Using experiments to understand public attitudes towards transgender rights

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans have seen recent legal victories and declining explicit discrimination, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals (TGNC) remain astoundingly vulnerable. An area of recent public debate is the right of transgender individuals to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity, regardless of the sex they were assigned at birth. Little is known, however, about how the public forms their views of transgender people and rights, particularly the issue of bathroom access. Our research agenda seeks to better understand public attitudes about transgender bathroom access. In this paper, we describe our use of experiments to investigate how issue framing and identity priming affects public opinion toward the key transgender right of bathroom access and provide results from a recent pilot study.