LGBT Transgender Discrimination and Bathroom Bills

2. WHAT IS A TRANSGENDER?
•The word “transgender” – or trans – is an
umbrella term for people whose gender
identity is different from the sex assigned to
us at birth.

3. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GAY,
LESBIAN, TRANSGENDER, BISEXUAL
• LESBIAN: Women who experience sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual
attraction to other women.
• GAY: Used in some cultural settings to represent men who are attracted to men in a
romantic, erotic and/or emotional sense. Not all men who engage in same-gender
sexual behavior identify as gay, and as such this label should be used with caution.
• BISEXUAL or BI: A person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical, and/or
spiritual attraction to people of their own gender as well as other genders, not
necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree.
• TRANSGENDER: A person who lives as a member of a gender other than that
expected based on sex or gender assigned at birth. Sexual orientation varies and is
not dependent on gender identity.

4. TERMINOLOGIES
• CISGENDER: someone who feels comfortable with the gender identity assigned to
them based on their sex assigned at birth.
• Homophobia: A range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or
people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgender (LGBT). It can be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion,
or hatred, may be based on irrational fear, and is sometimes related to religious
beliefs.
• Homosexual: A clinical term for people who are attracted to members of the same
sex. Some people find this term offensive.
• Heterosexual: A person who is only attracted to members of the opposite sex. Also
called “straight.“

5. • Sexual orientation: The type of sexual, romantic, and/or physical attraction
someone feels toward others. Often labeled based on the gender
identity/expression of the person and who they are attracted to. Common labels:
lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, etc.
• Transsexual: A person whose gender identity is different from their biological sex,
who may undergo medical treatments to change their biological sex, often times
align it with their gender identity, or they may live their lives as another sex.

6. WHAT IS A TRANSGENDER
DISCRIMINATION?
• The news is full of stories about state laws limiting legal
protections for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
community. On the heels of last year’s victory for marriage
equality, bills were introduced in nearly two dozen states that
would have abridged LGBT people’s basic rights—and
unfortunately, many of these efforts specifically targeted the
transgender community, which already faces significant
discrimination.

7. •The largest completed survey of transgender
people found that almost half of all respondents—
47 percent—had faced discrimination in hiring,
promotion, or job retention, and 78 percent
experienced at least one form of harassment or
mistreatment at work because of their gender
identity.

8. •Twenty states, the District of Columbia, and 255
municipalities have enacted or extended
employment, housing, or public accommodations
statutes or ordinances that prohibit discrimination
on the basis of gender identity or expression. But
other states, such as Mississippi and North
Carolina, have moved in the opposite direction.

9. EMPLOYMENT
• This takes many forms and can include termination, failure to
hire, demotion, and hostile work environment, among others.
No comprehensive federal equality act exists yet, so you will
have to make a substantial argument based on the law in your
jurisdiction.

10. PRISON ACCOMMODATIONS
• Incarceration presents a serious safety issue for transgender prisoners if
their housing placement is based on their gender assigned at birth rather
than their lived gender. Also, a client might ask you to fight for the right to
medically necessary transition-related care, such as hormone replacement
therapy or surgery. The DSM-V provides that the correct diagnosis for a
transgender client is “gender dysphoria.” Obtaining a name or gender-
marker change may be part of your client’s medically necessary treatment
for gender dysphoria. If such changes are necessary, your client generally
has the same legal right to obtain those protections as others.

11. FOSTERING GOOD CLIENT
RELATIONS
• There are a few key things to keep in mind when a transgender
client comes into your office. Most important, use the client’s
chosen name and pronoun. This gives clients the dignity they
don’t always enjoy elsewhere. A clear lack of experience with or
exposure to the LGBT community may make a client
uncomfortable. Like your other clients, transgender clients are
aggrieved when they come to you—don’t let ignorance create a
barrier.

12. LACK OF LEGAL PROTECTION
• While the federal government's Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Education have
recently taken steps to include transgender people under
existing non-discrimination protections, there is still no
comprehensive non-discrimination law that includes gender
identity.

13. POVERTY
• In too many cases, this lack of legal protection translates
into unemployment for transgender people. The
National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS)
found that 15 percent of respondents were living in
severe poverty (making less than $10,000/year). For
transgender people of color, those rates were even
higher, with 34 percent of Black and 28 percent of
Latina/o respondents reporting a household income of
less than $10,000 a year.

14. HARASSMENT AND STIGMA
• The LGBTQ community still faces considerable stigma based on over a
century of being characterized as mentally ill, socially deviant and sexually
predatory. While these flawed views have faded in recent years for lesbians
and gay men, transgender people are still often met with ridicule from a
society that does not understand us. This stigma plays out in a variety of
contexts – leaving us vulnerable to lawmakers who attempt to leverage
anti-transgender stigma to score cheap political points; to family, friends or
coworkers who reject transgender people upon learning about our
transgender identities; and to people who harass, bully and commit serious
violence against transgender people.

15. ANTI-TRANSGENDER VIOLENCE
• At least 13 transgender women were murdered in 2014,
and 2015 is on track to see even higher numbers. These
women were stabbed, shot, strangled, burned; killed
violently by intimate partners or strangers.

16. IDENTITY DOCUMENTS
• The widespread lack of accurate identity documents among transgender
people can have an impact on every area of their lives, including access to
emergency housing or other public services. To be clear, without
identification, one cannot travel, register for school or access many services
that are essential to function in society. Many states require evidence of
medical transition – which can be prohibitively expensive and is not
something that all transgender people want – as well as fees for processing
new identity documents, which may make them unaffordable for some
members of the transgender community.

17. PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS
• This is another area where transgender people commonly
encounter discrimination. Public accommodations include
everything from restaurants to shops to banks—and people can
experience humiliating treatment in these environments. There
is no federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in public
accommodations, but 45 states and the District of Columbia
have such laws.

19. • A bathroom bill is the common name for legislation or a
statute that defines access to public toilets (restrooms)—
by transgender individuals. Bathroom bills affect access to
sex-segregated public facilities for an individual based on
a determination of their sex as defined in some specific
way—such as their sex as assigned at birth, their sex as
listed on their birth certificate, or the sex that corresponds
to their gender identity.

20. • According to CNN, as of March 2017, 19 states, the District of Columbia, and more
than 200 municipalities have anti-discrimination laws and ordinances permitting
transgender people to utilize public facilities that correlate to their gender
identity. Whenever the subject comes up in the news, law enforcement agencies,
state human rights commissions, and prosecutors have steadfastly denied there is
any equivalence between such policies and an increase in assaults. Most notably,
civil rights activists argue there are more reports of transgender people being
assaulted in bathrooms that do not correspond to their gender identity.

21. • Another claim asserts being transgender is not a legitimate condition. This position
puts forth that transgender people are mentally ill and should not be afforded the
same healthcare guarantees or legal protection as gay and lesbian
Americans. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of mainstream medical,
psychological, and psychiatric communities concur that being transgender is not a
mental illness or fabrication. Plainly put, it is a valid state in which a person's gender
does not align with what was assigned at birth. According to a study published in
The Lancet in 2016, typifying transgender identity as a mental disorder contributes
to uncertain human rights violations, legal status, as well as impediments to suitable
health care.
• A condition is defined as a mental illness when it causes considerable distress.
According to the American Psychological Association, the American Medical
Association, and other healthcare organizations, for many, merely being transgender
does not cause dysfunction; it is the social ignominy and obstacles to articulating a
person's identity that cause complications.
• Although there is a lot of anxiety linked to this issue, it seems to be based on fear
instead of facts. Knowing this, it is truly demoralizing to see so many states, and
now our federal government, make a conscious choice to treat transgender people
with what appears to be hatred.