Why The Transgender Community Is The Single Most Important Step Toward A Healthier Life?

Imagine being born and being yourself for a good eleven years and on your twelfth birthday getting a card that dictates how you have to be for the rest of your life and changes everything you were before you received this card, whether you wanted to or not. This is what happened to me when the horrendous biological change of puberty occurred. I could no longer be me I had to be her and despite knowing what it meant to be a girl and why I was considered one I was never her. It took a whole lot more googling and frustrating questions to come to the conclusion that maybe my gender didn’t correspond with the one assigned at birth. The term transgender made my head spin.

Over the past few years, the issues faced by people who identify as transgender (gender dysphoric) have gained momentum in the media. From Caitlyn Jenner to which bathroom to use, transgender people have made a lot of progress in addressing

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.

Grossman, Arnold H. Anthony R. D’Augelli. “Transgender Youth: Invisible and Vulnerable.” Journal of Homosexuality. Vol. 51, No. 1 (2006): pages 111-128. Web. 25 June 2015. Arnold H. Grossman, a professor of Applied Psychology at New York University, and Anthony R. D’Augelli, professor of Human Development at Pennsylvania State University, did a study of Transgender youth from ages 15 to 21. The study was designed to determine the factors that affect the youth, who either identify as transgender or their gender does not fit the normal gender descriptions. Focus groups were used as nonthreatening environment to examine the youths’ social and emotional experiences. The study not only provided insight on their emotional and social experiences but

In a lot of places around the world more and more people are coming out as “Transgender.” The term transgender means that the person’s gender identity does not correspond with the gender they were assigned as having at birth. From personally having a transgender boyfriend I have since realized that these people experience a lot of discrimination in and from society. Many people simply just do not understand what the term transgender means and they see it as someone just “wants to be a man” or “wants to be a woman.” While there may be people who present it this way, it is more so that the individual just “feels” different, and “feels” as if they are “in the wrong body.” Some people experience this feeling at a young age as my boyfriend did in his elementary age. We live in a world who put these people down for being who they truly are, and no human being wants or needs that.

There has been an increasing number of cases in the United States involving transgender children going through gender social transition. Transgender people are individuals who have a gender identity that does not correspond with their sex at birth (Olson, Durwood, DeMeules, & McLaughlin, 2016), and these individuals may undergo several forms of transition. Gender social transition can be defined as the situation in which individuals make changes in their social life by expressing themselves and live according to the gender that they identify with, instead of their sex at birth. These life changes may include using a different name, using different pronouns, changing physical appearances on the surface level (e.g., clothing, hairstyle), and even using a bathroom that aligns with the person’s identity. However, these changes do not include any medical or hormonal intervention. Thus, making it purely social intervention. This phenomenon also appears amongst children, which raised debates among the people, including the scientific community. Existing psychological literature have studied children who experience gender dysphoria (GD), defined as a sense of discomfort that resulted from from incongruence between gender identity and assigned sex (Steensma, 2013). The term was historically known as gender identity disorder (GID). The psychology community have explored the topic on whether or not parents should allow their children to go through gender social transition, and the

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

In America today, change is occurring all the time. It seems so simple just to make a change in the world or within ourselves, but in reality, the people of our society are terrified of the idea of change. Change can come in many ways, such as in technology, education, the workforce, etc., but a big change that seems to be an issue in the world today is the idea of change in gender, also known as transgender. Transgender can be defined as, “denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex” (Merriam-Webster). People struggle to wrap their head around those who are transgender because it is not what they were taught growing up. Even though being transgender is becoming more and more familiar today, the concept of changing gender is difficult for people to obtain and is negatively impacting society and the workforce today.

American governmental laws which imply gender are written on the principle that there are two sexes, male or female. However, with nearly 700,000 transgender people living in our country today, these laws overlook a large portion of society(Gates, 20011). Men and women making a change from one sex to another sometimes struggle to fit in our society.Transgenders must overcome some obstacles and laws that can affect their passport, break laws of discrimination, determine what sports they may participate in, and laws that even limit their health insurance plan.

Disclosure of transgender identity is one of the most challenging yet personally liberating pronouncements that an individual can share with others. Verbalizing their self-identity can be a struggle for transgender individuals due to fears of social disapproval, rejection, loss of loved ones, discrimination, ostracism, verbal harassment, and violence (Shira Maguen, 2007).

Who hasn't been told to "just be yourself and people will like you?" It seems like such a simple notion. But what if being yourself could lead to harassment, rejection, isolation, unemployment, homelessness, physical violence, or even death? Not so simple anymore, is it? Sadly, this situation is one that confronts transgendered people worldwide on a daily basis.

This is the first time that a president has said the word “transgender” in the State of the Union address. These words were not said by any accident and should not be taken lightly. All the cases he named are actually some of the most widely discriminated groups of people in the country, as well as the world. The group i’d like to analyse is that of the transgender community. I myself as well as people who are dear to me do not identify with the socially “correct” understanding of gender or sexuality. August 14th of this year marks the 15th murder of a trans individual, an all time high. (Time) Subsequently, I’ve witnessed hate, and I now hope to have a clearer understanding through a sociological analysis. Using the theories and tools of thought I will explore discriminatory actions taken against them, how these actions affect their standards of living and even their personal health. Understanding this, then I’d like to speak on what we as a first world are repairing these issue in comparison to other nations.

Have you ever gone somewhere and felt completely out of place, like you didn’t belong there? Maybe you have felt that way at a party, at the beach, at school, or maybe even just being on your own sports team? Transgenders have that feeling everyday, they often feel completely out of place in everything they do. They feel as if they’re in the wrong body, and that they are not who they are supposed to be. Being transgender is about the gender someone identifies with, such as being born a boy but feeling like they should be a girl and actually identifying themselves as a girl or vise versa. Identity and expression are two of the most important factors in the way people see themselves and take part in their surroundings. When someone feels they are in the wrong body or not the person they feel they should be, their entire world feels upside down. When someone When someone decides to identify as a different gender than they were born with, a transgender, every aspect of their entire life can and does change. After changing genders their sports team can change, they have to deal with constantly being judged by their peers, switching their name, and even thinking about which bathroom they should use at school or in a public place. For example, last track season at Bay High, we were at a track meet against Niceville and the 4x400 relay was about to start, and a transgender boy, he was born as a girl but now identifies as a boy, had to run in the girls relay, the officials and

This increased awareness has brought light to a once hidden population. Despite the major advances of civil rights in recent year, many gender minority adolescents still face discrimination, bullying, isolation, and rejection (Mayer, Garofalo, and Makadon, 2014). Gender minority refers to the transgender and gender nonconforming individuals whose current sex is not the same as the sex they were born with; whose gender expression falls outside the social norms for their current sex (Reisner, Greytak, Parsons, and Ybarra, 2015). In comparison to cisgender (non-gender minority) people, those that are considered gender minority appear to be disproportionately affected by health disparities (Reisner, Conron, Tardiff, Jarvi, Gordon, and Austin,

The social issue that I chose which affects society today is transgender inequality. These issues are more recently gaining attention and becoming a prevalent topic of inequality within our country. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. As more and more transgender people share their stories in the media, the social problems that arise from these stories are discrimination within their everyday lives. They suffer from scrutiny and judgment from their peers, and thus many hide their gender identity from family and society. This social injustice can be as simple as a glance or staring, or offensive comments and questions to violent hate crimes. Transgender people are prone to violence and harassment, and often not feeling safe in any aspect of society. They are fired from jobs, denied medical insurance, and being murdered left and right solely for being transgender. “A staggering 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%)” (National Center for Transgender Equality). The structure of this paper will consist of adding all the research that was gathered over the semester, news articles and peer