Transphobia
I was exploring a website that shows the amount of transgender individuals in the United States, and was interested in seeing the percentage of transgender identifying individuals in each state. The percentage seems to be affected by the general political ideology of the respective state. For example, New York has 3% of youth that identify as transgender, while Wyoming only has 0.6 % of youth identifying as transgender. I pulled up an election map from both 2016 and 2020, and it appears that the state’s election ideology may affect the percentage of transgender identifying people that actually come out as transgender in the state. Similarly, 0.9% of adults living in North Carolina, a more “purple” state as shown by election maps, identify as transgender, compared to Missouri's 0.2%.
From this, it seems that the political ideology of each state affects the number of people that come out as transgender. I am somewhat confident that the total percentage of people(people that have come out plus those that have not) is generally equivalent between each state. Like I said above, it seems as if the lower percentage of transgender identifying people can be contributed to the conservative states. This does go along with conservative values. I find it disappointing that conservative people are so opposed to letting people do something that has no effect on them. It is not that hard to call someone by different pronouns than you are used to. Sure, you may make a mistake now and again, but at least show an attempt to have respect for that individual. It’s also not difficult to call someone by a different name. I find it funny that no one has a problem calling me Zach instead of Zachary, but if I were to want to be called something like Beatrice, it becomes a huge problem for some people even though it seems like a simple request. From our reading in “Why Sex Is Not Binary,” I can see that this has been an issue for a long time, even since the ancient Romans. How can we go about fixing the issue of transphobia?
