Elderly Transgenders

Majority of transgender people will face some sort of discrimination in their lifetime whether it is through being rejected by their families, denied housing or finding employment. “Employment discrimination forces many to become involved in the street economy and in survival crime. Widespread bias and ignorance among law enforcement and other officials mean that transgender people are disproportionately subjected to arrest and, in turn, imprisonment.” (al, 2011)

In the late 1950’s to mid-1960’s, the transgender community faced discrimination such as physical and verbal harassment, denial of social spaces, and alienation in the media. This matters to us today because transgender individuals are still existing and are a part of our human population today. The community is also still struggling to find their representation in the media and in society. The transgender community is still facing a wide array of types of discrimination, from nasty looks to denied access of education. Gender identity should not be taken into consideration when determining another person’s worthiness of respect.

Scholars have been critical of the medical establishment’s and state’s involvement in constructing and policing of transgender identity. These kinds of pressing issues have occupied the small existing literature. There is not much information and studying what is being done on transgender in traditional areas, family studies research, such as their dating behavior and formation of intimate relationships in adulthood. There is little research on the issues around being parents, their children’s experiences with having transgendered parents, as well as relationships in the family as a whole, and relationships in work and school.

Regarding access to healthcare, transgender individuals often face the most obstructive barriers when attempting to receive care. Whether they are seeking access to hormones, therapy, general health services, reproductive healthcare, or specialty healthcare, transgender patients typically cannot get what they need without jumping through many hoops or hiding their identities. This occurs especially so in cases of intersecting identities -- where an individual is not just transgender, but is transgender and a person of color, disabled, gay, indigenous, undocumented, poor, etc. These intersecting identities interact in multifaceted ways to produce even more barriers for trans individuals seeking healthcare due to healthcare provider bias, insurance requirements, and doctors’ general unwillingness to help coupled with inaccessibility founded on racism, transphobia, homophobia, mental illness stigmatization, etc.

In addition to the economic vulnerability of older adults, being a part of the LGBT community makes dealing with disparities connected to aging even more difficult because many LGBT elderly experience increased isolation due to a lifetime of stigma. Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen a Ph.D. professor and the director of Healthy Generations cited a study called Caring and Aging with Pride. In this study 2,560 demographically diverse LGBT older adults across the nation mention similar concerns related to Isolation, finding friend support, caregiving and health. Fredriksen-Goldsen mentions how LGBT older adults are

Relocating into a senior care facilities can be a frightening experience for the aging population. Getting familiar with new surroundings, new organization structure, and new people that can cause anxiety to rise. For a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer individual, this experience can be traumatic. The fear of harassment, hostility, and neglect by healthcare providers and caretakers can keep LGBTQ people from seeking care until their health begins to critically decline. LGBTQ cultural competency training is highly recommended for healthcare professionals and social service organizations. The greatest barrier that prevents quality health care for LGBTQ people is the lack of competence among the healthcare professionals.

The transgender population often have complicated medical needs and encounter numerous health disparities including discrimination, lack of access to quality health care and social stigma. Some health disparities include various chronic diseases, cancers, as well as mental health issues (Vanderbilt University, 2017). Transgender individuals are at increased risk of HIV infection with their rates being reported “over four times the national average of HIV infection, with higher rates among transgender people of color (Grant, Mottet, Tanis, 2011).” In addition, they usually do not have health insurance (Makadon, 2017) and have a lower probability of preventative cancer screenings in transgender men (AMSA, 2017).

During the holocaust, a large faction of people were subjected to horrible hardships that killed many, and scarred those that weren’t given the luxury of death. The Jewish were this faction; they were sent to ghettos and concentration camps, treated like animals, starved, and even burned alive. Similar events are going on today, though not quite to this extent. People are discriminated against for their skin color, sexuality, or gender by legislature, in the workplace, and in daily life. In “Experience of Career-Related Discrimination for Female-to-Male Transgender Persons: A Qualitative Study,” Franco Dispenza and his colleagues did a study on the different types of discrimination and their impact on female to male transgender men. The holocaust

Of the study’s 25 participants, 20 were female-to-male. The authors determined the main problem for the participants was the struggle to find transgender-sensitive health care. The subjects described discrimination by healthcare systems, lack of knowledge and hostility by providers, and lack of health insurance to cover transgender-specific healthcare needs. Some of the FtM participants who had problems with pelvic pain, abnormal uterine bleeding, and a history of abnormal Pap tests kept their gender as female on their insurance so they could still get the care they needed. Using a national cross-sectional survey data set, Shires and Jaffee (2015) reported similar findings. Of the 1,711 FtM participants included in this study, 41.8 percent reported verbal harassment, physical assault, or denial of equal treatment in a doctor’s office or

Transgender people are a diverse population of individuals who cross or transcend culturally defined categories of gender ( Bockting ,Miner, Romine, Hamilton and Coleman, 2013). The world is evolving and people need to become acceptance of others especially transgender individuals. Transgender individuals are a group of people most vulnerable to workplace discrimination (Bailey, 2013) due to those that are prejudice or dislike the ideal of those unknown to them. Therefore, for those people that are not aware of how to confront their prejudice or biases towards people that are transgender, they should be more open minded to understand and accept diversity. There is a lot we need to learn about this phenomenon so having the willingness to understand

Transgender issues cover a a multitude of spheres: discrimination (at school, in the workplace, when looking for housing), violence, suicide, and identification through legal documents to name a few. Transgender individuals deal with greater struggles than that of cisgender individuals, or those who identity as the gender which they were assigned at birth. Perhaps one of the greatest struggles transgender individuals have to deal with is acceptance, whether it be acceptance from others or acceptance of themselves. Cisgender individuals, or those who identify with the gender identity given at birth, do not have to worry that their gender identity will be accepted; society has already dictated it to be ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’ (“Definitions of Terms”). Trans individuals are not afforded this luxury.

Gender discrimination is a huge problem within a health and social care setting. Men and women, service users and/or staff, have the right to not be discriminated against in the workplace. However, it still occurs till this day and goes against their rights, especially now that there a transgender people. Many people are against this, causing disruptions everywhere. The elderly in care homes might be refused certain things due to their gender and who they are. An example can be if there ever was a transgender elderly in a care home and they would need assistance in using the toilet, they would be denied access in using the toilet they prefer and would feel more comfortable with all due to the fact that the carer believes that that is wrong

While discrimination is pervasive for the majority of transgender people, the intersection of anti-transgender bias and persistent, structural racism is especially severe. People of color in general fare worse than White transgender people, with African American transgender individuals faring far worse than all other transgender populations. Many transgender people are also the targets of hate crimes. They are also the victims of subtle discrimination—which includes everything from glances or glares of disapproval or discomfort to invasive questions about their body parts (Bassichi, Lee, & Spade, 2011). Discrimination laws and hate crimes laws encourage us to understand oppression as something that happens when individuals use bias to deny

In addition to the everyday challenges of aging, LGBT older people face an array of unique barriers and inequalities that can

According to Hagg and Fellows (2007:4), sex generally refers to anatomy and biology such as male or female, whereas gender refers to the qualities and behaviours society expects from a boy or girl, a man or woman. The definition of transgender refers to a person having no identification with, or no presentation as, the gender one was assigned at birth (Hagg and Fellows 2007:4). The definition of transsexual in Hagg and Fellows (2007:4) refers to a person who had undergone a sex change operation or a person identifying with the opposite sex.