Survey Shows Overwhelming Support for Transgender Americans

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[11.04.2011]

Transgender issues have been in the news quite a bit recently, from September’s controversy over Chaz Bono’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars to the Girl Scouts of Colorado’s choice to accept Bobby Montoya, a 7-year-old transgender child who had previously been turned away.

A new survey from Public Religion Research Institute shows that two-thirds of Americans report feeling well-informed about transgender issues, and importantly, most Americans are able to state in their own words what transgender means..  Among the 91% of Americans who report that they have heard of the term transgender, 76% provided an accurate definition.

Not only are Americans relatively well-informed about what transgender means, they overwhelming support policies to provide transgender people with legal protections.

  • Approximately 9-in-10 (89%) Americans—including strong majorities of all religious and partisan groups—agree that transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans.
  • In 2009, President Obama signed a bill that extended previously existing hate crimes legislation to make it a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her gender identity. Seventy-four percent of Americans favor this expansion.
  • Three-quarters (75%) of Americans agree that Congress should pass laws to protect transgender people from job discrimination.

But despite this overwhelming support, a recent spate of hate crimes against transgender people here in Washington, DC shows that violence against transgender people remains an issue.

What does this mean for transgender issues more generally? Our recent report, Generations at Odds: The Millennial Generation and the Future of Gay and Lesbian Rights, showed that there is at significant generation gap between Millenials (age 18-29) and seniors (age 65 and up) on issues like same-sex marriage, laws that would protect gay and lesbian people against job discrimination, allowing gay and lesbian people to adopt children, and civil unions. This generational divide also persists in our findings on transgender people, indicating that as time goes on, Americans will likely become even more supportive of transgender equality.

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  • Jolie McKenna MS Ed

    Interesting and encouraging article! I am glad some of these questions are beginning to be researched. Thank you. I have the privilege of being the first and only transexual Executive Director of an LGBT Community Center in the United States. I teach on these issues in institutions and schools regularly. I was a little concerned because it appears the authors got the definition of transgender confused. Transgender is a broad category. It refers to all kinds of people who transgress gender norms – American Idol’s Adam Lambert or Lady Gaga’s character Joe Caldone would be examples. Neither Lady Gaga or Adam Lambert have plans to change their gender identities just because they wear suggestive costumes on stage. Transexual person is the term for a person who was identified as one gender at one time during their life and then does something deliberate to change their gender identification at another point in their life. I am not complaining!! I am simply clarifying – there is precious little written on the topic and this underscores the need for more discussion, better language and more understanding of the community. Thank you for doing this study!!