Essay Example on Everything You Need to Know About Transgender: From 1965 to Now

Introduction

Transgender describes people with the gender expression that is different from the sex assigned at birth. The first-ever mention of the term transgender happened in 1965 in psychiatrist John Oliven's seminal work titled Sexual Hygiene and Pathology (Lewis 56). In this work, the psychiatrist argued that transsexualism that had been used previously was misleading. From this earliest usage, the term transgender became popular after repeated applications by various scholars and mass media. By the 1980s, many scholars used the "transgender community" as an umbrella term that included trans-sexuals, crossdressers, and transgenderists. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, scholars applied transgender to describe a female who was transitioning to a male or a male transitioning to a female gender (Beemyn 115).

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To date, most societies categorize transgender in the same categories as lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. In recent years, scholars have also added other names for minority sexual identities like queer, intersex, and ally. Thus, the umbrella term for all these references is LGBTQIA. Unfortunately, the association of transgender with the other minority sexual identities has left members of this gender quite vulnerable to discrimination against these minorities. Notably, transgender members believe that they have a normal gender identity. However, a significant portion of the community perceives these people as nonconformists. This essay discusses the causes of the negative treatment of transgender people and the goals that these people intend to achieve.

Causes of the Negative Treatment Directed Toward Transgender Individuals

The primary cause of prejudice directed toward transgender individuals is the socialization that predisposes members of society to behave in particular ways or have certain social expectations. Historically, society has recognized women and men as the only dominant types of gender. Therefore, as individuals grow, they only have an understanding of these two genders. This earliest form of socialization is highly significant for shaping individuals' attitudes in their later lives. In elaborating his social learning theory, Albert Bandura argued that children imitate what they observe in their social environments and acquire as the accepted norm (Harinie 2). Imitation, in this case, occurs in the sense that individuals mostly grow up in the company of heterosexual friends or family members. As many individuals develop within their family setting, they are less likely to interact with a transgender person before beginning schooling.

Socialization also influences adverse treatment against transgender people by creating specific expectations of sexuality and gender behavior and roles. According to Basu et al., gender socializes adolescent girls to behave in particular ways, such as the practicing of being a wife, mother, being emotional, and feminine clothing (25). Indeed, even in plays, girls mostly learn to play with pink toys as society socializes them to believe that the pink color is for girls only. On the other hand, boys learn masculine related behaviors as being providers and protectors of families and playing with blue toys, trucks, and cars (Basu et al. 25). Deviating from socially assigned gender norms becomes the subject of criticism, and being perceived as unfitting and an outcast. If children behave in unusual ways, parents also endure criticisms such as being perceived as unable to achieve effective parenting. As such, parents or caregivers ensure that their children conform to the expected norms of the given society (Basu et al. 25). This discussion indicates that socialization and the related mechanisms of enforcing norms predispose members of society to develop certain gendered behaviors and also hold specific beliefs toward members of those genders (Basu et al. 25). In this case, socialization makes members of society believe that women and men should be the only two genders.

Even worse is the fact, socialization makes members of society link one's gender to the real biological sex assigned at birth organs (Basu et al. 25). They develop this belief after observing that heterosexuals depict gender characteristics that conform to the expectations attached to individuals of particular biological sex. For instance, societies believe that women should display behaviors related to female biological sex. Indeed, sex is often applied interchangeably with gender. For this reason, societies expect members who depict certain sexual features to have behaviors, social and sexual, related to their sexual orientation. Like is the case of the girls and pink toys or boys and blue toys, an individual who exhibits social and sexual behaviors that contradict his/her sex features is likely to attract negative perception (Basu et al. 25). However, transgender persons exhibit gender behaviors that contradict the sex assigned at birth. Thus, due to social expectations regarding gender norms and sexuality, they are perceived as nonconformists.

Another cause of prejudice against transgender persons is the fear that heterosexuals associate with these people. Transgender is not a common gender, and thus society considers these people as though they do not belong precisely to the human race. At least, people who develop negative attitudes against transgender individuals consider them abnormal beings, which might possess some malicious abilities (Basu et al. 26).

The War That the Transgender Community Is Still Fighting

Notably, the transgender struggle has come a long way. In 1969, some members of this community fought against the arrest by the police, in what is famously known as the Stonewall Uprising (Nappo 3). This uprising marked the beginning of the transgender's fight against this type of gender-based discrimination in society. To date, transgender people fight against various mistreatments.

Violence

One of the vices that the community continues to fight is violence. In 2018, the Human Rights Campaign identified at least 26 deaths of transgender individuals that resulted from fatal violence (Para.1). According to the advocates, these deaths happened mainly due to anti-transgender bias. Apart from this bias, transgender individuals bear escalated levels of violence due to transphobia and sexism, racism, and poverty (The Human Rights Campaign, Para.3).

Sexism refers to discrimination that an individual faces due to his/her sex or gender (The Human Rights Campaign, Para.3). Racism is discrimination against a person's affiliation to a certain race due to the belief that some races are superior to other races. Notably, transgender persons face certain discrimination due to their lack of affiliation with the two dominant sexes. This sexism is evidenced by the fact that some transgender persons miss employment opportunities due to their gender status. Such discrimination is highly prevalent among transgender persons who also have to battle racism (Rojas and Swales Para.1). This intersection is mostly prevalent among minority transgender persons who, apart from prejudice based on their gender, they face institutionalized racism (Rojas and Swales Para.1). The interaction of these issues ensures that transgender persons face high levels of unemployment, poverty, and homelessness, all of which put them at increased risk of physical assaults.

Another form of violence has been bullying of transgender students and youth that have persisted in recent years. The federal government defines bullying as an unwanted, repetitive, and aggressive behavior exhibited by school-aged children (Campos 288). Mostly, bullying victims have some inferior characteristics, either real or perceived, compared to the bullies. Thus, transgender individuals have increased vulnerability to bullying as their gender status is an additional cause of the perceived inferiority. The findings of a survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) indicated that 90% of transgender youth experience bullying at some point in life (Campos 288). Also, 85.2% of the youth surveyed by the GLSEN reported that they had previously encountered verbal harassment (Campos 289). Furthermore, 27% of the respondents had been physically harassed, while 13% had been physically assaulted (Campos 289). A specific case of the bullying of transgender students involved Kenneth James Weishuhn, whom, the decision to inform his classmates of being a gay changed his reception fundamentally (Campos 288). According to Campos, after a month of the revelation, Weishuhn started receiving death threats, and he was listed on an online group page that some of the classmates established to steer hatred against transgender peers. After the pressure mounted, Weishuhn resorted to committing suicide by hanging on April 14, 2012 (Campos 288).

Parenting Rights

Also, transgender people continue to fight for parenting-related rights. Notably, the heterosexuals' rights of parenting are deemed as universal. For transgender, this right of parenting is far from being realized. Previously, same-sex couples were not allowed to engage in parenting before a few states formulated legislation to facilitate this right (Cooper and Paul 86). These states include California, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. However, advocacy for the rights of transgender individuals to engage in parenting like their heterosexual counterparts has come a long way. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) investigated the allegation that prevailed in 1999 that transgender persons may not achieve effective parenting as heterosexuals (Cooper and Paul 86). Contrary to this belief, ACLU found no evidence that could link the transgender community to parenting ineffectiveness (Cooper and Paul 86). Instead, the organization discovered that these individuals could raise children successfully. It also revealed that the perceptions of transgender persons as less intelligent than heterosexuals were highly exaggerated, and thus they could perform better in parenting than previously perceived.

Despite the favorable findings of the ACLU, transgender could not pursue parenting rights due to the unrelenting opposition that emerged. In the District of Columbia, Steve Largent, the then U.S. representative, proposed the Appropriations Act 2000 that intended to ban individuals not related by marriage or blood from joint adoption of children (Congressional Record 18005). In 2013, the introduction of the Every Child Deserves a Family Act could have barred organizations that deal with child adoption from discriminating against individuals based on their sexual orientation (Mooney et al. 369). However, Congress never passed this bill.

Transgender persons also have been fighting for parenting rights in courts, but they mostly achieve unfavorable outcomes. In Alabama, judges of the court of civil appeals dismissed an application by a woman to adopt the child of her same-sex spouse. According to this ruling, women had no right to marry each other. In Arkansas, the passing of Act 1 in 2008 banned all people who cohabit outside a valid marriage from adopting children (Brantley Para.8). Undeniably, this legislation affects anyone, but it has more significant effects on transgender persons. Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, and Florida also had some laws that either prohibited same-sex marriages or adoption by same-sex couples. Even in states where adoption of children by same-sex couples was authorized, a significant portion of the population held a negative view on such legislation. However, as of 2017, the U.S. had legalized adoption by same-sex couples in all the fifty states.

Apart from the U.S., transgender individuals have realized some rights for joint adoption in most parts of the world (Powell 1127). For instance, Argentina, Au...