Transphobia in America

Posted by Ashton Krause in English 1 · Giknis · Y Band on Monday, February 26, 2018 at 11:11 am

A sensitive social issue in America is Transphobia. For clarification Transphobia is “intense dislike of or prejudice against transsexual or transgender people” by word of the dictionary. My goal in learning about this topic is to educate myself about a community I am surrounded by. The reason I leached to this social issue is because I am a Transgender male. I find this topic underrated and I want to open it up to the world more. Although my topic is centered to a specific group of people, it connects everyone in a different way. These people are apart of family, have friends, are someone’s coworker or partner. Events that occur to trans people effect others lives and emotions.

Ever since the precidency of Donald Trump sprung on the United States, hate towards groups of individuals has become more exposed due to the bravery our presdient gives to people who spill hate speech. In 2016 after Trump was elected the rate of hate crimes went up by 300. Since January 2017 at least twenty-five transgender individuals have been killed, 80% are transgender people of color, the most ever reported. The Trump administration has continued to put public attacks on the transgender community including his attempt to ban transgender people from the military.

The first reported transgender death of 2017 was on January 4th, Mesha Caldwell was a fourty-four year old African American woman who was a hair and makeup artist. She was shot to her death on a Mississippi road. Her murder is still being investigated to this very day but this is seems to be a trend among the other twenty-four deaths that have occured since 2017. Since the beginning of 2018 at least four trangender people have been shot or killed by any other violent means. There is 1.6 million to 2.8 million homeless youth in the United states, twenty to forty precent of those children are trangender youth. More than 1 in 10 trandgender people are evicted from their homes. When seeking for a homeless shelter most do not have LGBT friendly communities and supplies. 22% of homeless transgender people are assulted while staying at shelters. The ignorance to the community has been recognized and several people have made their own shelter specifically for LGBTQ people and if not they are open to making theirs LGBTQ friendly. For example, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has promoted and created educational rescources for serving LGBTQ youth.

Sexual abuse is a big factor in most LGBTQ people’s lives. 47% of transgender people are sexually assualted during some point in their life. One in two transgender people are sexaully abused or assulted. Transgender youth and Transgender people are color are more commonly sexually abused than anyone. 13% of African American transgender people are sexually assaulted in their work place.

My research has impacted my thoughts on this social situation because I always knew hate crimes occured but I never thought about how frequently they occur. Social actions to handle this problem occur all the time, including, awareness on social media, protests and contributing at local activist centers. Hate crimes transpire every day but its up to the youth to set a path of equality and freedom of speech for the generation after us. It’s up to you if you take part.

annotated bibliography

Violent deaths of transgender people throughout the years

Comments (4)

Elizabeth Burrows

This post was beautifully written and incredibly thoughtful especially because you feel very passionate about it. Think about what you talked about how people being aware of this issue and what you could do to raise awareness, a campaign? an SLA awareness day? presentations in advisory? A lot of really awesome things you could do with this to make an impact.

Annie Chen

Reading this made me think about the topic more deeply and feel like there is so much to be said and learned on this topic. Your writing felt very personal and it sounded like you knew what you were talking about. Your stats were great. I am excited to see what you are going to do with the agent of change and original research.

Amal Giknis

This is such an important topic to research and for others to learn about. What kind of work are you thinking of doing for your Agent of Change with this? How do you think you could have an impact for this issue?

Kayla Kelly

this is a very good topic that you choose, and it kind of sound like some people may be shot the person because they are transgender, and it would be very crazy to do that, but there are a lot of crazy people, and transgender people should not be made fun of or whatever because they made that decision because that is who they are who they want to be. but anyway, there is only one picture I would say put up a couple more pictures, and maybe one of them like of transgender person like mine (I abhor animal abuse; I amend animal abuse) there is a picture of my dog, that was shot 16 times,and still has two bullet in her leg, that is in the front, so put a front picture that is related to your topic.