New Research Report on Trans people's life experience of inequalities and
discrimination:
Engendered Penalties: Transgender and Transsexual People’s Experiences of
Inequality and Discrimination
Authors: Stephen Whittle, Lewis Turner and Maryam Al-Alami, (Crown
Copyright 2007)
available at
http://www.theequalitiesreview.org.uk/upload/assets/www.theequalitiesreview
.org.uk/transgender.pdf
This 95 page report was commissioned by the UK Government's Equalities
Review. As a consequence of the report's findings, the UK Government has
announced that transgender will be a protected category (along with sex &
gender; race & ethnicity; physical or mental disability; religion & faith;
age; and sexual orientation) for the new Equalities and Human Rights
Commission that starts work in October 2007.
Clearly this is a great leap forward for the trans community in the UK,
but much more important is the report's findings on the extent of
inequality and unlawful discrimination experienced by trans people in a
modern European, liberal, society. The empirical and qualitative report's
findings were based upon an analysis of over 100,000 emails, a survey with
873 respondents, and interviews.
Starting in early childhood and through to the grave, trans people face
repeated and ongoing prejudice which results in violence, abuse,
institutionalised discrimination and 'othering' throughout all aspects of
their lives. The evidence threw up some new and interesting results which
challenge current understandings of the trans community and the people in
it. These include evidence that tomboys experience more abuse at school
than sissy boys, and that many lifelong 'transvestites' would be
transssexual if it were not for their fear of workplace discrimination.
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