Transgender in Science: The Power of Mesearch

This blog post is a part of the series, “So Good,” developed by the APAGS Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity. This series will discuss current events and how these events relate to LGBTQ+ graduate students in psychology. If you are interested in contributing to the “So Good” series, please contact Mallaigh McGinley (they/them).

I believe that science can help us move towards a more kind, more just, and more equitable world, and that science can truly change lives for the better. When I initially attended undergrad from 2004-2006, I found I was consistently questioning myself and my life’s path. I felt, as I had for my entire life, that there was something wrong with me. No matter how hard I tried, I could not come up with the answers I needed to be successful. What I needed was to take the time necessary to figure out what I perceived was wrong with me, and to figure out what my path could actually be. I finally returned to continue my undergraduate degree in the Spring of 2015 after pursuing a completely different career in the restaurant industry. While I hadn’t exactly figured out what felt off, I did have a path – I saw the way the world treated those who did not fit within the standard conceptions of what was “normal” (e.g., transgender people, queer folks, BIPOC), and I wanted to do something to make it better. It’s the typical undergraduate student’s reason for pursuing an education in psychology: I wanted to help people. Less than one month after returning, I began to see news articles about the first in a series of papers from a longitudinal study following transgender children (Olson, Key, & Eaton, 2015). Reading the coverage of this article, and eventually the article itself, helped me realize that there were children out there who felt the way that I had felt as a child, and that they were remarkably similar to their cisgender peers. What this told me in that moment was that the way that I had felt all my life wasn’t beyond normal human variation; there was nothing wrong with me. It was then that I realized the power of scientific research to impact individuals and societies, while engaging in positive social change. While we have talked many times since I initially reached out to her, I don’t know if I have ever actually told Kristina that the article itself actually led me to becoming comfortable with who I am, and it led coming out. So… thanks, Kristina!

But we still live in a world where transgender people are misunderstood and discriminated against, in spite of landmark court decisions like Bostock v. Clayton County as well as the so-called “Transgender Tipping Point” that Time magazine declared in 2014.

Transgender people face discrimination in multiple arenas. Transgender, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming individuals face significantly higher rates of harassment, discrimination, sexual abuse, and other traumatic events (Lefevor, Boyd-Rogers, Sprague, & Janis, 2019; Su, Irwin, Fisher, Ramos, Kelley, Mendoza, & Coleman, 2016), experience higher rates of suicidality among both adults and adolescents (James et al., 2016; Thoma, Salk, Choukas-Bradley, Goldstein, Levine, & Marshal, 2019), and deal with discriminative experiences even within healthcare settings (Grant, Motter, & Tanis, 2011; James et al.,  2016; Bradford, Reisner, Honnold, & Xavier, 2013). Transgender individuals also face high rates of employment discrimination (James et al., 2016). These disparities are particularly salient when considering individuals who are members of intersectionally stigmatized minority identities (Howard, Lee, Nathan, Wenger, Chin, & Cook, 2019). For example, 50% of Indigenous American transgender individuals faces one or more negative experiences with a health care provider in 2014-2015, while only 34% of White transgender individuals faced similar circumstances (James et al., 2016). While some of these data are outdated, it is more likely than not that these experiences haven’t magically gone away over the last five years, particularly under the political and social circumstances we have experienced during that time extending from military bans to certain well known children’ authors who must not be named coming out against transgender rights (Rowling, 2020).

While I am only at the beginning of my research career, the issues faced by myself and my community are at the center of my research goals. In spite of the many people I have met, both within the field and outside of it, who not only tolerate but embrace transgender individuals, I still see a world that pushes people like me to the edges of society and over those very edges. I could easily lose hope when I read about the over 350 transgender people who were murdered worldwide in 2020, or when I hear stories from friends about how they have been denied housing, jobs, or faced assault simply for being transgender. But I can’t lose that hope. I have to believe that we can turn this around. And being in academia, pursuing research into these topics – that’s the way that I work towards a more inclusive, more equitable world.

As I am both transgender and queer, some might say that I am pursuing so-called “mesearch.” Others might say that the work I do is not “broad enough” to be considered for higher impact factor journals (side note: I have previously seen and am fully expecting to see decisions from editors over the next many years that say something along the lines of “this manuscript might be more suited to a more specialized journal”). There are some who would say that I am not “objective” enough to do this kind of research. That my research is made less because of who I am. But being queer and transgender gives me advantages that straight, cisgender people simply do not have when pursuing research about transgender people. I am involved in my own communities. I face some of these problems, and I have the opportunity to hear stories of the situations that others face. Those of us who are members of gender, sexual, and romantic minorities talk to one another. I know some of the questions that need to be asked. I know about many of the problems we face. And I can design studies that seek to explore those very questions. There is a certain power to studying issues that are faced by a community that you belong to. There is a certain power, then, in my being a queer, transgender researcher. But what we need to do, as a field, is embrace that power. The power of inclusion in research, in recruiting, and in retention. Those of us who face these experiences, and those of us who belong to the communities that we study (and whose issues we study) need to be included as active researchers in projects about those very communities. This includes research on gender, sexual, and romantic minorities. This includes research into racial bias and discrimination, the dehumanization of minorities, and minority related inequity. And we should be involved in every aspect of the research, from design to data collection to the writing process. We must be given a seat at the table, and we must be acknowledged and given full credit throughout the process (and it should be as actual authors, not simply in acknowledgement sections). This work is about us: it must include us.

References
Bradford, J., Reisner, S. L., Honnold, J. A., & Xavier, J. (2013). Experiences of transgender-related discrimination and implications for health: results from the Virginia Transgender Health Initiative Study. American journal of public health, 103(10), 1820-1829.

Grant, J. M., Motter, L. A., & Tanis, J. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the national transgender discrimination survey.

Howard, S. D., Lee, K. L., Nathan, A. G., Wenger, H. C., Chin, M. H., & Cook, S. C. (2019). Healthcare experiences of transgender people of color. Journal of general internal medicine, 34(10), 2068-2074.

James, S., Herman, J., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Anafi, M. A. (2016). The report of the 2015 US transgender survey.

Lefevor, G. T., Boyd-Rogers, C. C., Sprague, B. M., & Janis, R. A. (2019). Health disparities between genderqueer, transgender, and cisgender individuals: An extension of minority stress theory. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 66(4), 385.

Rowling, J. K. (2020, August 27). J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues. Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/

Su, D., Irwin, J. A., Fisher, C., Ramos, A., Kelley, M., Mendoza, D. A. R., & Coleman, J. D. (2016). Mental health disparities within the LGBT population: A comparison between transgender and nontransgender individuals. Transgender Health, 1(1), 12-20.

Thoma, B. C., Salk, R. H., Choukas-Bradley, S., Goldstein, T. R., Levine, M. D., & Marshal, M. P. (2019). Suicidality disparities between transgender and cisgender adolescents. Pediatrics, 144(5).

Catherine Wall is a doctoral student in the Health Psychology program at Virginia Commonwealth University where she uses interdisciplinary methods to explore the downstream consequences of bias and prejudice towards those who are members of gender, sexual, and romantic minority populations, with a particular focus on those who are members of multiple stigmatized minority identity groups. In addition to her research, Catherine provides consulting for cultural competency and accuracy related to transgender health and transgender identities. She can be contacted via email.

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