As can be seen from the other posts on this blog, much of the information which applies to sexual minorities can also be interpreted to apply to transgender individuals. It’s true that both groups are stigmatized, they often overlap (one person can be both lesbian and transgender, for instance), the stigma is invisible unless the individual is publicly “out”, and attitudes towards them tend to be negative (Herek, 2002a; MacInnis & Hodson, 2012; Pachankis, 2007). In fact, one study by researchers Nagoshi, Adams, Terrell, Hill, Brzuzy, and Nagoshi (2008) found that sexual prejudice has a strong tendency to also lead towards anti-transgender prejudice. Right wing authoritarianism, social dominance, in-group identity, and religious fundamentalism (as mentioned in previous blog posts) predicts sexual prejudice, but it has also been found to predict anti-transgender prejudice (MacInnis & Hodson, 2012; McCullough, Dispenza, Chang & Zeligman, 2019; Nagoshi et. al., 2008). Lastly, as Herek (2010) noted in his “differences as deficits” model, people who deviate from societal norms are never considered to deviate positively. It is possible for people to just be different, and for that difference to be neutral, but in the cases of stigmatized individuals, the stigma is always negative by definition.
While doing research for this project, I noted that there was less research available on gender minorities compared to sexual minorities. This may be a matter of the databases I was using, or it may be that there is simply less research out there. However, the sources I did find which were specific to anti-transgender prejudice note that there are interesting differences between attitudes towards sexual minorities and transgender individuals. Read the blog post called “Negative Attitudes Towards Transgender Individuals” for more information about these specific kinds of differences.
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