Disparities in Transgender Population

At Issue: Defining Transgender

In today’s evermore politically correct society, the term transgender is loaded with various meanings and implications. The inability for a consensus to form as to universal meaning stems from various interest groups laying claim to the significance of the term. For instance, the term ‘transgender’ is often interchanged with ‘transsexual’ or ‘transvestite.’ The two conditions are wholly different separate from transgender. For the purposes of this paper, Andrew Solomon’s definition will suffice: “The term transgender is an encompassing term that includes anyone whose behavior departs significantly from the norms of the gender suggested by his or her anatomy at birth. The term transsexual usually refers to someone who has had surgery or hormones to align his or her body with a nonbirth gender” (Solomon, 2012, pg. 599). It is helpful to know what the key differences between the terms transsexual and transgender. A person who is transsexual is someone who has gone through the process of changing their physical sex from the sex they were born with to the desired sex. A transsexual person could be someone who has met the criteria for the DSM-5 diagnosis of gender dysphoria and physically transitions so their inner-self matches their physical body thereby erasing the dysphoric state. Although the term transsexual falls under the umbrella of transgender, it is important to distinguish the two terms.

It is important to note that being transgender does not necessarily imply anything about that person's sexual preference. Transgender individuals can be heterosexual, homosexual, asexual or anywhere else on the sexual preference spectrum. Understanding what transgender means also necessitates unders...

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.... Findings pointed to 16 percent of the 67 participating male to female transgendered had been forced to have sex with a casual partner, and an astounding 25 percent of said individuals had been forced to have sex by their primary partner (Stotzer, 127). Even more evidence to support these findings came from the Xavier et al. studies. Xavier et al.’s findings resulted in 35 percent of transgendered individuals had been forced to have sex with a person who lived in the victim’s household during the time of the attack. For male to female transgendered individuals who have entered the world of prostitution, the most common perpetrator were their customers at 60 percent, someone else at 40 percent and lastly, their pimp at 20 percent (Stotzer, 127). Aside from the sexual violence that has been experienced, many transgendered individuals fall victim to physical violence.