[Video] Georgia transgender woman speaks out on discrimination

“I took the approach laying low. But the older I got, the harder it became. It’s too much of a war on the inside and I had to be free,” she adds.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality interviewed 6,450 transgender and gender non-conforming study participants from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Participants completed online or paper surveys.

Key findings include:

• All respondents faced some kind of discrimination “yet the combination of anti-transgender bias and persistent, structural racism was especially devastating. People of color in general fare worse than white participants across the board, with African American transgender respondents faring far worse than all others in most areas examined.” Household income for the respondents in the study was four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000 a year compared to the general population.

• 41 percent of respondents reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6 percent of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55 percent), were harassed/bullied in school (51 percent), had low household income, or were the victim of
physical assault (61 percent) or sexual assault (64 percent).

The video is made by In the Life Media.

 

Top photo: Ja’briel of Hinesville, Ga., is featured in a video by In the Life Media that highlights the discrimination transgender people face.