Introduction

Transgender people have experienced harmful and dangerous challenges within society. This is reflected in representations of trans people within mainstream media—it has been more negative than positive, and has done more harm than good when influencing the general public who consume such media.

Because of such media portrayal, perceptions of trans people in society become damaging, which negatively influences trans folk's lived experiences. For instance, they experience more barriers to healthcare than their cisgender counterparts. The medical-industrial complex's singular view of the trans experience forces those seeking gender-affirming care to rehearse and perform a false narrative of their lives.

This is further exacerbated when looking at transphobia via an intersectional lens—the challenges experienced by black and/or impoverished trans people are magnified because they experience compounded forms of discrimination.

With this in mind, we split our website into 3 sections: the media, the healthcare sector, and intersectionality. We want to shed light on the challenges trans people face in these 3 facets of society and will speculate what a trans-affirming future could look like within these facets.

Our guiding research questions are:

How are trans people perceived in our society, and how is this reflected in the way the media portrays them and in their lived experiences?

Additionally, how might the literature guide us in imagining what a trans-affirming future might look like?