Transgender

In the case of someone who is transgender, their gender does not reflect the one assigned to them at birth. This includes trans guys, trans girls and non binary people (you'll have noticed this if you have a Spotify account).

That is, a trans man's gender is male and is different to the female written on their birth certificate. Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, which is the feeling of "not belonging in their body". As in, looking in the mirror and the person they see is not them.

I'll try to explain what it is in a way you cis people can understand. Gender dysphoria would be the sadness when your body doesn't match up with your gender. Cis people may also feel gender dysphoria, whereby their body is not masculine or feminine enough, typically by standards and expectations imposed by society or by themselves but ultimately due to societal perception. Guys may experience it as not being tall (or large, wink wink) enough and girls by not being feminine enough or not having a large enough chest or not being slim enough.

If you want to see the embodiment of senseless transphobia, I invite you to go look at JK Rowling's Twitter account.

On a more serious note, trans people face discrimination in many areas, including schools/workplace (social discrimination) at hospitals (medical discrimination) and legal discrimination.

1. Transgender people are much more likely to be victims of a hate crime, as compared to any other rainbow flavour. And that's already extremely high, with LGBT+ people being the second largest group targeted by hate crimes, the first being people of colour.

Trans people are 4x more likely to be victims of physical agression, as compared to cisgender people. (86.2 per 1000 vs 21.7 out of 1000) Less than 1 in 10 incidents against cis people were reported as hate crimes vs 1 in 4 for trans people. Around half of all violent victimisations were not reported.

2. Sexual assault, physical assault, harassment in schools/workplace and job loss due to bias and discrimination are some of the most prominent issues affecting trans people due to society. The main cause? People's reluctance to accept and their habit of alienating people who they do not understand (view: history)

3. 19% of trans people have experienced violence or abuse from a family member.

4. 50% of trans adults have reported harassment in the office.

5. 26% of trans people have lost their job due to prejudices in the workplace.

6. Discrimination manifests itself as mental health problems, with trans people expressing signs of clinical depression (44.1%), anxiety (33.2%) and somatisation (25%)(whereby mental state translates into physical symptoms).

The same research found that support from other LGBT+ (in particular the T), encouragement and support from friends and family and reduced discrimination within society softened the blow of stigmatisation.

While mental health is no joke, many trans people (68% in the USA, likely worse elsewhere) will not seek professional help from therapists or sorts because of the risk of further discrimination and stigmatisation from medical workers and due to the healthcare system ignoring trans-exclusive problems and treating them like a cisgender patient.

7. I added this last minute following new breaking and depressing news. Anti-trans legislation is a dangerous (and ridiculous) thing in the real world which affects trans people. So you'll have Texas investigating parents who let their children transition under the pretext of child abuse. Then you have Florida (or is it Texas) which wants to check children's genitals to decide if they participate in guys or girls sports. Or bathroom conflicts (for the record, there have been no trans people sexually assaulting anyone in bathrooms and restricting biological men and women to men's and women's bathrooms won't do shit to deter rapists) where you can have an 80kg muscular trans guy having to go into the bathroom used by cis women. Talk about ridiculous.

Worsened mental health and higher tendency to severe problems, including clinical depression, anxiety and somatisation. This in turn is suspected to increase suicidal tendencies which are predicted to be above the average at 51% although the figure is extremely uncertain.

I heard this some time long ago. I don't remember where but it really stuck with me.

"Black people cannot end racism"

Seems really incorrect at first glance, doesn't it? It took me maybe a week to finally understand what it meant (I may just be thick as a brick). Essentially, racism is not a problem with black people but rather with white people. It's the racist people who need to change in order to eliminate racism.

The same applies here. The only way for transphobia to disappear is if transphobes either change their mentality or die off like the dinosaurs (which one is more likely, you tell me).

Further ways of catering for trans people in society is support. If you cannot get rid of transphobia, be someone who will support trans peers. No, you don't need to go to extreme lengths either. Things like calling out transphobia, using the correct pronouns/names for a transgender person already go a long way. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that not discriminating against a minority is suicide prevention in itself.