Trans People Research Articles

Perceptions of a South Australian online trans health resource: transnormativity, safety, and professionalism

Background The proliferation of trans-led online health resources constitutes a purposive community response to the limitations that many trans people face globally in accessing healthcare information and services. While such resources are typically community run or administered by individuals, and hence not subject to reporting mandates, it is useful to examine how end-users perceive online health resources for trans people. Aims This paper reports on an evaluation of one trans-led online health resource, focused on South Australia. Methods Interviews were undertaken with 15 trans people who accessed the website Trans Health SA. Participants were invited to view the website alongside the first author, and to share their thoughts about the website design and content. Results Thematic analysis resulted in the development of three themes: (1) transnormativity and the intended viewer, (2) the website as a welcoming community space, and (3) discrepancies between content and design. Conclusions The paper concludes by considering what it means to create inclusive online trans health resources in the context of both ongoing marginalization and community diversity.

LGBTQ+ Families, Welfare, and Same-sex Marriage Legalisation in Taiwan: A Social Policy Perspective

This article examines whether and to what extent legalised same-sex marriage can assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) people to develop family life and protect them from defamilisation and familisation risks. It focuses on the provision of and gaps in welfare for LGBTQ+ people since Taiwan’s same-sex marriage legalisation in 2019. A content analysis of online community discussions since marriage equality shows that local LGBTQ+ community discussions were filled with concerns about the lack of familial status for cross-border couples, lack of legal parental status and rights for same-sex parents, and questions about heteronormative values and kinship ties. This article reveals how heteronormative assumptions embedded in the policy system and in the wider society adversely influence LGBTQ+ people’s welfare, and identifies supplementary and alternative measures. It highlights the importance of providing universal basic services free from heteronormative biases and prioritising the well-being and rights of all citizens.

Paradoxes of Openness: Trans Experiences in Open Source Software

In recent years, concerns have increased over the lack of contributor diversity in open source software (OSS), despite its status as a paragon of open collaboration. OSS is an important form of digital infrastructure and part of a career path for many developers. While there exists a growing body of literature on cisgender women's under-representation in OSS, the experiences of contributors from other marginalized groups are comparatively absent from the literature. Such is the case for trans contributors, a historically influential group in OSS. In this study, we interviewed 21 trans participants to understand and represent their experiences in the OSS literature. From their experiences, we theorize two related paradoxes of openness in OSS: the paradox of openness and display and the paradox of openness and governance. In an increasingly violent world for trans people, we draw on our theorizing to build recommendations for more inclusive and safer OSS projects for contributors.

Extended Reality Trans Technologies: Bridging Digital and Physical Worlds to Support Transgender People

Extended reality (XR) technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive, and may have capacity to help marginalized groups such as transgender people. Drawing from interviews with n = 18 creators of trans technology, we examined how XR technologies do and can support trans people. We uncovered a number of creative ways that XR technologies support trans experiences. Trans technology creators are designing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) systems that help people explore trans identity, experience new types of bodies, educate about and display trans stories and curated trans content, manipulate the physical world, and innovate gender-affirming surgical techniques. Additionally, we show how considering XR as an analogy for trans identity helps us to think about the fluidity and fluctuation inherent in trans identity in new ways, which in turn enables envisioning technologies that can better support complex and changing identities. Despite XR's potential for supporting trans people, current AR and VR systems face limitations that restrict their large-scale use, but as access to XR systems increase, so will their capacity to improve trans lives.

‘Why Is the Chubby Guy Running?’: Trans Pregnancy, Fatness, and Cultural Intelligibility

ABSTRACTSince the late 2000s trans pregnancy has received increasing public and academic attention, and stories of the ‘pregnant man’ have become a media staple. Existing research has critiqued such spectacularization and the supposed tension between maleness, masculinity, and pregnancy that underpins it. Extending that work, this article draws on interview data from an international study of trans reproductive practices and analyzes participants' experiences of being, and expecting themselves to be, perceived in public space not as spectacularly ‘pregnant men’, but as fat men. As a starting point we take the experience of one participant whose heavily pregnant participation in a five‐kilometer race prompted the question: ‘Why is the chubby guy running?’ Using Judith Butler's concept of the cultural intelligibility of gender, we ask why the question asked was not: ‘Why is the pregnant guy running?’ We further consider the degree to which pregnant trans people manage their unintelligibility within the matrix of pregnancy, fatness, and trans/gender and how this reveals the limits of gender intelligibility itself.

Are masculine faces “natural” for all men?: an experimental study about predictors of Chinese young adults’ attitudes towards trans men

ABSTRACT Researchers have increasingly paid attention to prejudice against trans people and its predictors. However, few studies have explored if potential predictors may interact to affect people’s attitudes towards trans people. In this experimental study, we examined the impacts of participant-related factors (i.e. gender and prior contact experience with gender or sexual minorities), target-related variables (i.e. gender identity and facial appearance), and their interactions on Chinese young adults’ attitudes towards trans men. We recruited 172 Chinese young adults to rate images of men with different gender identity labels (i.e. cisgender or trans men) and facial appearances (i.e. feminine or masculine). Results showed that a three-way interaction existed among targets’ gender identity labels, targets’ facial appearances, and participants’ genders. Overall, female participants were less likely than men to show more negative attitudes towards trans men than cisgender men. Participants showed more positive attitudes towards masculine-appearing trans men than feminine trans men. The current findings implied that people favoured trans men’s masculine faces, which match the roles of their gender identities.

Trans and nonbinary students’ accounts of schooling: on epistemic witnessing, trans livability and the failure of the school cistem

ABSTRACT In this paper, we draw on accounts of trans and nonbinary youth we interviewed as part of a larger study on supporting gender diversity in schools. Our study is informed by an approach to epistemic witnessing which we conceive of as a praxis that is informed by a commitment to trans de-subjugation, testimonial justice and a transfeminist methodology with its critical focus on cissexist analytic pitfalls in research and refusal of objectification and overgeneralization of trans people. Our approach to analyzing interview data which refused the methodological constraints of forcing meaning into overdetermined and prescriptive thematic categories was also facilitative of this praxis. Overall, we provide testimonial accounts of trans youth navigating cisnormative school spaces and the tensions that arise around desires for trans (in)visibility which expose the cistemic forces at play in the education system in its failure to provide supportive conditions of trans livability and racial justice.

Discrimination based on gender identity and decision-making regarding HIV/STI-protected sex, a cross-sectional study among trans and non-binary people in Germany

BackgroundTrans and non-binary people are often discriminated against. Discrimination has a negative impact on health and may affect sexual health and behavior. We explored the relationship between discrimination based on gender identity and the perceived ability to make decisions about their sex life to feel as protected as desired from HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) among trans and non-binary people in Germany. Secondarily, we assessed whether feeling unable of making HIV/STI-protected sex decisions was associated with behaviors related to increased HIV/STI risk.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the Sexual Health and HIV/STI in Trans and Non-Binary Communities (TASG) survey conducted online between March-July 2022 among trans and/or non-binary people aged 18 years and older living in Germany. We described the prevalence of frequent discrimination based on gender identity. We calculated prevalence ratios (PR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for the associations between frequent experienced discrimination based on gender identity and feeling unable of making HIV/STI-protected sex decisions, and between feeling unable of making HIV/STI-protected sex decisions and behaviors related to increased HIV/STI risk.ResultsAmong 3077 participants, 22% reported frequent discrimination based on gender identity. Participants experiencing such discrimination reported 1.4 times more often to feel unable to make HIV/STI-protected sex decisions (PR 1.4, 95% CI 1.1–1.8). This perceived inability was associated with increased prevalence of sex under drug influence (PR 2.9, 95% CI 2.3–3.7) and condomless penetrative sex with multiple partners without PrEP (PR 2.0, 95% CI 1.4–2.9).ConclusionFeeling unable to make decisions to feel protected from HIV/STI among trans and non-binary people was associated with both frequent discrimination and behaviors that increase the HIV/STI risk. Strategies for empowering trans and non-binary people to assert their sexual decision-making needs should be explored.

O TRÁFICO INTERNACIONAL DE PESSOAS PARA FINS DA EXPLORAÇÃO SEXUAL NO BRASIL

This paper aims to analyze international human trafficking for sexual exploitation in Brazil. This crime represents not only a vulnerability on the part of the victims of this crime, but also, and mainly, a failure of the State towards them. This criminal offense predomitantly affects those who are marginalized from society, who are lured by the promise of a change in their lives, of fulfilling a dream that would be unattainable in their home country due to their reality. Criminals demonstrate that in a given country it is fully achieved. Therefore, this study seeks to understand how this practice has occurred over time and with Brazilian legislative developments regarding protection standards. Justifica-se a análise, pois a sua incidência vem crescendo cada vez mais. Brazil will be analyzed since it is considered a supplier of women, trans people and children for this market, aiming to understand how the practice of this crime is typified in the Brazilian legal system, and what public policies have been developed; and also to analyze the international agreements of greatest relevance to the subject, the main one being the Palermo Convention. To this end, the work developed is the result of qualitative research that used the deductive method, through documentary and bibliographical research, statistical analysis and the verification of some operations carried out by the State. Finally, it can be concluded that the study and understanding of this theme is extremely important for the prevention of human trafficking.

How can HIV self-testing facilitate increased access to HIV testing among multiply marginalised populations? Perspectives from GBMSM and trans women in England and Wales

Background HIV self-testing (HIVST) may facilitate marginalised populations’ uptake of HIV testing, but whether the extent of marginalisation challenges individual uptake of HIVST remains under-researched. We aim to explore the perspectives of multiply marginalised cis-gender gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM) and trans women on whether HIVST might increase their uptake of HIV testing. Methods We reanalysed qualitative interview data from SELPHI (the UK’s largest HIVST randomised trial) collected between 2017 and 2020 from marginalised populations, defined as people self-identifying as non-heterosexual, transgender, non-White ethnicity and/or with low educational attainment. Thirty-eight interviews with multiply marginalised individuals were thematically examined using the framework method. We specifically focussed on kit usability (a function of the interaction between blood-based HIVST kits and users), perspectives on how HIVST can improve access to HIV testing and suggestions on need-based scale-up of HIVST. Results HIVST kits were considered usable and acceptable by multiply marginalised GBMSM and trans women. The majority of interviewees highlighted multi-levelled barriers to accessing HIV testing services due to structural and social marginalisation. Their multiply marginalised identities did not impede HIVST uptake but often form motivation to self-test. Three potential roles of HIVST in the HIV testing landscape were identified: (1) alternation of HIVST and facility-based testing, (2) integration of HIVST into sexual health services and (3) substituting facility-based testing with HIVST in the future. Perceived beneficiaries of HIVST included trans communities, individuals with undisclosed sexuality and people with physical disabilities. Discussion HIVST can facilitate marginalised populations’ access and uptake of HIV testing by alternating with, integrating into and substituting for facility-based services in the UK. Marginalised identities did not present challenges but rather opportunities for person-centred scale-up of HIVST. Future implementation programmes should ensure equitable access to HIVST among trans people, men unable to disclose their sexuality, and perhaps people with physical disabilities.

Participation, barriers, facilitators and bullying experiences of trans people in sport and fitness: findings from a national community survey of trans people in Australia.

This study aimed to assess participation rates of transgender and gender diverse (trans) people in sport/fitness activities, compare mental health outcomes for trans people participating in sport/fitness with those who do not and explore internal/external barriers and bullying experiences faced by trans people in sport/fitness contexts. A cross-sectional online survey open to trans people aged ≥16 years living in Australia was conducted between February and April 2023 and it assessed rates of sport/fitness participation, barriers to participation and bullying experiences through multiple-choice questions. Mental health measures comprised the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) and self-reported history of self-harm and suicidality. Covariate-adjusted binary logistic regression models tested associations between interpersonal factors, sport/fitness variables and mental health outcomes. Of 664 respondents (median age 32 years), around one-third (32.8%) regularly participated in sport/fitness. Common internal barriers to participation included anxiety about others' reactions (63.9%), body dissatisfaction/dysphoria (56.5%) and fears about feeling accepted/affirmed by others (54.7%). Respondents commonly reported experiencing inadequate bathroom/changing facilities (44.4%), exclusionary rules and regulations surrounding gender (36.7%), and invasive or uncomfortable policies or procedures (23.3%). Over one-third (34.4%) of trans people had experienced gender-based bullying or exclusion. Regular sport/fitness participation was associated with significantly lower K10 scores (mean difference=-4.4, 95% CI-5.8, -2.9, p<0.001) and a 40% reduction in odds of recent thoughts of self-harm and suicide (aOR 0.6, 95% CI 0.5, 0.9, p=0.01; aOR 0.6, 95%CI 0.4, 0.9, p=0.02). Trans people face significant barriers to sport/fitness despite experiencing significant mental health and personal benefits from participation. Affirming and including trans people in sport and fitness should be a key priority for sport and fitness federations, organisations and policy-makers.

Subverting the “Default Settings” of Cis-Heteronormativity in Social Work Praxis with Trans Clients

ABSTRACT The past several years have brought about a steep increase in hostile legislation targeting queer and trans people, specifically policies that threaten the ability of trans people to receive gender-affirming care. Social workers provide more services related to addressing psychosocial needs than any other group of mental health professionals, and as the number of trans people continues to rise, so will the need for providers who are competent in working with them. Transness is currently an identity culturally and clinically defined by suffering, but that does not need to be the case, and in an ideal future it will not be. In considering how to reconceptualize social work praxis to decenter cis-heteronormativity, the field can look to theories of disability, sexuality, gender, race, and abolition for models of how practitioners can work with trans clients from an asset-based perspective, at once more effectively supporting them and creating a less oppressive and repressive society for everyone. Social workers who identify as allies to, or a part of, the queer and trans community must move away from a posture of performativity, which often perpetuates notions of normativity, and instead work toward substantive social change by subverting the “default settings” we are all socialized into. Achieving this end requires meaningful engagement with trans people and their varied lived experiences, internal, interpersonal, and in their interfacing with institutions, as well as a commitment to challenging our society’s rigid values surrounding gender, to reconceptualize social work praxis with trans people.

Key aspects in the development of gender identity and sexual orientation according to trans and gender diverse people: a qualitative approach.

For decades, the sexuality of trans and gender diverse people has been researched from a pathologising and medical perspective. This approach makes assumptions about the experiences of trans people, limiting concern for unique and individual experiences, especially for those with non-binary or gender diverse identities. A growing number of articles however are beginning to take the viewpoints of trans people seriously, taking into consideration their unique experiences and insights within the context of sexual and romantic relationships. This study examines the development of gender identity and sexual orientation of a group of trans individuals in Spain. Thirteen self-identified trans participants were interviewed about their sexual orientation, gender identity and the interplay between both those aspects. A constructivist grounded theory methodology was employed to analyse the data. Five major categories were identified: reinterpreting experiences through identification with gender identity and sexual orientation; questioning gender identity and sexual orientation norms; understanding the interplay between gender identity and sexual orientation; developing as a couple; and building a community. Findings highlight the dynamic and relational nature of gender identity and sexual orientation and provide further insight into the interaction of these aspects in the development of trans and gender diverse identities.

Navigating Survival: The Role of Information in the Lives of Trans adults in South Carolina

This community-based action research dissertation interrogates how trans people in South Carolina use information to survive. I am conducting 25 semi-structured interviews with trans people across the state to ask what information they need to survive, what barriers to information access they encounter, and how they overcome those barriers. I am working with an advisory board of five trans people to bring community input into my research. The board has pilot tested the interview protocol and given their feedback. In a practical part of the research, we are identifying a challenge trans people experience in their daily lives. The board collectively chose the lack of resources for trans people as the problem we will address. Together we are building an informational resource to fill those gaps and ease information seeking. Early themes from the interviews indicate that trans people rely on their peers for information over experts. However, trans people do not always have access to trans community, and it can be dangerous to ask friends and family, leaving their information needs unfilled. Overall, participants found a lack of resources related to transness. In response to this lack, participants created their own information resources for themselves and their communities.

Navigating the Secular Landscape: Religious Discourse on Transgender Rights in the United Kingdom

Transgender people face high rates of discrimination and health problems yet supportive policy measures are often opposed, especially by religious organisations adhering to cis-normative theologies. Scholars exploring the links between religion and transgender issues have examined a number of themes, but the way religious actors discursively frame transgender issues remains under-researched. This article contributes to work in this area by using the concept of political opportunity structures to examine the discourse of religious groups on the 2022 Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The study shows that arguments were typically framed in secular terms, drawing on the epistemic authority of science and a language of individual rights. Supporting groups used arguments designed to highlight the difficulties that transgender people face. Oppositional groups used themes based on biological essentialism, concern for the well-being of trans people, the risks to cisgendered women and warnings about the negative impact on society and religious freedoms.

Toward a Theology of Trans Opacity: Trans Studies’ Critique of Queer Theory in Conversation with Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Revelation

While it is generally known that the disciplinary origins of feminist and queer religious studies are enmeshed with the production of anti-trans feminisms, theological legacies of this historical entanglement remain largely unaddressed. Although later feminist and queer theologies might not explicitly take up these anti-trans positions, trans identity is still often instrumentalized in its incorporation into queer and feminist theological discourse for rhetorical and methodological gain without attention to the subjectivity and self-understanding of trans people themselves. This article argues that the theology of Karl Barth, when read with his feminist and queer critics, provides resources for critiquing this kind of trans instrumentalization in his doctrine of revelation and critique of natural theology. Moving beyond either reactionary dismissal or instrumentalized incorporation, this article instead argues for a right to opacity for trans people in Christian theology and practice resourced from Barth’s theology.

Language and terminology to describe transgender communities; Perspectives from people with lived experience

Background There is no consensus over the meaning of “transgender,” “trans and gender diverse,” and other terminology used to describe people with a gender different from the gender presumed or recorded for them at birth. We aimed to survey transgender (trans) individuals to understand lived experience perspectives on terminology. Methods An online cross-sectional survey of trans people currently living in Australia and aged ≥16 was conducted from June 2021 to April 2022. Demographic data and terminology preferences were ascertained through fixed-option and free-text questions. Results Of 1023 respondents with a median age of 30 years (IQR 24, 41), 37.1% were trans women, 34.9% were trans men, 27.6% were non-binary, and 0.4% had a culturally specific identity. There was no consensus regarding community-level terminology, with “trans/transgender and gender diverse” the most preferred term (21.9%), followed by “trans/transgender” (19.3%), and “gender diverse” (15.1%). The term “trans/transgender” was more preferred by trans women (27.9%), trans men (19.0%), respondents who had a history of or wanted gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT; 20.7%), and gender-affirming surgery (GAS; 20.9%), compared to non-binary respondents (8.2%), and respondents who did not want GAHT (4.9%) or GAS (13.9%). Three themes emerged from free-text responses regarding term preference: (1) Inclusivity, (2) Trans as a binary and medicalized experience, and (3) Societal understanding, accessibility, and destigmatization. Conclusion From Australian trans communities’ perspectives, the term “trans/transgender and gender diverse” was the most preferred community-level terminology to collectively describe people with a gender different from the gender presumed or recorded for them at birth. Further perspectives are needed from other cohorts internationally.

Erasing trans people: How to ensure Australia does not go down the same path as the United States

The United States is witnessing a wave of laws targeting transgender people, ranging from prohibitions on participation in sport, denial of access to gender affirming health care and regulating bathroom access and what people wear. This anti-trans trend that we are seeing in the United States is sending shock waves through the trans community in Australia. Is Australia going to follow the US ‘hate manual’? Are trans and gender diverse people here at risk of being persecuted, vilified and discriminated against in the same way? This article considers the gaps in Australia’s protection of the human rights of trans and gender diverse people and identifies where our laws need to be strengthened to ensure we follow a path of inclusivity and respect, not hate and division.

Lockdown Limbo: Reviving Marx’s ‘Dead Labor’ for Queer and Trans Mental Distress During COVID-19

Lockdown measures against the spread of COVID-19 unleashed a mental health crisis in which queer and trans people faced particular difficulties. This paper argues that mental distress resulting from pandemic lockdowns was for these groups to be considered as a particular relation to death, which is encapsulated by Marx’s notion of ‘dead labor’ – past, living labor and labor that cannot be exploited. Using dead labor as a prism for understanding the necropolitics of mental health under contemporary capitalism, this paper outlines how pandemic lockdowns induced a failure in the reproduction of queer and trans lives which structurally produced mental distress for these groups, and it analyzes how such discapacitation due to mental distress constructed a dead laborer who could temporarily be set aside. In theorizing the concept of dead labor in relation to mental health, this study situates lockdown distress within capitalist quests for profitability and contributes to an emerging scholarship that situates queer and trans struggles within and against capitalist social forms, notably the relation between production and reproduction and the exclusionary figure of the human.

The Triviality Worry About Gender Terms and Epistemic Injustice

ABSTRACT According to contextualism, a gender term such as ‘woman’ does not invariantly refer to a specific social or biological kind. Instead, gender terms have different extensions depending on the context of utterance. Contextualism accommodates that speakers are perfectly able to use gender terms in very different ways and still be coherent and successful in their communicative exchanges. However, while the flexibility of contextualism is its primary asset, it has also turned out to be its potential demise. The worry is that the view not only makes trans-including claims true but also allows that trans-excluding claims can be true and therefore, does justice to the claims of trans people only in a trivial sense. This paper defends the view that contextualists can respond to this worry by showing why trans-excluding claims are often morally problematic even in contexts where they are true. Contextualists are well-equipped to say that when speakers insist on using gender terms in trans-excluding ways, they engage in a meta-linguistic negotiation about how gender terms ought to be used – where using them trans-excluding is treated as normatively superior. This constitutes a kind of epistemic injustice.