Researches used a sample of 129 transgender and gender nonconforming youth from three U.S. cities , assessing their name usage among home, school, work, and friends. They then compared it to depression as well as suicidal ideation and behavior.
The results were at once both astounding and unsurprising: when compared to those who are not able to use their own name in any situation, researchers found 71% fewer indications of severe depression.
What’s more, they also found that thoughts of suicide dropped by 35%, and a 65% decrease in attempted suicide.
This is why intentional and consistent misgendering is a matter of harassment, not free speech. For many kids, it is literally a matter of life and death.
This is the latest in a field of research I call “quantifying shit we should know already”. This conclusion, like the conclusions of many similar studies on trans issues, is kind of thing that any given trans person easily could have told you (and many scream from the rooftops to anyone who will listen about this). The kind of thing where, if you spend any significant amount of time around trans people, your response will be a big “no duh”.
Other classics in this field:
“Trans people far more likely to be the victim of assault than the perpetrator of assault in bathrooms”
“Trans people far less likely to be depressed or suicidal if their parents accept them”
This is the latest, but it does put the whole “it’s my freedom of speech to call you the name you were born with because I refuse to acknowledge that you’re trans and that’s my FREE SPEECH” crowd in a different light. To quote the thread I found on twitter about this:
It’s bizarre to me that people wouldn’t just call people by what they’ve been told. Nobody has a problem with someone named “Robert” asking to be called “Bob.”
Doing this to trans people is being an asshole just to be an asshole.
Lots of people do it as a show of force, or to diminish the person being referred to: sometimes they use a name that’s not quite what you gave them, sometimes they use a generic (I had a boss who called every woman “flower”; we pointed out we were not skunks).
Doing it out of ignorance or as a slip of the tongue is understandable: people to whom this happens will normally try to correct the error when it’s pointed out; their reaction is chagrin. People who do it to hurt react with anger. They claim that you can’t decide what your name is, or that your name doesn’t make sense, or that you don’t know what your name is, or that no way that’s pronounced like that or spelled like that. Or that it doesn’t matter. But when you call them Bob knowing full well they prefer Robert, ah! That is offensive, irreverent and uncouth!
As a comfortably cis guy, this is something I always took for granted.
My female partner has an unusual name (albeit 100% phonetically spelled) and it frequently gets mispronounced. This doesn’t really bother her. What DOES bother her are the people she meets who say variants of “I’m not even going to TRY to pronounce this” or, in one VERY special case, “I’ma just gonna say ‘Mary,’ OK?” It gets under her skin in a pretty intense way; it’s dismissive and insulting.
And that’s without ANY additional context or weight on the name. That’s without it being an obvious, intentional refusal to acknowledge one’s comfortable identity. Yeeeesh.
Trans issues aren’t always simple, and I can understand (but not agree with) some folks’ discomfort, confusion, or even reluctance in some cases. But it’s so, so, so damn clear at this point – no matter what your personal views are, simply doing the polite thing and treating trans folk the way they ask to be treated is the Right Thing to do and limits the pain and discomfort they will feel. Intentionally misgendering or deadnaming someone is an action that accomplishes nothing except increasing pain.
To the best of my knowledge I don’t know any trans people and never have. I’m genuinely concerned that if I met a person who looked like a guy and asked to be called a female name, my brain would decide they were screwing with me and make it very difficult for me to use such a name the same way I would one that I didn’t find incongruous.
I realize that I’m asking to be crucified here, but honestly I hope it just never comes up. I can’t be confident that I won’t come off like a shit.
Because I’m not part of the debate, it took me a while to even figure out what the OP was trying to say. I don’t know if that was a power play, if the OP is merely poor at communication.
While this hits trans youth in a way they are unfortunately especially vulnerable to, I think it goes beyond way beyond gender discrimination, while that obviously plays a part here, and is even more strongly rooted in the generational power conflict. There seems to be a continuous blindspot throughout time for the older generation to assume everything the younger one is doing to be rebellious and acting out, and for the younger to dismiss everything about the older generation as inflexible and uncaring. As someone perpetually not in the middle of the curve, I tend to root towards what looks to me like progress, but at the same time, as someone who sees the ultimate end of progress being the ability to reconcile disparate points of view, I still wonder what the best way to look at this situation is.
Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson has gained notoriety by refusing to conform to a Canadian bill/law legally compelling the populace to address the trans-gendered/gender-fluid by their preferred pronouns.
Peterson will not abide by a law that compels speech…
…perhaps if he was presented with the OPs life-or-death statistics, he would change his mind.
I wondered what was meant too but the OP is merely repeating the vague wording in the article. It desperately needs the word “preferred” or “self-chosen” in there because as is it sounds like people are just calling these kids “you” or “he.”
Presumably, the paper means the name they choose to go by, rather than the name that was given to them. But they don’t exactly make that clear, at least not in the excerpted quotes.
My daughter has a really good friend since 2nd grade that was born female and now as male. The pronouns are tough. It’s so easy to slip. That’s why I try really hard to always use the friend’s name and just avoid unintentional pronoun mistakes. From the above, obviously the pronoun is a real pain point. Some folks are outright dicks about it, others passive aggressive, and yet others like myself slip up without malice.
A different kid from the anxiety group therapy is also born female and now as male. His Mom screwed up on the correct pronoun when we were chatting as she was here to pick him up. She quickly corrected herself, apologized to me, and just kinda shook her head. I commensurated that using names is a lot easier to avoid accidental mis-use.
Yeah, there’s a world of difference between “She - I mean he, whoops, sorry” and “She, stop scowling at me, you’re not a boy.” The former is still not great, but people make mistakes sometimes, and the latter is actively aggressive and invalidating.
Names are easy, especially if the person either picks a name that isn’t strongly gendered, or makes an attempt to dress and groom in ways that match their preferred gender. Pronouns are hard, though. I’ve taken to just using names, and avoiding pronouns when I can.
Hormones make a huge difference. A friend recently switched from a neutral nickname to a new female name. I saw her last night. She has started to grow breasts, and doesn’t smell like a guy. It was easy to call her Emily. My sister-in-law dated a trans man for a while. The first time I met him it was really hard for me to “see” him as a guy. I might have forgotten had SIL not pointedly used make pronouns at every opportunity. The second time I met him was months later, and I didn’t recognize him, because I was looking for a tall, butch woman, and what I saw was a short guy.
In general, I’m really bad with names. But I make an extra effort for my trans friends, because (without seeing that study) it’s obvious that it matters a lot to them.
The other thing I’ve been told, which is obvious when you think about it, but would not have occurred to me, is that it’s annoying if you make a big deal about apologizing. That’s making it about you, and focusing on your difficulty with their gender. Better when you slip to just quickly correct yourself and move on. “She, oops, I mean he…” is a lot better than “She, oops, I’m really sorry, I’ll try harder next time. He…”
People make mistakes, I can’t count the number of times my mom has called me my brother’s name, or how many times I meant to say my son’s name and out popped the cat’s name instead (it doesn’t help that they’re both 2 syllable names that start with a hard consonant and end with ‘er’).
However, if you acknowledge the mistake, and apologize, you validate their gender identity rather than invalidate it.
Among my family people get called the names of other people constantly. Anybody of the same gender is a viable option. It’s not uncommon for people to just go through the entire list until they hit the right one. It happens so much apologies hardly happen anymore.
Or it turns out like:
“Hey Susan, would you please-”
“-I’m not Susan.” :mad:
“Oh, sorry. So, Other Susan, would you please…”
I kind of suspect this sort of name malapropism isn’t really comparable to calling Trans people by rejected prior names, though.