Last month I wrote an article speaking to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey in which some disturbing data was published with regard to various aspects of bias and discrimination towards Transgender individuals in the U.S.
Since that article I’ve visited Washington, D.C. for the National Center for Transgender Equality’s (NCTE) annual Policy Conference where Jack Harrison (co-author of the NTDS report), along with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) mentioned state-specific data was available to Trans organizations and advocates for use in their work.
TransHaven made such a request and we received a fact sheet on the Missouri findings this past weekend.
While we expected to see similar findings as in the national survey, we were not prepared to see a higher trend in bias, discrimination and other data in some of the survey’s Missouri findings. Of the data, the most chilling trend was to see a suicide attempt rate of 50% of the Missouri sampling, compared to 41% from the overall national sampling of Trans individuals. To put that in perspective, the suicide attempt rate in the general U.S population is one of 1.6% compared to the number of Trans people making such an attempt at some point in their life—over 30-times greater
Other Missouri data shows a greater number in bullying and harassment of those trans-identified while in school (78% vs. 65% in K-12) and trends showing a greater likelihood of homelessness and having a household income of less than $10,000 or less. In this sampling, the Missouri data also showed that 5.47% of the Missouri respondents were HIV positive in comparison to the general population’s rate of 0.6% noted in the World Health Organization’s report of 2007.
From the Missouri sampling of the NTDS, it is clear that certain efforts being conducted by TransHaven will continue and in some cases, a stronger advocacy and support of other efforts must be emphasized. TransHaven is currently working on projects regarding homeless shelters and identity documents and is a member organization of the Missouri Safe School Coalition and St Louis’ I Care Campaign. We also are supporting efforts to pass the Missouri Non-Discrimination Act (MONA) and other initiatives to pass municipal non-discrimination policies with ‘Gender Identity’ in the language. At the national level, TransHaven will be taking on educational efforts in promoting the re-introduction of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act scheduled to take place this week in the U.S. House of Representatives.
TransHaven itself is embarking on a state-wide Trans Needs Assessment Survey in which we will work to gather a larger sampling of Trans individual’s demographics scheduled to launch on April 4th, 2011. From that data and that of the NTDS—we will be able to define without question the path TransHaven must embark on to serve our Missouri Transgender constituency.
Complete information on the Missouri-specific data from the NTDS will be posted on our website www.transhaven.org.
BY: ROBYN CAROLYN MONTAGUE
