Transgender people face rampant discrimination in every area of life: education, employment, family life, public accommodations, housing, health, police and jails, and ID documents, says a new report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality.
"This data is so shocking that it will change the way you think about transgender people and it should change the way you advocate," NGLTF said.
The study is based on surveys of 6,450 transgender people from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Among much else, it found that black transgender people have the roughest time of all, that many transgender people live in poverty, that 41 percent of respondents had attempted suicide, that 90 percent had experienced mistreatment on the job or hide their transgender status from co-workers, and that 53 percent had been harassed or disrespected in places such as hotels, restaurants, buses, airports and government offices.
"Nearly every system and institution in the United States, both large and small, from local to national, is implicated by this data," the report says. "Medical providers and health systems, government agencies, families, businesses and employers, schools and colleges, police departments, jail and prison systems -- each of these systems and institutions is failing daily in its obligation to serve transgender and gender non-conforming people, instead subjecting them to mistreatment ranging from commonplace disrespect to outright violence, abuse and the denial of human dignity."
For the full 228-page report, see tinyurl.com/transsurv.
Assistance: Bill Kelley