The Specifics and Urgencies of Trans Issues

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Jan 29, 2018
by Louise Hallman
The Specifics and Urgencies of Trans Issues

The problems facing the trans community are sometimes dismissed from wider LGBT discourses and data

The challenges faced by trans men and women range from their access to and decision if and how to transition, forced sterilization, and widespread discrimination, to violence and even murder. Still, many of these issues are often not well understood and are marginalized within global LGBT discourses.

Learning from trans leaders since its very beginnings, and highlighted in its global statement, the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum has sought to emphasize the distinct challenges faced by transgender people.

Lack of understanding, marginalization, discrimination, persecution and violence frequently beset the LGBT community. This is especially true for transgender people — even within the LGBT community. Speaking at the inaugural session of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum, Fernanda Milán, Guatemalan refugee and co-founder of the Trans-project in Denmark, opened a panel on trans issues by explaining why transgender people are the most vulnerable and exposed segment of LGBT populations.

Milán was the first transgender person to be granted asylum in Denmark after the Guatemalan police attacked and threatened her because of her activism and gender identity.


Urgent concerns

As Milán shared with Fellows, trans people face many urgent issues. Legal recognition of gender change in many countries still is impossible, but even where legislation is in place, it often requires that transgender people undergo surgeries that leave them sterile, which is a major violation of their basic reproductive rights. Access to gender reassignment procedures is greatly unequal around the world, and even in countries with facilitated access, the internationally recognized protocol for regulating access considers transgender persons to be mentally ill.

Due to discrimination in families and the education system, transgender people often are economically disadvantaged and lack support networks in their struggle. This leads many into sex work, putting them at heightened risks of HIV. Trans women are especially vulnerable to sex trafficking.

At the fifth session in 2017, human rights lawyer, Mónica Leonardo echoed Milán’s concerns: “We see throughout the Latin American region, and Guatemala is no exclusion, there is a prevalence of HIV in one percent of the population. For transgender women it’s 35 percent.” The prevalence among gay men is 18 percent. Furthermore, she added: “There are reports of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture and extortion, often committed by armed forces, namely the police or the army.”  

Statistics unfortunately prove Milán and Leonardo right. “There has been a constant increase in reported murders of transgender people around the world,” stated Carla LaGata, lead researcher from Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT), which conducts the Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project. At the session in 2013, LaGata presented documentation gathered between 2008 and 2012: at least 958 trans people were murdered in Central and South America, 109 in Asia, 77 in North America, 77 in Europe, eight in Africa, and two in Oceania. Transgender migrants and sex workers, especially people of color, were disproportionately victims of this violence.

It is chilling realities like these that prompted the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum to explore and address trans safety as a separate, distinct and urgent issue within the Forum. The collectively written Statement of the Salzburg Global LGBT Forum: Advancing human rights for LGBT people and communities thus declares: “Transgender people across the world face threats to their lives and safety. Governments, legal institutions, faith leaders and the media must fulfill their responsibilities to safeguard human lives and challenge transphobia.”

Each year, the Forum has had held dedicated panels, breakout groups and exhibitions addressing the lived realities of trans people across the world. Asian trans experiences were especially explored in Chiang Rai, Thailand at the 2016 session of the Forum. Some Asian countries are renowned for their sex-reassignment surgeries and social tolerance of trans communities, but, as one trans Asian Fellow remarked: “There is high degree of ignorance in thinking that Asia is a paradise for trans people.”


The Power of Data

Countering that ignorance means researching and sharing the truth of the experiences of trans people. “When we talk about LGBT issues,” LaGata explained, “we are often missing the ‘T’ from our data.”

LaGata stressed that the existing research about transgender persons has been dominated by medicine and by the Global North. These biases produce data that are pathologizing and often misconstruing local contexts. A narrow focus on laws that criminalize homosexuality or gender non-conformity, for example, misses the importance of other (e.g. anti-prostitution) laws that are specifically used against transgender persons on a global level, or too quickly targets contexts where these laws may exist, but where transgender people are relatively well respected by the broader society.

To address this lack of data and counter these biases, the TMM project was developed with 19 partner organizations and within an advisory board of 27 members from every region of the world. The project has a strong empowerment focus – including research trainings for local activists – and produces ongoing reports monitoring the reported cases of murdered trans people and a map of the legal situation of trans people worldwide, all available online.

There has been progress in addressing some of the legal issues faced by trans people. As of 2017, 51 of the 126 countries mapped by TvT allow the legal change of gender on official documents without challenge, although only four countries (three of which are in South Asia) offer a third gender option.

But despite areas of progress, the number of trans people murdered continues to rise, with Latin America markedly the most dangerous region – despite the fact that trans people in many Latin American countries have been granted legal recognition and protections. In particular, Argentina’s gender recognition law is seen by many as the best existing policy from which many countries, including from the Global North, could benefit.

Passed in 2012, this law allows people to alter their gender on official documents without first having to receive a psychiatric diagnosis or surgery, and also requires public and private medical practitioners to provide free hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery for those who want it, including those under the age of 18.

The high number of recorded murders in Latin America may be because of the number of organizations already monitoring in the region, raising the question about the situation of trans communities in other regions of the world. It also demonstrates that even where laws exist, legislation does not always offer ultimate protection from discrimination, persecution and violence.


The Power of Stories

Data is important. Data is often what helps drive policy. But even with the attention of policymakers, it is hard to gain the attention or change the hearts and minds of the public with data alone. Stories, especially personal ones, can be far more powerful in this regard. The Salzburg Global LGBT Forum strongly believes in the power of sharing personal experiences and ethical listening.

Trans Fellows have opened up and candidly told their stories of their realization of feeling that they were in the wrong body as a child. Stories of their struggles to communicate with parents, siblings, partners and children when choosing to transition. Stories of suffering harassment and attacks from neighbors, strangers and the police. Stories of fleeing their homes and countries in search of safety. And stories of triumph as they establish alternative families, eventually reconcile with family members who had once rejected them, or help the passing of new protective and inclusive legislation.

Sharing these stories far and wide is vitally important to challenge the prejudices that fuel transphobia and hinder legal and societal progress. The media has a large role to play here as Josephine Shaw, who helped to found campaigning group Trans Media Watch (TMW), explained in 2013. TMW has worked to promote the presentation of informed and empowering images of transgender people in the media by engaging in dialogue with television stations and other media and by organizing training workshops.

Historically, trans issues had been marginalized also within the LGBT movement, stated Joe Wong, Program Manager, Asia Pacific Transgender Network, Singapore. However, a new base of trans leadership has given more space for direct advocacy of trans issues.

Direct trans engagement with the World Health Organization and the United Nations, for example, especially in regional contexts has allowed for the recognition of data and policy indicators that are sensitive of trans communities. It is better, Wong insists, that instead of people speaking on behalf of the trans community, the community should speak for itself.

The Salzburg Global LGBT Forum continues to learn from trans men and women and strives, through their leadership, to amplify their voices and vision not only to the public but also within the global LGBT community.