in 1969, people from the greater trans communities have often been politically aligned with the lesbian, gay, and bisexual communities. [9] However, researchers and some activists from the greater trans communities argue trans bashing should be categorized separately from violence committed on the basis of sexual orientation ("gay-bashing"). [8] [10] Anti-trans bias crimes have been conceptually and characteristically distinguished from homophobic crimes in the scholarly research. [11] One argument is that conflating violence against trans peoples with violence against gay people erases the identities of people in the greater trans communities and the truth of what happens to them. However, campaigns against gay bashing and trans bashing are often seen as having a common cause. [12]
In the murder case of Gwen Araujo, the perpetrators accused of hate crimes against her tried to use a trans panic defense, an extension of the gay panic defense. [13] [14] The jury deadlocked, but there is evidence they rejected the trans panic defense. One law journal provided an analysis of the trans-panic defense, arguing in part that the emotional premise of a trans panic defense (shock at discovering unexpected genitals) is different from the emotional premise of a gay panic defense (shock at being propositioned by a member of the same sex, perhaps because of one's repressed homosexuality). [15]
The United Nations adopted their Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as the first global declaration of human rights. [16] There are a number of articles in the declaration that have been suggested to specifically pertain to transgender people and violence (including, but not limited to, physical, psychological, legal, systemic, emotional, and political violence), although LGBT rights are not explicitly outlined in the document.
Transgender rights are legally protected by the law of Pakistan via the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 which prohibits discrimination and violence against trans people in the country. [18]
In the United States, currently seventeen states plus the District of Columbia have hate crime laws protecting people victimized on the basis of their gender identity (they are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Utah, Washington, and Washington, D.C.). [19]
The Matthew Shepard Act expanded the federal hate crime laws to include gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. In order to qualify as a federal hate crime in the United States, the crime must include successful or attempted bodily injury due to the use of firearm, explosives, weapons, fire, or incendiary devices. [20] Hate crimes are covered by state, rather than federal laws unless the victim or defendant travel across state lines or national borders; using an interstate commuting route; the weapon has been brought across state lines; or if the conduct interferes with or otherwise affects commerce across state lines. [20] This means that, unless hate crimes under the federal definition occur in a way that does not just affect one state, states have the freedom to implement their own hate crime laws. The protections of these laws range widely. Pennsylvania, for example, has not included gender identity in their hate crime protections since it was rescinded from the law in 2008. [21]
In the late 2000s in Seattle's gay village of Capitol Hill, there was evidence of an increase in incidents of violence against trans people. [22]
Bathroom bills are bills proposed with relation to bathroom access and gender identity. [23] There have been a number of bills proposed in the United States intended to limit access to restrooms for those who do not identify with the sex on their birth certificate. Some of these bills are justified with the rationale of protecting cisgender women from violent acts committed by cisgender men entering their facilities under the pretense of identifying as transgender women, although there is no evidence thus far of any instances of this. [24] [25] [26]
Some transgender people are content, and may even prefer, using gender-neutral bathrooms, but others expect the right to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. The Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network found that singling out trans students by offering them alternative facility options may backfire by increasing their chances of disengaging from school or dropping out entirely. [27] Using bathrooms that are incongruent with the gender one presents as breaks social norms while following laws, and one study found that cisgender people report discomfort at the incongruous appearance between someone's gender presentation and the bathroom they're in even when the bathroom matches their assigned sex. [28]
Transgender people are more likely to be harassed in bathrooms by cisgender people than vice versa. In one survey, 70 percent of the transgender respondents had faced discrimination when attempting to use a restroom of their gender identity, including "denial of access to facilities, verbal harassment, and physical assault." [29] An example of such harassment occurred in 2018, when California Republican Congressional candidate Jazmina Saavedra said she heard the "voice of a man" from a locked stall in the women's restroom of a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles and filmed herself chasing the person out of the restaurant with assistance from the restaurant manager. In the video, Saavedra said she was prepared to use pepper spray and a stungun against the transgender woman. [30] This kind of tactic can result in public outing of a transgender person's current or former gender identity.
One survey of transgender populations conducted in Washington, DC, by the group DC Trans Coalition, "found that 70 percent of survey respondents report experiencing verbal harassment, assault, and being denied access to public toilets." [29] It also found that "54 percent of all respondents reported having some sort of physical problem from trying to avoid using public toilets, such as dehydration, kidney infections, and urinary tract infections" making access to safe restrooms a public health issue. [29] [31]
On 23 February 2020, a restaurant patron in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico made a police report that a transgender woman had entered the women's bathroom. Police arrived at the restaurant and spoke to the transgender woman. Someone filmed the police interaction and posted the video to social media. Later that day, the transgender woman—Alexa Negrón Luciano, also known as Neulisa Luciano Ruiz—was murdered. [32]
In 2018, a transgender woman was killed by a mob in Hyderabad, India, following false WhatsApp rumors that transgender women were sex trafficking children. Three other transgender women were injured in the attack. [33]
Despite having legal protections, trans people in Pakistan continue to be targets of violence. [34] Between 2015 and September 2020, 68 transgender people were killed in Pakistan, and 1,500 were sexually assaulted in multiple incidents. In 2018, transgender people reportedly experienced 479 violence incidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. [35]
In 2019, Amnesty International published a report indicated Shama, a transgender journalist, was raped by nine men in one of Pakistan's cities, Peshawar. [36]
In September 2020, a prominent transgender activist Gul Panra, was shot six times. [37] [38] Nayyab Ali was allegedly sexually assaulted and attacked by acid as a result of her being transgender. [39]
Hate crimes against transgender people in England, Scotland and Wales, as recorded by police, increased 81% from the 2016–17 fiscal year (1,073 crimes) to the 2018–19 fiscal year (1,944 crimes). [40]
Media can contribute to trans bashing through misinformation and scare tactics. Transgender individuals are oftentimes misrepresented negatively in media, or not represented in media at all. Transgender individuals may be portrayed in the media as curiosities or oddities, as mentally unstable persons, as predators or as thieves. [41] A public example of this is the attention paid to the transition of Chelsea Manning, a transgender U.S. Army soldier imprisoned for releasing classified documents to WikiLeaks. [42] A Fox News story on Manning's transition was introduced with the Aerosmith song "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)", while host Gretchen Carlson referred to Chelsea by her deadname, mocking The New York Times for "helping him" by using Manning's preferred gender pronoun. [43] The Army refused to let her grow her hair as long as female prisoners, and continued referring to her using her deadname so as "to avoid confusion" until a court mandated her correct gender pronouns. [44]
According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report on Health and Health Care (NTDSR), which surveyed 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming people, people who do not identify with their birth sex face obstacles to getting healthcare and have a greater likelihood of facing health issues related to their gender identity. [45]
Transgender people experience greater mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, [46] and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as physical health disparities (e.g., cardiovascular disease [47] ). From The 2015 National Transgender Survey Report out of 27,715 respondents "forty-eight percent (48%) have seriously thought about killing themselves in the past year, compared to 4% of the U.S. population, and 82% have had serious thoughts about killing themselves at some point in their life." [48] Trans people also have a higher rate of suicide attempts than the population as a whole. [49] In 2013, 2.2% of U.S. adults had attempted suicide [50] while 41% of trans people had attempted suicide at some point in their life in 2011. [45] The rate of attempted suicide in transgender individuals increased to 51% for those bullied or harassed in school, 55% for those who recently lost a job due to bias, and 61% and 64% for those who were victims of physical and sexual assault, respectively. [45] Low self-esteem in transgender people has been linked to being at high-risk for HIV transmission. [51] [52] In 2008, the rate of HIV in transgender women in North America was 27.7%. [53]
In the 2010 and 2011 NTDSRs, 19% of the people surveyed reported having been refused medical care due to their gender identity and 50% reported lack of provider knowledge of transgender health needs. [45] [54] Under the Affordable Care Act, it is illegal for any health program receiving federal funding to discriminate based on gender identity. Discrimination includes refusal to admit, treat or provide any services that are available for other patients; subjection of patients to intrusive examination; harass or refuse to respond to harassment by other staff or patients; refusal to provide support services; obligation to participate in conversion therapy; and any sort of interference in the pursuit of health care rights. [55]
Race has been shown to compound manifestations of existing discrimination on the basis of gender identity. [45] [54] Black trans women have the highest suicide rate of any other group in the United States, at almost half attempting in their lives, while cisgender black women attempt suicide at a rate of 1.7% on average. [56] Trans students of color face higher rates of harassment and violence in schools. [45] American Indian transgender students face the highest rates of sexual assault in school at 24%, followed by multiracial (18%), Asian (17%), and black (15%) students. White transgender students face a 9% rate of sexual assault in K–12. [45] Black trans women have a higher rate of HIV infection than other groups, with a 30.8–56.3% rate, versus 27.7% of MTF transgender people on average. [53]
In the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 22% of respondents who had interacted with the police reported harassment due to bias. 20% reported denial of equal services. 48% reported being uncomfortable asking for police assistance. Respondents who had served time in jail reported a higher rate of harassment by officers than by others in jail. For all respondents, 7% reported being held in a jail cell solely due to gender identity expression, while this number was 41% for black and 21% for Latino trans respondents. [45] Transgender people have reported being refused medical care, particularly hormone therapy, in prison, with black trans people and American Indian trans people with the highest reporting rates. [45]
Transphobia consists of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger towards people who do not conform to social gender roles. Transphobia is a type of prejudice and discrimination, similar to racism, sexism, or ableism, and it is closely associated with homophobia. People of color who are transgender experience discrimination above and beyond that which can be explained as a simple combination of transphobia and racism.
The LGBTQ community is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning individuals united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBTQ activists and sociologists see LGBTQ community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society. The term pride or sometimes gay pride expresses the LGBTQ community's identity and collective strength; pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. The LGBTQ community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBTQ community.
Gay bashing is an attack, abuse, or assault committed against a person who is perceived by the aggressor to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ+). It includes both violence against LGBT people and LGBT bullying. The term covers violence against and bullying of people who are LGBT, as well as non-LGBT people whom the attacker perceives to be LGBT.
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is a legal aid organization based in New York City at the Miss Major-Jay Toole Building for Social Justice that serves low-income or people of color who are transgender, intersex and/or gender non-conforming. The organization was formed in August 2002 by attorney and transgender civil rights activist, Dean Spade. The project was named for Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist and veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, who died the same year that SRLP was formed.
The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the U.S. state of Utah have significantly evolved in the 21st century. Protective laws have become increasingly enacted since 2014, despite the state's reputation as socially conservative and highly religious. Utah's anti-sodomy law was invalidated in 2003 by Lawrence v. Texas, and fully repealed by the state legislature in 2019. Same-sex marriage has been legal since the state's ban was ruled unconstitutional by federal courts in 2014. In addition, statewide anti-discrimination laws now cover sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and housing, and the use of conversion therapy on minors is prohibited. In spite of this, there are still a few differences between the treatment of LGBTQ people and the rest of the population, and the rights of transgender youth are restricted.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in the United States are among the most advanced in the world, with public opinion and jurisprudence changing significantly since the late 1980s.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Azerbaijan face significant challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal in Azerbaijan since 1 September 2000. Nonetheless, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are not banned in the country and same-sex marriage is not recognized.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, non-binary and otherwise queer, non-cisgender, non-heterosexual citizens of El Salvador face considerable legal and social challenges not experienced by fellow heterosexual, cisgender Salvadorans. While same-sex sexual activity between all genders is legal in the country, same-sex marriage is not recognized; thus, same-sex couples—and households headed by same-sex couples—are not eligible for the same legal benefits provided to heterosexual married couples.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Mongolia face legal and social challenges not experienced by non-LGBT people, though there have been substantial improvements since the 1990s. Homosexuality was criminalised in Mongolia in 1961 through its Criminal Code. Following the Mongolian Revolution of 1990 and the peaceful transition to a democracy, homosexuality was legalised and awareness about LGBT people has become more prevalent. Hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity result in additional legal penalties. Hate speech based on these two categories has been outlawed in the country since 1 July 2017. Households headed by same-sex couples are, however, not eligible for the same legal protections available to opposite-sex couples.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
In the United States, the rights of transgender people vary considerably by jurisdiction. In recent decades, there has been an expansion of federal, state, and local laws and rulings to protect transgender Americans; however, many rights remain unprotected, and some rights are being eroded. Since 2020, there has been a national movement by conservative/right-wing politicians and organizations to target transgender rights. There has been a steady increase in the number of anti-transgender bills introduced each year, especially in Republican-led states.
Discrimination against non-binary people, people who do not identify exclusively as male or female, may occur in social, legal, or medical contexts.
Transgender inequality is the unequal protection received by transgender people in work, school, and society in general. Transgender people regularly face transphobic harassment. Ultimately, one of the largest reasons that transgender people face inequality is due to a lack of public understanding of transgender people.
Sexual encounters in private between two adults are legal. Although homosexuality was decriminalized, LGBT Dominicans still endure discrimination and violence due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. In a 2014 poll, almost three quarters, 73%, of people in the Dominican Republic alone have said that members of the LGBT community have experienced some sort of violence or discrimination. Members of the LGBT Community in the Dominican Republic are victims of hate crimes, extortion by the police, and discrimination when it comes to resources and employment services. They also face discrimination when seeking treatment from health care systems. Between 2006 and August 2015, there have been 32 reports of possible hate crimes against transgender people.:5
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBTQ topics:
A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a statute that denies access to public toilets by gender or transgender identity. Bathroom bills affect access to sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on a determination of their sex as defined in some specific way, such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds to their gender identity. A bathroom bill can either be inclusive or exclusive of transgender individuals, depending on the aforementioned definition of their sex.
The Massachusetts Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Initiative is a state-wide referendum passed by Massachusetts voters in the 6 November 2018 mid-term election that prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender identity. The vote upholds language which was already present in the state anti-discrimination statute, defeating an attempt to veto it by public referendum. It is the first state-wide anti-discrimination statute passed by referendum supporting transgender rights in the United States.
Discrimination against transgender men and transmasculine individuals is sometimes referred to as transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, or transmisandry.
Transphobia in the United States has changed over time. Understanding and acceptance of transgender people have both decreased and increased during the last few decades depending on the details of the issues which have been facing the public. Various governmental bodies in the United States have enacted anti-transgender legislation. Social issues in the United States also reveal a level of transphobia. Because of transphobia, transgender people in the U.S. face increased levels of violence and intimidation. Cisgender people can also be affected by transphobia.
Transgender genocide or trans genocide is a term used by some scholars and activists to describe an elevated level of systematic discrimination and violence against transgender people.