Have You Read This (Essay and Speech Book)

The Treatment of Transgender Individuals in Our Society [Informative Speech]

Introduction

41% of transgender individuals attempt suicide at some point in their lives. 41%. That is 41% too many. You might not think that 41% of one group is that much, but compare that to the 4.6% of the general public. Transgender people are over ten times more likely to commit suicide than a cisgendered person. Think about that for a moment. How often do you think about transgender suicide rates? How often do you think about the effect you have when you misgender someone or call them by the wrong name? How often do you think about that 41% when you make a transphobic joke or the correct thing to say just "slips your mind"?

Transgender individuals have always had an extreme prejudice against them. Against us. We have to deal with being turned away from a job because we don't look the way people think we should, we have to deal with being misgendered, not only by complete strangers, but by our friends, our family. We have to go through life with people laughing at "the confused tomboy" or "that drag queen", people we thought we could trust telling us that we need to stop begging for attention. Even in schools, a teacher thinks that the right name or the right pronouns are too much to ask for, are too much of a burden to use. I'm here to tell you exactly why that is bull and why you should always use the name and pronouns someone tells you to use.

Body

What do you usually think when you misgender someone? For those who do not know, "misgendering" is defined as "referring to (someone, especially a transgender person) using a word, especially a pronoun or form of address, that does not correctly reflect the gender with which they identify". For example, if you meet a transgender man who uses "he/him" pronouns and you continuously call him "she" or "a girl", you are misgendering him. How often do you think about that? If you accidentally misgender someone, how often do you apologize for it? How often do you make a note not to do it again? Do you ever think that it might have that serious of an affect? It does. Misgendering a transgender individual can have some pretty severe consequences that you might not have been aware of. Misgendering can be seen as a form of harassment, an act of malice that is used to make a trangender person unsure of their identity or to outright ignore it. Even if you do it accidentally, it can be perceived as you saying "your gender does not matter to me, you do not matter to me". In a 2015 US Trans Survey, 46% of transgender adults experience verbal harassment due to their identity. That is 46% of a group who are being called slurs, being threatened, and being dehumanized or insulted because of how they identify. Misgendering can have a very serious effect on people's mental health. In 2014, a study in the journal Self and Identity show that 32.8% of transgender people feel stigmatized by being misgendered. This same study showed that genderqueer people (such as people who identify as nonbinary, agender, or genderfluid, like myself) are much more likely to be misgendered. Those who are misgendered reported feeling much more self-conscious about their appearance and their identity.

This mistreatment doesn't just end with misgendering by strangers or people on the street. 33% of trans people have experienced at least one instance of discrimination when seeking medical treatment. 27% have experienced some form of employee discrimination, be it being fired, being mistreated at work, or not being hired due to their identity. Transgender people are over three times more likely to be unemployed compared to the general population. 77% of people who were in grades Kindergarten through 12th grade experienced mistreatment in schools. These are schools, places of education and learning, where they didn't feel safe due to their teachers. These are children who felt rejected by the people who were supposed to be providing a place to learn and thrive. 54% report verbal harassment in schools. 24% report being physically attacked within a school. 17% of respondents said that the harassment so bad that they felt that they had to leave the K-12 school. 57% of trans people feel uncomfortable asking the police for help, as the police have been reported to frequently assume that trans people are sex workers, especially black transgender females. 23% of transgender individuals do not see a doctor when they need one out of fear of being discriminated against. Just think about that. People are afraid to get help due to how society treats them.

If you were a parent and your child came out as transgender, how would you react? I'm sure that you have an accepting comment on the tip of your tongue, but hold onto that. How would you really react? Not, "what is the right way to react", but how would you, individually react? Most likely, you would be confused, most parents are at first. The problem is not confusion, not when people make a considerable effort to eliminate the confusion and try to understand. The problem arises when relationships are terminated simply because one person is transgender. 33% of transgender people suffer from depression, this usually goes untreated as children due to refusal by parents to give their children the help they need. 62% of homeless LGBT youth report facing discrimination by their families, being 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight, cisgender peers. Transgender people can also struggle with romantic relations, many reporting that their partners have left them during their transition or when they came out. In one study, 54% of the transgender individuals involved reported that their gender transition was the reason for a relationship ending with 9% being uncertain if it was due to their transition or not. 25 to 50% of transgender adults report being parents. 30% of children of a transgender parent do not remain in contact with said parent. 57% of transgender individuals report rejection from their families upon coming out. 45% of intimate relationships do not survive a person's coming out and gender transition. 55% say that their relationship with their family is not as strong as it was before coming out. 40% claim that a member or multiple members of their family chose to no longer associate with them after they came out.

Conclusion

If you look at these statistics, you can see that transgender people in our society are treated with absolute disrespect. You can see the effect misgendering has on transgender individuals, the discrimination we face, and how relationships can be ruined. Hopefully you will have learned to correct yourself the next time you say something transphobic and will stop being a part of the problem.