In this third article on the injuries of transphobic discrimination, I'm summarising a third report. TranzNation was produced by the Australian Research Centre on Sex, Health and Society at LaTrobe University in Melbourne in 2007. Unlike the earlier Transgender Lifestyles and HIV/AIDS Risk (1994), this report was timed after much of Australia had implemented state and territory trans-inclusive antidiscrimination laws. Amongst the states, only Tasmania had yet to do by the time that this report was compiled, which was accomplished in 2013. Federal Australian antidiscrimination legislation was amended to cover transgender and intersex people that same year. The Australian Society for HIV Medicine and NSW Gender Centre also assisted in the distribution and design of the report in question. In all, 253 people responded to the survey. 229 were from Australia, while 29 hailed from this side of the Tasman. Transwomen respondents tended to be older than transmen. In terms of general health 35.8% and 28.9% defined their health as either "good" or "very good"- significantly lower than the Australian cis general population in the Australian National Health Survey (2006). Insofar as healthcare access went, 82.1% reported that they regularly saw a medical practitioner, while 50.7% of the Australian respondents had private medical insurance and 51.3% used it for a gender-related health concern. 66.7% stated that they were satisfied with the transgender health information that they received from their medical practitioners and supplemented that information from the Internet. Of the respondents, 73.1% stated that they had used hormone treatment in the context of transitioning. Most had not had reassignment surgery, although 39.1% of respondents had. Similar proportions of transwomen (39.3%) and transmen (38.7%) had done so. However, many reported obstacles to securing surgery, such as work, family, legal issues, medical specialist access, and especially cost of the procedures. Half of the respondents (50.6%) also reported that they had problems with alteration of their official documentations to reflect their current gender. Unfortunately, it seems that one has to have had the aforementioned surgical procedures to secure amended official documents with corrected gender description. While ninety percent of those who had completed surgery did so, so did one quarter of those who were transitioning. When it came to vilification and discrimination, 84.1% reported transphobic verbal abuse and social exclusion, while one-quarter had experienced service provider discrimination and nineteen percent reported transphobic violence. 16.1% reported spousal violence from partners, but only 18.2% had reported it to police and of those, only 34.8% reported that they had been treated with respect and dignity. Respondents for TranzNation were recruited by online calls for respondents, LGBTI media coverage of the proposed survey, invitation of key transgender activists to participate within the study and approaches to Outblack, a Koorie/Murrie (Aborigine) LGBTI support network. Australian AIDS Councils were also provided with contact details and business cards were printed. Most respondents came from Victoria (30%), New South Wales (25.7%) and Queensland (13%), while Western Australia (8.7%) and New Zealand's North Island (6.7%) also provided a significant number of respondents. Most (68.3%) had been born in Australia, while New Zealand-born respondents (11.3%) were slightly numbered by those of English extraction (12.5%). Unfortunately, only 1.6% each were Koorie/Murrie, Torres Strait Islanders or Maori- in the case of the New Zealand sample, substantially below Maori representation in the general population (14.6%: New Zealand Census data). The mean age of the respondents was about forty-one years of age. Of the New Zealand respondents, 58.8% lived in the North Island and 33% of those who responded came from Auckland. In educational and employment terms, 32.4% of respondents had some secondary school qualifications, 31.6% had a trade or occupational qualification and 21.3% had tertiary qualifications, while 13.8% reported a postgraduate tertiary qualification. 41% were in full-time employment, 18% were university students, 16% were on welfare benefits and 7% were retired. In income terms, 35.1% of Australian respondents reported that they survived on less than $A20,000 per annum, as did 41.7% of the New Zealand respondents. 25.3% managed on $A40,000-$60,000 per annum, while 29.2% of New Zealand respondents reported that they received $20,000-$40,000 per annum income. This discrepancy may be attributable to the absence of meaningful trans-inclusive antidiscrimination legislation in New Zealand compared to most of the Australian jurisdictions. When it came to general health, two-thirds of respondents (66%) reported fatigue, while 52.6% reported insomnia or sleep problems and 49% reported feeling depressed, lethargic or hopeless, while 46% percent reported a poor self-image and 42% reported food intake problems. Given what they've had to endure from transphobic discrimination, depression, anxiety problems and fatigue is unsurprising. Younger transwomen (60%) tended to report greater frustration than transmen with the stress and strain of transitioning and consequent depression over the obstacles that they have had to negotiate. Thrity percent reported dysthymia (chronic depression). Sixty percent of transmen utilised psychotherapy, compared to forty percent of transwomen. During the last year, 47 percent of those sampled had attended a general practitioner, while 43 percent visited a dentist and 20 percent visited hospital inpatient or outpatient facilities. 57% reported opportunities for feedback, while 27.4% said that they did not and 24% reported variable levels of consultation with their medical practitioner/s. Of the sample, 73.1% said that they were currently using hormonal treatment, while 36.4% said that they were likely to do so in the future. In terms of surgery, nearly one quarter of the transwomen and transmen both in the sample had had genital reconstruction surgery in their respective contexts, while 11% of the transwomen sampled had an orchidectomy (removal of testicles) and 15% of the transmen had a mastectomy, while 11% also had a hysterectomy (removal of their fallopian tubes and uterus). Transwomen tended to have more cosmetic surgery- rhinoplasty (9.9%), breast implants (9.9%) and facial surgery were used in this context. Given the current imperfect transmale genital reconstructive surgery, only one transman reported a fully-fledged phalloplasty. Seventeen of those sampled went overseas for their surgical needs, due to paucity of such services in Australia and New Zealand. Of those, fifteen went to South-East Asian sites. Fourteen utilised the services of Thai surgeons, while one had their procedure done in Singapore. The average age of those who had undergone reassignment surgery tended to be above thirty years of age. One cohort (30-59) reported 45.1% had undergone surgery, while in the oldest cohort (60+), 57.1% had had surgery. This seems to be indicative of the cost of such procedures, which are usually not subsidised by public health services in either Australia or New Zealand. Despite the aforementioned obstacles described in a paragraph above, once the respondents had access to surgery, their reported health and wellbeing improved considerably. Insofar as official documentation goes, respondents reported hurdles needed to be negotiated over gender reconciliation on many varied official documents as they were transitioning. These included national electorate listings and voter eligibility, tax records, bank account details, government department records, welfare benefit details, local council records, police records, telephone companies and motor vehicle registration details. Understandably, most respondents wished that the onerous procedures involved in this context could be streamlined. When it came to tangible discrimination, 87.4% of those sampled reported at least one experience of transphobic discrimination. The vilification and assault statistics are reported in an above paragraph. 15% had experienced problems with financial institution discrimination, 12% reported housing access discrimination, 11% reported property damage, while 5% referred to child custody discrimination. In the workplace, respondents reported 'closetry' at work, anxiety that 'passing' as a woman or man, or that official document checks would disclose their past birth gender, and discouragement from higher workplace performance due to anxieties about possible official document checks or subjection to discriminatory firing, which imposed greater stress than with cisgender workmates. This also caused situational depression within their work and everyday lives. In the next and final instalment in this series, I'll examine Australian law journal references to trans-inclusive antidiscrimination legislation and see what it might have to offer us. Recommended: Murray Couch, Marian Pitts, Hunter Mulcare, Samantha Croy, Anne Mitchell and Sunil Patel: TranzNation: A Report on the Health and Wellbeing of transgendered people in Australia and New Zealand : http://www.glhv.org.au/files/Tranznation_Report.pdf Politics and religion commentator Craig Young - 28th May 2014
Credit: Politics and religion commentator Craig Young
First published: Wednesday, 28th May 2014 - 8:52am