Why are People Scared of Transgenders?

RAINBOW CORNER

Barriers to gender identification substantially undermine a person's identity and amount to a fundamental breach of a contract. A person's access to social security, housing, freedom of movement, and place of residency are all negatively impacted when their legal gender is denied. Additionally, it promotes prejudice, aggression, and exclusion in a variety of social circumstances, including work and academic environments. When transgender people affirm their gender identification, states frequently place severe limitations on them, prohibiting things like medical certification, surgery, treatment, sterilization, or divorce.

Transgender refers to those whose gender identity differs from the gender assigned to them at birth. Despite the fact that the term "transgender" and its current definition have only been in use since the late twentieth century, individuals who meet this condition have existed in all societies since the beginning of written history.

More than 2 million transgender people live in the US, according to the HRC Foundation. People from all backgrounds identify as transgender. Their families consist of parents, kids, and siblings. They are friends of your neighbours, co-workers. They are seven-year-old kids and grandparents who are in our seventies. People of different racial backgrounds, nationalities, and religions make up their unique community.

How and why we should encourage our society to be more inclusive, and how can we change the mindsets of people?

Marginalization and exclusion

Globally, offensive levels of violence and prejudice are experienced by transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

When they are people of colour, members of ethnic minorities, migrants, HIV-positive, or sex workers, they are particularly vulnerable to violence, including killing, beatings, mutilation, rape, and other forms of abuse and maltreatment; and in order to exercise their right to recognition, they need:

a) access to education

b) access to health care

c) access to employment

When their name and sex information on official documents does not match their gender identification or presentation, trans people are more susceptible to human rights violations. But the great majority of transgender and gender nonconforming people do not now have access to state-level gender recognition. In addition to creating a legal void, this circumstance fosters an atmosphere that unintentionally supports stigma and discrimination against them.

The impulse to punish based on preconceived beliefs of what the victim's gender identity should be, with a binary concept of what divides a man and a female, or the masculine and the feminine, is at the core of acts of violence and discrimination. These behaviours are generally the consequence of deeply rooted stigma and prejudice, irrational rage, and a particular form of gender-based violence undertaken with the intention of punishing those who are perceived to be defying gender norms.

A glimmer of hope for trans identity depathologization

For many years, pathologizing identities and other types of variation has been done erroneously using mental health diagnoses. In 2017, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations on the right to health argued that associating trans identities with illnesses only serves to increase stigma and prejudice.

The eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which was approved by the World Health Assembly in 2019, deleted trans-related categories from the chapter on mental and behavioural disorders. The revision depathologizes trans identities and is regarded as a crucial step in ensuring that transgender people live without violence and discrimination.

It is important to recognise that pathologization has long had a significant impact on jurisprudence, legislation, and public policy, permeating all spheres of state action and the public psyche. It will take time, effort, and additional measures to eradicate the idea that various gender identities are disorders of daily life.

State legislatures are urged to:

• Give transgender persons access to high-quality healthcare and health-related information, consider making gender-affirming medical care a legal requirement independent of a patient's medical condition, and take strong action to stop so-called "conversion therapy."

• Consult the UN experts' statement praising the modification as well as the new WHO International Classification of Diseases.

Legal gender recognition is still a far-off dream for many people. Gender identification is a crucial aspect of a person's identity. States are therefore required to provide gender recognition in accordance with the rights to equality before the law, freedom from discrimination, privacy, identity, and freedom of speech.

Barriers to gender identification substantially undermine a person's identity and amount to a fundamental breach of a contract. A person's access to social security, housing, freedom of movement, and place of residency are all negatively impacted when their legal gender is denied. Additionally, it promotes prejudice, aggression, and exclusion in a variety of social circumstances, including work and academic environments. When transgender people affirm their gender identification, states frequently place severe limitations on them, prohibiting things like medical certification, surgery, treatment, sterilization, or divorce.

The Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity has encouraged governments all around the world to make gender recognition for all people a legal obligation. The Independent Expert recommended nations enact legislation and create public policies that followed the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2015 recommendations, which state that the procedure for legalizing gender identity should include:

What states should do, in addition to the aforementioned principles:

To eliminate the stigma that gender diversity still carries in society, implement educational activities. provide educational programs that address misunderstandings, societal biases, and negative prejudice.

Redressing incorrect or prejudiced images of transgender and gender nonconforming people in the media; putting policies in place to protect children who identify as transgender or gender nonconforming from all forms of prejudice and violence, including bullying.

Examine laws and policies that intensify police abuse and harassment, extortion, and violent acts against people based on gender identification (such as those based on public decency, morals, health, and security, including those on begging and loitering).

Adopt legislation that forbids discrimination based on gender identification

Adopt laws against hate speech that are based on gender identity, as well as legislation against hate crimes that add transphobia as an aggravating circumstance to the punishment.

To inform policies, laws, investigations, prosecutions, and remedies, as well as to use affirmative action to address structural discrimination and socioeconomic inequities, it is necessary to gather information. Gather information to evaluate the types, prevalence, trends, and patterns of violence and prejudice experienced by trans individuals and people of different genders.

The takeaways:

Even as advocates work to address these injustices, trans individuals cannot wait perpetually for change. Visibility continues to have a significant impact on us, particularly when trans individuals are portrayed positively in popular culture and the media. But visibility by itself is insufficient and even dangerous, especially for those of us who are members of other underprivileged populations. Human Rights Campaign will continue to promote and advocate for the trans community to make sure that transgenders who are currently or soon will be your friends, neighbours, co-workers, and family members have an equitable opportunity to grow and prosper.

Also Read: Some Lucky Charms and their Benevolent Qualities

Also Watch: