I promised you a post on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s new report, How Fair is Britain? Here it is.

As I mentioned on Monday, mostly the report has little to say about the status of trans people in Britain because the EHRC does not have sufficient data to draw any conclusions. This isn’t surprising. The numbers of trans people are very small, they are not a fashionable group of people to study, and even if surveys did ask respondents if they identified as trans many trans people would lie for fear of outing themselves. Nevertheless, there are a number of rather depressing comments.

On Crime

In a small study of the experience of 71 transgender people, over half said that they had experienced harassment, and a smaller proportion (12 people) said that they had been physically assaulted: a large amount of crime against this group appears to go unreported.

A survey of attitudes among 872 transgender people found that two-thirds felt confident that they would be treated appropriately by members of the police service as their acquired gender. However, around 1 in 5 of those who had had contact with the police (68/367) felt that they were treated inappropriately, with attacks against them not being taken seriously and inappropriate searches being carried out.

On Health Care

The ‘Patient Satisfaction with Transgender Services’ which surveyed the opinions and experiences of 647 individuals at all stages of treatment/transition, found that 1 in 7 transgender people who responded to the healthcare section of the satisfaction survey felt that they had been treated adversely by healthcare professionals because of their transgender status.

On Education

In the same survey, transgender students were identified as the group who secondary teachers think are least supported in school (with only 7% of secondary teachers saying that this is the case). Also, only 7% of secondary teachers say that their school is ‘very active’ in promoting equality and respect for transgender pupils.

Despite two-thirds of lesbian, gay and transgender secondary students reporting that they have been victims of often severe bullying (17% of those bullied reported having received death threats), most teachers say that their schools do little to very actively promote respect towards lesbian, gay and transgender young people.

On Employment

Given the size of the transgender population, national survey evidence is unable to shed light on their economic position. However, a small 2008 survey of 71 respondents by the Scottish Transgender Alliance found that among respondents there was a high unemployment rate with 37% (N=26) receiving out of work benefits. There was also a high reported self-employment rate at 20% (N=14) perhaps because some members of the transgender community avoid situations where they do not have control over their work environment and the people with whom they have day-to-day contact.

There is very limited information about the economic position of the transgender population in the labour market, although research suggests that it is not favourable. A small-scale Scottish study (with 71 respondents) found that 55% of transgendered people had an HND/degree or postgraduate degree, but only 30% had a gross annual income of over £20,000, and almost half had a gross annual income of under £10,000.

Although little empirical work has been done in the area of employment for transgender people, it is reported in qualitative research and small-scale survey work that the employment sphere is the space in which transgender people face the most significant and pervasive levels of discrimination.

As a consequence of harassment and bullying 1 in 4 transgender people will feel obliged to change their jobs.

On housing

For transgender people, housing problems or crises can be related to aggression from neighbours and/or others in the local area, or the breakup of families on discovering a member of the family is transgender. These experiences may trigger a housing crisis or lead to homelessness.

I’m not posting this in the hope you folks will feel sorry for me. I know I have been very lucky. I have a home of my own, a decent income, and a wonderfully supportive relationship. But I have been through times when my annual income was in 4 figures (and I was afraid to go to social services for help). I have been through times when suicide seemed like a logical option. It is a bad place to be in, and there are many people in the UK, and around the world, who are in that place now.

Of course there are very many people who are much more seriously disadvantaged because they live in extreme poverty. But this is such a small problem in comparison to their plight. It is a problem that would be largely solved if we, as a society, would just change our attitudes. The economic cost is pitifully small.

So what can we as individuals can do about this? Trans people are such a small and despised minority that they are mostly off the political radar. Writing to your MP won’t help a lot. What we can do, however, is challenge opinions. The main reason why trans people are such a disadvantaged group is that politicians are afraid to do anything to help them. And that’s because when trans people are featured in the media it is generally either as the butt of jokes, or because some journalist is outraged that anything at all is done to support “perverts”. While those media attitudes exist, trans people will always be a political scapegoat rather than a protected group.

So next time you hear or see someone trashing trans people in public, do me a favor and challenge it, please.

You might also read this article by Matt Cheney, which I think is wonderful. If we were less obsessed with gender, and the maintenance of male superiority, we would be a lot less terrified by people who don’t fit our neat social boxes.

Update: For comparison, the National Center for Transgender Equality today issued a report on trans people’s access to health care in the USA. It makes horrific reading. The headline statistic is that 19% of respondents to the survey (of 6450 people) were refused care outright.

Today is International Coming Out Day. You can expect to see a lot of LGB people writing happy blog posts about what a positive experience coming out is, and how more people should do it. It is a wonderful, uplifting event. Posts by trans people, in contrast, will probably be rather less common, and not just because there are fewer trans people.

As Hal Duncan noted during the recent Salon Futura podcast on writing LGBT characters, social attitudes towards LGB people have softened considerably over his lifetime. That’s not true everywhere in the world, as yesterday’s reports from Serbia make all too plain. But conditions for trans people, even in the West, are far less friendly. A report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission titled How Fair is Britain? was issued today. Mostly what it has to say about trans people is “we don’t know” because there are so few of them, and they are so rarely studied, but what evidence it does have suggests that they are more discriminated against than any other group included in the report. I’ll comment on this in more detail another day.

On October 1st a new Equality Act came into effect in the UK. Mostly this is a very good thing that extends and consolidates rights for various disadvantaged groups in society. For trans people, however, it took rights away. In direct contravention of the existing Gender Recognition Act, the Equality Act states that trans people who have completed gender transition are not to be legally regarded as persons of their desired gender. It states that all trans people can be legally discriminated against in a wide variety of ways. I can legally be denied work and housing, thrown out of pubs and restaurants, denied service in shops, and denied access to transport services, simply because someone else says that they find my presence offensive. The right of other people to do these things to me is enshrined in UK law.

This new law is almost certainly in contravention of both British and European Human Rights legislation, but in the absence of a successful test case it still stands. Given the existence of such legislation, it is unsurprising that trans people are unwilling to be open about their status (though from what I recall of reading early drafts, the Equality Act makes concealing your trans status during a job application a criminal offense).

The argument for coming out is, of course, that the LGBT community needs role models. Gareth Thomas is doing a wonderful job in the rugby world, and the It Gets Better campaign on YouTube is providing much needed emotional support to frightened LGBT teens.

Trans people can be role models too. Chaz Bono has lent his support to the It Gets Better campaign. A potential role model in the UK is Nadia Almada, the Portuguese woman who won Big Brother. Judging from this interview with my friend Christine Burns, Nadia is a bubbly, confident person with a positive outlook on life. She’s busy setting up a new business. But the interview also touches on her suicide attempt following the recent Ultimate Big Brother show, which re-united past winners.

When Nadia was first on Big Brother, her housemates were unaware of her trans status. The programme’s producers played this up to the viewers, who were let in on the secret. That was part of the “entertainment”. For the reunion show, everyone knew about Nadia’s background. As this interview reveals, Nadia’s housemates were allowed to bully her, and this bullying was edited out by the TV company, thereby avoiding the outcry that resulted from the racist bullying of Shilpa Shetty, and making Nadia seem ill-tempered and hysterical to the viewers. This too was part of the “entertainment”. You can say this was all Nadia’s fault for wanting to be on TV, but putting yourself forward in that way is exactly what being a role-model is all about. You can’t inspire anyone if you keep yourself private.

It wouldn’t be so bad if all you were risking was yourself. Unfortunately homophobic and transphobic bullies don’t content themselves with persecuting the objects of their hatred. They often turn their attention to the families of those people too. You may have noticed that I have been rather more open about my own status of late. That’s because I am no longer living with my mother, and her home is no longer at risk of being vandalized simply because I live there.

The average age of gender transition in the UK is apparently around 40. That, I am sure, is an historical artifact. It makes no sense to transition at that age. Those people who want to transition are generally well aware that they are trans when they are at school. The longer you wait, the more time hormones have to make their mark on your body. The younger you can transition, the better. But until recently very few people have had the courage to go through gender transition, let alone come out.

So we currently have a society in which trans people are going through transition in late middle age. Many of them will have married earlier in life in order to appear “normal”, or in an attempt to “cure” themselves of their feelings, just as gay people did in my parents’ generation. Some will have children. If they go public about their trans status, they put their families at risk.

Finally there is the whole question of what it means to be “out” as a trans person. As I have explained elsewhere, there are many different types of trans people. Some are adamant that they are neither male nor female, and are very happy to be identified as something else. Others, however, want nothing more than to be accepted as ordinary members of the gender in which they feel they belong. For them, being out as a trans person means that they can never have that acceptance. It means that people will forever be seeing them as “really” a member of the gender they hate being seen as belonging to. It means admitting to themselves that they can never have the life that they dreamed of as children. For some it is an admission that their lives have been a failure.

Despite the desperate need for positive role models, trans people are very reluctant to come out. I regret that, but I very much understand where they are coming from, and I will try never to condemn anyone for failing to do so. I hope you won’t either.