Transgender Awareness Week
During the week of November 13-19 we celebrate Transgender Awareness Week to honor transgender people whose lives have been lost as a result of anti-transgender violence. This week is for transgender people and allies to take action in order to bring awareness to the trans community through education, sharing stories, and advocating issues of prejudice, discrimination, and violence impacting the community. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or expression differs from societal expectations of their sex assigned at birth. Additionally, nonbinary is defined as people who do not describe their gender identity exclusively as male or female.
Historically, the LGBTQ+ community has been subjected to discrimination and oppression because of politics, religion, and societal standards based on sex assigned at birth. An argument used against the LGBTQ+ community by Catholicism and Christianity is that God views homosexuality as a sin so therefore it is wrong. However, the Old Testament’s original German translation had the word ‘knabenschander’ meaning boy molester. Leviticus 18-22 was originally written as: Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination. Furthermore, 1 Corinthians originally said: Boy molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God. In 1892, Germans created the term “homosexual” & an American company, Biblica, paid for an updated German bible using the word ‘homosexual’ instead of ‘boy molesters’. The English translation is now “Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination.”
In Florida alone, we have seen an attack on the trans community being used for political gain, transgender teachers are no longer able to use their preferred pronouns or titles, such as Mr. or Mrs., in class. Politicians such as Ron DeSantis have introduced bills such as the “Don’t Say Gay'' law and banning books that disproportionately target LGBTQ+ literature in public schools. H.B. 1521 makes it illegal for trangender teachers, staff, and students to use the bathroom that best fits their gender identity. Because of this, teachers and staff face professional discipline while students face a “penalty” and a “disciplinary referral.” With all of that being said, it should not come as a shock that transgender people face higher levels of depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide when compared to the general population. Specifically, transgender people have the highest rates of mental health challenges among the LGBTQ+ community because of the extreme political focus to condemn them and a lack of support.
Factors influencing mental health challenges among the trans community include discrimination, transphobia, financial instability, and health challenges. One study examining reasons for suicidal thoughts in transgender youth reported “school belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma created a statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality.” More than 1 in 5 transgender youth reported being threatened with or forced into conversion therapy to “cure” their gender identity. The APA, American Psychiatric Association, explains that “conversion therapy is based on the prior assumption that diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are mentally ill and should change.” We now know that there are no proven benefits of conversion therapy, in fact it causes significant mental health problems, and diverse gender identities and sexual orientations are not any form of a mental illness and do not need to be changed.
Source: GLAAD, HealthPartners, APA