The Transgender Community Is Becoming More And More Accepted

Internal conflict is something that the transgender community knows all too well. Feeling as though you are living in the wrong body can do serious damage to the way that someone sees themselves. One of the hardest time for transgender teens is puberty. Researchers have said that “This is a particularly hard age, since the body begins to change and adapt gender specific features (breasts, changes in genitals, menses, etc..). Transgender individuals have reported “I was disgusted by (hair, breasts…etc)” (Ami B. Kaplan, 2014). It already puts a child or teen under great stress to see themselves living life as a gender they feel is completely wrong, but, as puberty begins to hit and they see this body changing it only increases that self-hatred that slowly builds. Even though transitioning can be the best decision a transgender person might make, it can still be just as difficult to finalize this. Many transgender youth have said that they have “Fears about finding a partner, feelings about having to experience surgeries, hormones, (and for MTF transsexuals) facial hair removal and voice changes, and fears about violence and prejudice when one is read transgender”(Ami B. Kaplan, 2014). Even when the option to transition arises, doubt may still linger. Some transgender youth that have gone through with transitioning face many issues emotionally such as “Disappointment that transitioning didn’t solve all problems, level of satisfaction with appearance, level of satisfaction

Here in Canada, this issue has been brought forward in both communities and provincial level of concerns. To take a look closer to home, the city of Toronto had witnessed the complexity of this issue in the past years. A Toronto transgender teen who identifies as a male, was banned from using his high school boys restroom, and was forced to leave school grounds and search for a public bathroom at a gas station. Concerns were mentioned for the safety of Spencer, and also how he felt uncomfortable being forced to use the women’s restroom; however, several parents and students agreed with how the school was taking action to this problem. After a petition was enacted by fellow supportive students, Spencer was allowed to freely use the restrooms at his high school.

In class, we have learned and discussed how during the period of adolescence, it is known that this is the period of time where individuals are finding themselves and figuring out where they belong. It is during this time where individuals are the most sensitive and personal problems tend to arise more commonly during this stage. A major issue adolescents struggle during this stage is gender identity and sexuality. Adolescents are trying to figure out who they are attracted to and how they perceive themselves to be. While the norm is to identify oneself as their biological gender, there are those who develop gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a reoccurring feeling that one’s biological gender is the opposite of one’s sexual identity (Cole,

Historically, trans students have had a difficult time in having adequate bathroom access. Many schools do not have policies that allow trans students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. This creates a difficult learning experience for the trans student, because they are put into uncomfortable situations. Trans students are more often than not to use the bathroom and locker that matches their biological sex and not their gender identity. They are then placed into a bathroom that is not for their gender, it is the same as forcing a man to use the women’s restroom. It further enforces that there is a gender binary, that is a socially accepted norm, and that trans students are not a part of it. Students should all feel

A cultural population that is possibly the most marginalized and misrepresented in health care, is the transgender and gender-nonconforming community (TGNC). Sex and gender are two different concepts. A person’s sex refers to their biological status as either male or female, or the assigned sex at birth (Bradford, 2016). Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture claims as masculine/male or feminine/woman (Nobelius, 2004). Gender identity is the feeling a person has of being male or female or a combination of both. It is how the person see’s themself. TGNC people connect with a different gender than their birth gender (Dickey, Budge, Katz-Wise & Garza, 2016), in other words, their gender identities do not match with the sex or the gender role expected by society.

Despite the transgender population’s small size, more people identify as transgender now than in any previously recorded time period. This is largely due to social movements that aim to improve upon and normalize LGBT experiences. As it becomes more common to think outside of traditional gender roles and the Western gender binary, more individuals discover that they do not psychologically conform to the genders they are assigned at birth and instead seek to make social and physical transitions that better align with their chosen gender identity. For many, the decision to transition is partly due to gender dysphoria, a feeling of unease in one’s body because it does not match their gender identity. This discomfort can be severe enough to cause

The biggest factor that needs to be understood, addressed, and dealt with is the rate of suicide of transgender students. Transgender students in high school and college are more likely to attempt suicide at a point in their life if they are not offered gender appropriate programming, housing, bathrooms and locker rooms, counseling, health care, and having name changes on records and documents. There have been countless times that I have gone into the women’s restroom, because I am not fully transitioned and I know that I do not pass as well as I would like to, and I get a mean look or someone tells me I’m in the wrong restroom. I have been at work cleaning the restrooms and a women asks me to leave so she may use the restroom, because she

Some believe it’s best to support children in transitioning from one sex to another, typically citing the common trend of poor mental health in trans kids unable to transition as a crucial factor in the debate. Others, however, are more hesitant to allow children to make this decision as they think children are too young to know their gender identity without any doubt. As children as young as five are asking to transition, fearing that they don’t fully understand their gender identity does makes sense. Should children that young be allowed to make serious life decisions such as transitioning? Without an easy answer, the high suicide rate of trans kids whose identities aren’t accepted, combined with the high number of trans people who are murdered in the US (Human Rights Campaign) show the how deeply uncomfortable the country is towards gender non-conforming people. Because much of the fear surrounding gender transitioning stems from a long history of ingrained gender roles, society needs to reconsider why gender is treated as such a strict binary and why anyone who crosses those lines makes them so nervous. By better understanding the science and history behind gender identity, people can begin to break the long tradition of gender socialization that creates such a hostile environment for trans kids to grow up

Across America there are a select group of people that are faced with the challenge of choosing between the labels “Men” and “Women”. These particular labels are what separate who can use what restroom. Some want to use the men’s restroom, but fear there might be consequences that come along with it. Others want to use the women’s restroom, but are worried about possibly being assaulted. One might question why would there be consequences toward a man for using the men’s restroom, and a possible assault toward a woman for using the women’s restroom? This is where the term Transgender comes in. Transgender refers to those “who claim a gender or expression different from the one assigned at their birth”. Transgender individuals can be gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, and a number of other things. The distress of being bothered in the restroom leads many transgender individuals avoiding them altogether. If transgender individuals continue to use the restrooms that match their biological gender and not a form of a gender neutral restroom, some transgender individuals can face the dangers of harassment, consequences, and possible assault.

There has been a lot of questioning and a huge debate concerning the rights of transgender people. Some subjects are concerned about which bathroom or changing room they can go to when needed. They are worried enough to be stating that a transgender person has the right to choose any bathroom, or locker room that he or she prefers. It began in 2016 when the Obama administration banned sex discrimination in schools. That is when the Education and Justice Departments enforced school districts and colleges to allow transgender students to use whichever bathroom or changing room they needed. At this point, many school districts were worried about federal funding being withheld if they didn’t follow through with the enforcement made by the Education and Justice department.

My opinion about this question is that transgenders should not be allowed to go in any bathroom they chose because no one would want to see a man in the women's restroom or a female in the men's restroom. “It's clear that a transgender person being forced to use a bathroom that is designed primarily for one sex rather than another would be disadvantaged, but how many students in any one school is actually a transgender? Are we supposed to build them an entirely separate facility, and if we did would that not make them stand out more as being different? It would be more practical to make all bathrooms

For a person who is transgender, gender dysphoria sets in at a young age. The individual is uncomfortable and displeased with their biological sex because it does not match their gender identity. This is compounded with societal norms that use symbolic interactionism to show what the gender expression should look like. The pressure from family, friends, and society can cause discomfort and disappointment with the biological sex they are born, which results in anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems. The dysphoria often is a promoter to make the individual change their body and gender expression to be more in line with what is felt to be their gender identity. "A lot of the trauma that gender dysphoric children particularly experience is the lack of validation, the kind of ongoing, 'No, you 're not what you say you are; you are what the

Joe is a fifteen-year-old boy whom is in the process of transitioning into the gender that he identifies. As of now, he is in the gender non-conforming stage of his transformation. “Should I use the women’s restroom? Should I use the men’s restroom? What if someone harasses or assaults me if I go in there? I just do not know what to do.” This could go through the mind of someone going through the non-passing phase of transitioning into a transgender individual. Lately, there has been heavy discussion on the rights of transgender individuals to use public facilities. These thoughts and conversations have been bubbling in the past few months since President Trump took office in January. Gender-neutral restrooms is a large topic discussed in

When going to the restroom, you’re always expecting to see someone of the same gender. But, what if you saw someone of the opposite gender in the same restroom as you are? Some schools do not allow transgender students to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. Transgender people should have the choice to use restrooms of their desired gender.

In the past few years alone, the world as a whole has become remarkably aware of the transgender community. With this have come historic advances in civil rights for transgender people; however, discrimination continues to be a significant problem. In the United States, one public issue that has surfaced is public bathroom use; many individuals are opposed to transgender people’s using the gendered bathrooms of their choice simply because the genders assigned to them at birth are different from their gender identities.