THE EARLY INSIGHTS FOR THE 2022 US TRANSGENDER SURVEY ARE OUT! THE CORPUS IS FOUR TIMES THE SIZE OF THE 2015 USTS!!! IT'S BY FAR THE LARGEST TRANS STUDY EVER COMPLETED!!!
Wanna talk about transfeminine enby erasure and trans men being erased? Of the impact of transmisogyny in a nutshell? Here's the most damning graph I've ever seen.
30% of the corpus was transmasc enbies, versus EIGHT percent transfem enbies. That's a fourfold difference.
And let alone the policing and erasure of trans men too. Jesus, that's a 30% difference.
Wow. Just as a data scientist who works with trans folks, this is stunning.
@ctrl@rebeccasaurus@Impossible_PhD this has always been my issue with sharing my agab. You end up just creating just another category of man/woman and further enforce the binary. As far as Im concerned, your agab only matters in the context of agab specific healthcare, everything else is just enby erasure
@rebeccasaurus@sentinian@ctrl As I understand the history, transmasculine and transfeminine were coined, as words, so that we could:
Not refer to a trans person relative to their birth gender.
Specifically be inclusive to both binary and nonbinary trans people.
Speak about issues common to binary and nonbinary people (for instance, "top surgery" as shorthand for double mastectomy as part of gender-affirming care).
If you don't care for that umbrella term, I certainly understand your stance, but I do not appreciate being attacked over it. I would encourage you to direct your concerns to Julia Serano, who coined it in her 2008 book, Whipping Girl. I'm just trying to use the most commonly agreed-upon/preferred terms to be able to speak about what these data say.
@Impossible_PhD@rebeccasaurus@sentinian We're not criticizing the use of the terms transmasc and transfem, but the fact it's used to replace "amab" and "afab".
Because by equating the two you are definitely refering to a trans person via their 'birth gender'.
It is not inclusive at all, since it's just basically saying "enby people are just {man, woman}-lite".
And I don't get how transfem or transmascs has anything to do with the various surgeries / procedures we can encounter ?
And regarding your last paragraph, again, it's not a critic of the terms transmacs or transfems, and painting our comments as if it was, is just missing our point.
I don't get why you can't just use the same words than the survey ? 'afab' and 'amab' in this context makes total sense ?
@ctrl@rebeccasaurus@sentinian I don't use the terms from the survey because a great many nonbinary people have expressed to me over the years that they strongly prefer transfem/transmasc over that. I am respecting their wishes. You have made it clear that you don't agree with that position.
This is horrifying to the extreme. This isn't just the death of a generation. This is the death of several, the cultural obliteration of trans, enby and GNC folks in general for decades upon decades, in pursuit of a vaunted patriarchy constructed entirely of pigeonholes.
Of that 25-44 range, I would even hypothesize that the lion's share are below 35.
It is a wonder and a blessing that we even have as many as we do -- folks like @oldladyplays who is an absolute gem and out there living her best life.
But imagine how much better we could be with more like her...
Seriously, at some point I need to find the best way to treat her to something like Nougat or Vincenzo's or somewhere in town. (Hear that? The offer's open!)
Surprising absolutely nobody, only 3% of respondents said that they were less satisfied with their life after transitioning--and that's "less satisfied" for all causes, including discrimination and unrelated illness or disaster.
Meanwhile, the more focused question--change in satisfaction with HRT--confirms every other study out there, showing dissatisfaction with HRT is a rounding error at less than 1%.
Same data with gender-affirming surgery, though there are a couple more people who are significantly less satisfied. We're still talking a little over 1% here though.
More than a third of respondents live below the poverty line now, and almost a third had been homeless at some point.
But the really damning thing is this: When the USTS was completed, the US unemployment rate was 8.7%. 18% of all trans people were unemployed, more than double that rate.
And those in the Bible Belt are the ones most likely to be unable to move. Mobility is sharply reduced in lower-income areas, in no small part by design, and especially for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, ND and other groups which are discriminated against in terms of income.
@theogrin@Impossible_PhD yeah especially given the really brutal stats later on in the doc on poverty -- I wonder how those poverty stats skew in areas likely to be less supportive
I don't even have to look up the doc to tell you they skew hard towards poverty, because a culture of hatred and violence doesn't just have the obvious illness and death effects, but also results in stressors which make it difficult or impossible to hold down even the most seemingly-innocuous job for long, even without the push to turn to self-medicating through alcohol or other substances.
@theogrin@rachel I comment on that, and it is absolutely horrid--but one thing to remember is that this was completed in 2022, when overall unemployment was 8.7%. There's going to be some artifacts in here from the background rates.
@Impossible_PhD yeah, I was really surprised by their regional demographics...they did include one or two states in the South that seemed unusual choices to me, but they're small and wouldn't affect that much. It's interesting both that there are so many trans folks in that region (we're everywhere in similar proportions since that's the largest grouping of states) and that they are so poorly represented in depictions of transness. I've read some really great studies about trans folks in the South, but all of them often start by having to point out how we neglect that region or tell people to just move from therew.
@Impossible_PhD This is one of the pieces I struggle with most. I live in Iowa, which is literally taking pages from the Florida playbook wrt trans persecution. A big difference, though, is that FL has huge urban centers, full of people living their best queer lives. Iowa is incredibly rural, and that low-density population still outweighs our city centers. We don't have the numbers here.
I feel like I'd be safer in Atlanta or Ft. Lauderdale than Iowa City. 😞
@Impossible_PhD Even if all the trans people in the Bible Belt moved (impossible, as you just said!) trans kids would still be born there. Changing culture so they’re safe and more likely to be accepted by their parents! 💜
One can see something similar w/the UK census. Trans numbers right around the 0.6-1.2% predicted by data from other countries... Until you get to my lot (gen x) where it drops off a cliff.
@JuliaRez Census data is crap for estimating the population size anyway. Minoritized people lie constantly about their minoritization on census forms, and always have.
@Impossible_PhD It does make you wonder, how many just never get to realise. I wondered if was nonbinary at one point, and there are few if any transfem enby stories told or experiences shared. So you just default to binary and leave the wondering for later-never.
@Impossible_PhD
Just a gentle reminder that being enby and AFAB doesn't make someone transmasculine. I know a lot of AFAB enbies who wouldn't describe themselves as transmasc and would be surprised to be included in that category, including some who took a long time to realize they were enby because of that linear "m-f spectrum" framing.
@smolwaffle There is no universally-agreed-upon term for nonbinary people of that type which does not use their gender assigned at birth as a referent, which is a much more common pain point. "Transmasculine" and "Transfeminine," as terms, were introduced specifically to be nonbinary-inclusive ways to describe people transitioning away from their GAB or toward another gender without mentioning their AGAB.
Just a gentle reminder that these terms make discussion possible, even if imperfect.
@smolwaffle The other thing to remember is that one of the main ways that outsiders work to undercut, destabilize, and slow reform movements, and especially equality movements, is to enter the discourse and work to start petty disputes about immaterial things that take considerable time to navigate.
To quote Terra Kestrel: "What is preventing us from doing the work we're all here to do?"
That is always, always supremacy culture, and it should be ignored, set aside for later, or done away with.
@dramypsyd Are you kidding? I am not exaggerating at my excitement over this, and sharing my nerdy excitement over the internet is how I get to geek out!
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