Counselor candidates’ perception of heterosexism

Abstract

Transgender individuals are often faced with “stigma and not being accepted” in society. These attitudes towards transgender individuals can significantly affect their mental, emotional, and social lives. One of the most important emotional and social needs of these individuals is “being accepted and valued by others”. Professionally, counselors have important roles and responsibilities in helping these individuals understand, accept, and assert their identity. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to determine the perceptions of the counselor candidates on this issue. As such, this study consists of two main parts. In the first part of the study (Study 1), a Turkish adaptation study of the “genderism and transphobia subscale” in the Revised Form of the Genderism and Transphobia Scale was carried out on 273 voluntary counselor candidates. In the second part of the study (Study 2), whether gender, cognitive empathy and affective empathy predicted the perception of genderism and transphobia was examined among 216 volunteer counselor candidates. In the light of the findings obtained, it was seen that the “genderism and transphobia” subscale in the revised form of the scale in Study 1 has appropriate psychometric properties for counselor candidates. In Study 2, it was seen that gender and cognitive empathy predicted the perception of genderism and transphobia, whereas affective empathy did not. These results were examined in the context of Turkey’s sociocultural characteristics.