Browsing by Subject "Transgender"

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Despite numerous studies demonstrating high rates of discrimination and poor mental health among transgender people in Western countries, little research has been conducted on this population in Sri Lanka. As such, the primary objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of discrimination experienced by transgender people in the workplace, health care, and family settings. Additionally, we investigated the potential association between discrimination and adverse mental health outcomes, including current depression, anxiety disorders, and low self-esteem. In Galle, 100 transgender participants were recruited through snowball sampling and then completed the survey through face-to-face interviews. The survey consisted of five sections: sociodemographic information, mental health scales, and discrimination experience in the workplace, health care, and family settings. We reported the prevalence of discrimination and adverse mental health outcomes. We also estimated the prevalence ratios of current depression and anxiety disorder, which are associated with work inaccessibility and workplace discrimination, adjusting for age, education, and gender identity in separate Poisson regression models. The study found that school harassment (67%), workplace insults (63.5%), and work inaccessibility (47.4%) were the most commonly reported types of discrimination among transgender participants. Among them, the prevalence of current depression, anxiety disorder, and low self-esteem were 44%, 38%, and 81%, respectively. Furthermore, work inaccessibility was associated with a 16% increase in the prevalence of depression. Workplace discrimination, as measured by two categories (1 or 2 types of discrimination, ≥3 types of discrimination) was associated with greater prevalence (41%-56%) of depression and anxiety (22% - 46%) than non-discrimination, although all of those associations were not statistically significant. The high prevalence of discrimination against transgender people presented in the study highlights the urgent need for legislative changes to protect their rights. Future studies should aim to identify coping resources and develop evidence-based interventions to minimize the adverse mental health consequences of discrimination. It is expected that the researchers and transgender voluntary groups who had been involved in the study may transform the study results into meaningful real-world interventions.

Transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people have historically had a bad relationship with Christianity. We have experienced rejection, physical harm, and spiritual violence justified in the name of faith. Such a history of trauma means it is hard for transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people to find refuge and sanctuary in the church. Those who have reconciled or remained connected to faith are often looked upon suspiciously by others within our communities. Even the most affirming churches fail to recognize the unique needs of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people. Many others stand by and remain complicit in the harm done in the name of faith. Using memoirs and resources written by and about the lives and experiences of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people, this resource equips pastors and lay leaders to understand better the spiritual needs of transgender, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people and communities.

This dissertation turns to illiberal state violence and state formation in Latin America’s Southern Cone region as the ground for trans politics and activisms. Focusing on the entanglements of Argentine trans politics with histories of dictatorship (1976-83), I ask: how do contemporary transgender cultural producers deploy and revise historical narratives of national trauma to stake gender rights claims in the present? What sorts of political, aesthetic, and legal tactics do trans cultural producers adopt within political contexts hyper-saturated by state violence? What ethical and political challenges arise? In response, I formulate a trans framework of analysis that combines archival, visual culture, literary, and ethnographic methods to study contemporary transgender politics and cultural production as these have taken shape in response to shifting Argentine state formations.

Each chapter considers how trans activists strategically deploy existing visual and material culture, activist strategies, and legal interventions developed by antigenocide activists such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo to forward trans rights claims. In doing so, my work traces unexpected affinities between Argentine transgender and antigenocide politics, cultural production, and activisms. Taken together, the dissertation’s chapters evoke an interdisciplinary method that twins the study of cultural practices with histories of state violence, focusing on gender and sexuality as central to such analyses. By tracing the ways Argentine trans activists reanimate the past to meet the demands of the present, my dissertation offers an historical interpretation of trans political subjectivity that extends and revises trans studies’ geopolitical imagination, bringing Latinx American archives, national histories, and political strategies to bear on existing trans studies scholarship.

Contemporary, empirically-based knowledge of transgender health is scant and lacks understanding of physical health, health problems or impairments, chronic health conditions, and the impact of individual factors known to affect health outcomes in other vulnerable populations such as socioeconomic position and sexual orientation (Bowleg, 2012; MacCarthy, Reisner, Nunn, Perez-Brumer, & Operario, 2015). Despite a growing body of health-related literature, additional research is needed to advance our understanding of health among transgender subgroups such as male-to-female (MTF, transgender women), female-to-male (FTM, transgender men), and gender nonconforming (GNC) adults. This knowledge will help prioritize health needs and identify pathways to improve the health and reduce the health inequities plaguing the transgender population in the U.S. (Feldman et al., 2016; Institute of Medicine, 2011).

The purpose of this dissertation research was to establish evidence regarding the health of transgender and GNC adults in the United States. Specifically, this dissertation 1) reviewed current literature on the experiences of transgender adults when they access and utilize healthcare, 2) identified and addressed methodological concerns related to conducting transgender health research using data from the 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and 3) explored the health status of three transgender subgroups (MTF, FTM, and GNC adults) and their cisgender male (CGM) and cisgender female (CGF) counterparts. Health status analyses included 1) bivariate logistic regression models and one-way analysis of variance methods to test for study group differences in individual factors and health status, and 2) multivariable logistic regression models to determine the differential effects of individual factors on health status in the five study groups. A posteriori pairwise contrasts of the study groups were conducted when a significant overall study group effect was detected.

The main findings from this dissertation include the following. First, transgender adults experience numerous obstacles accessing healthcare, discrimination from healthcare professionals and clinicians, and barriers to medically necessary care, such as cross-sex hormones, as well as primary and preventative healthcare. Second, the 2015 BRFSS data collection procedures introduced measurement error and sex misclassification that contributed towards problematic BRFSS sampling weights. Third, transgender adults have poorer health than their cisgender counterparts. However, when data are disaggregated into transgender subgroups, notable differences in the health of MTF, FTM, and GNC adults are revealed. Notably, GNC adults have poorer overall health than their transgender and cisgender counterparts.

Overall, the studies from this dissertation provide empirical evidence to inform health promotion and illness prevention in transgender and GNC adults. These findings make significant contributions to the transgender health knowledge base, and advance the field by identifying priority research topics, policy areas, and methodological considerations for public health surveillance and population surveys aimed at improving the health of transgender and gender nonconforming people. Findings also provide the foundation to improve healthcare delivery and educational programs for current and future health professionals. To further advance transgender health knowledge, a more comprehensive understanding of how gender identity and gender expression influence health status and healthcare utilization for transgender and GNC adults is needed.

TRANS/SUPER/NATURAL: Fear, Trembling, and Transsexuality in American Fiction develops new ways of thinking about the biological, historical, and social elements that constitute what we call gender by identifying 20th-century American literature’s practice of mobilizing motifs of magic and monstrosity to articulate authors’ material, social, and political relationships to transsexuality. These motifs are shown to be part of a historical process in which medical and social sciences as well as academic discourse have employed misogynist and racist logics to render the transsexual body “super/natural”—that is, at once an unnatural biological aberration as well as a disembodied site of abjection beyond the natural/unnatural binary upon which is projected dire spiritual implications. Identifying the centrality of this super/natural thinking to other instances of political theorizing by marginalized populations, TRANS/SUPER/NATURAL reads fearful and esoteric representations of transsexuality in American fiction as making visible the magical thinking underlying contemporary formulations of gender. Across three chapters, the figure of the super/natural transsexual aids in the refiguration of embodiment as an always-already mystical experience that unsettles reductive pathologies of racism and sexism; kinship and socialization as fluid processes that work not to reinforce essentialist binary gender norms, but to enable transgressive categorical slippages; and history as a malleable space vulnerable to alterations that might make the present more livable for vulnerable populations.