Introduction
Society will never tolerate gender differences: in the past few years, more than a thousand mothers have killed their newborn children because of their hermaphroditism. Despite numerous movements for equality, individuals who prefer same-sex relationships or have both male and female sexual characteristics are still subject to discrimination. However, transgender people are among the groups most despised by traditionalistic politicians, spiritual orthodoxies, and individuals whose beliefs are distant from liberal ones.
Transgender people are distinguished in the workplace, excluded from military service, and prevented from partaking in professional sports workouts. Beyond these obvious concerns, they are hated by some feminists and even LGBTQ+ people. The transgender community is one of the most oppressed categories of society, which creates the necessity to ensure the problem’s visibility and debunk the myth that transgender is solely the fourth letter in the LGBTQ+ acronym.
The Lifelong Struggle of Gender Identity
At all times, the issue of gender reassignment has been one of the most controversial and forbidden, generating vigorous discussion and condemnation in any civilized state. Nevertheless, some people feel uncomfortable in their bodies; accordingly, many seek to bring them into a state corresponding to their self-perception. Usually, this happens quite early in childhood, in connection with which one can say that people are transgender from birth (Wirtz et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, it is significant to state that this awareness can occur in adulthood. Individuals dissatisfied with their gender experience deep psychological discomfort and often suffer from the fact that they have to hide their condition. The situation has slightly changed because, at the end of the 19th century, numerous states outlawed any manifestations of homosexual behavior (Robinson & Schmitz, 2021). Shifts in the law prompted people to think about the previously impossible – surgical sex reassignment.
Economic and Social Marginalization of Transgender People
Numerous transgender people are misunderstood even by their closest relatives and lose their careers and prospects for the future. Sometimes, it is easier for relatives to accept their child’s mental illness than their transgender status. The inability to find a job and a source of regular income causes stress and depression and significantly affects the quality of life of transgender people (Nolan et al., 2019). Moreover, most are forced to spend extra money on hormonal medications, examinations, or surgical operations.
At the same time, some are forced to work unofficially, illegally, or outside the law to maintain an acceptable standard of living because of employment problems. Although awareness of trans people’s issues is growing worldwide, multiple employers still struggle to imagine how to build company policies and a behavior culture that will support trans employees (Nolan et al., 2019). The reality is that even LGBTQ+-friendly companies tend to focus only on LGB people, ignoring TQ+.
Gender Norms and the Roots of Transphobia
Gender education begins in childhood when parents impose gender stereotypes that become the cause of the oppression of transgender people in adulthood. During socialization, individuals receive one of the most basic rules by which they evaluate themselves and others – gender norms (Robinson & Schmitz, 2021). Furthermore, since these norms are deeply rooted in the majority’s consciousness, it is difficult to change them.
Therefore, trans people find themselves in a challenging position. For example, when a trans woman is assigned the male gender at birth and identifies as a woman wearing typical women’s clothing and jewelry, she does not conform to expectations (Wirtz et al., 2020). Unfortunately, in such cases, transgender people are often stigmatized, considered subhuman, and discriminated against on this basis. It causes fear of showing up, isolation, and a constant sense of otherness.
Representation and Invisibility in Media
Despite this, in the show business and film industry, people who identify themselves as transgender people increasingly assert their rights. They agonized for years over their dissimilarity but managed to change themselves and successfully continue their lives. These include the famous singer Dana International and Lana and Lilly Wachowski, who wrote the screenplay for the world-famous film The Matrix; the siblings were brothers Larry and Andy before the sex change (Salerno et al., 2020).
However, even considering this, transgender people are the most invisible part of society. Even yet, according to specialists’ calculations, this group makes up 0.5-1% of all the Earth’s inhabitants, according to WHO estimates – 03-05% (Robinson & Schmitz, 2021). These statistics demonstrate that the situation needs to be addressed, the problem of transgender discrimination should be discussed, and Transgender Visibility Day was established for this purpose.
The Purpose and Power of Transgender Visibility Day
The need to establish a Transgender Visibility Day points to the oppression that transgender people experience at different stages of life. It is a day to remind all people of those whose lives have been sacrificed for gender identity, while there has been no day to support transgender people alive. Visibility Day is a call for moral responsibility, increased tolerance, and the lifting of restrictions on the rights of transgender people. Knowledge is the foremost thing that can help defeat fear (Salerno et al., 2020). Not exclusively the awareness of the general public that there are transgender people out there somewhere on TV shows, whether they are mentally ill individuals or perverts, greedy for attention, who epitomize society by cross-dressing.
The Call for Recognition, Respect, and Inclusion
Every member of a democratic society should understand that transgender people exist here and now, right next door and that that random fellow traveler in the carriage could be a transgender person. Moreover, any friend or relative could, at some point, ask everyone to use a different grammatical gender and a new name for them. Just as important is this day for minorities themselves, who must choose visibility instead of years of destruction from self-denial and loneliness (Nolan et al., 2019). It is necessary to know not only the success story of a trustworthy transgender person who has gone through all possible stages of medical transition and is now living peacefully but also the stories of complex gender searches, alternative gender identities, doubts, fears, and frustrations.
Conclusion
Thus, transgender people are not lonely and invisible, nor are they merely an extra letter in the word LGBT. They are one of the most oppressed categories, victims of stigmatization and discrimination. Transgender people are treated with hostility; they are forced to keep their identity to themselves to meet the expectations of others. Such experiences can trigger psychological reactions that undermine a person’s emotional well-being, job satisfaction, and desire to stay here. Discrimination begins in early childhood and accompanies transgender people throughout their lives: family members, friends, colleagues, bosses, medical workers, authorities, and strangers.
To solve these problems, the state must support measures to provide them with qualified medical, psychological, and legal assistance. However, it is equally essential to publicize the problem to attract the attention of every citizen, and it is the day of transgender people’s visibility that helps to achieve these goals. Every citizen of a democratic country should have the right to be oneself, and realizing this right depends on everyone’s awareness.
References
Nolan, I. T., Kuhner, C. J., & Dy, G. W. (2019). Demographic and temporal trends in transgender identities and gender confirming surgery. Translational Andrology and Urology, 8(3), 184. Web.
Robinson, B. A., & Schmitz, R. M. (2021). Beyond resilience: Resistance in the lives of LGBTQ youth. Sociology Compass, 15(12), 47. Web.
Salerno, J. P., Williams, N. D., & Gattamorta, K. A. (2020). LGBTQ populations: Psychologically vulnerable communities in the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(S1), S239. Web.
Wirtz, A. L., Poteat, T. C., Malik, M., & Glass, N. (2020). Gender-based violence against transgender people in the United States: a call for research and programming. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 21(2), 227-241. Web.