ABSTRACT

In 2015, this author wrote a chapter entitled “An Eye to the Future; Perspectives on the National Transgender Discrimination Survey” for the book Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Civil Rights: A Public Policy Agenda for Uniting a Divided America (Burke 2015). In that exposition of a 2011 national survey, I began to spell out what everyday life as a transgender person is like in the United States. I first talked about methodological problems in the survey and then I enumerated some anecdotal information about just how desperate life was becoming for transgender people. I described a Transgender Day of Remembrance for those who have died during the year. I touched on difficulties with documentation and, in particular, healthcare. And then I described possibilities, highlighting the advantages of increased visibility and increasing numbers of allies of transgender people. I touched on implied risk with increasing visibility, looking to hope in the resiliency of the trans community. Looking ahead to potential areas of public policy, I outlined some hopeful signs, including new legal sanctions against discrimination, improved health insurance coverage, increasing reporting and prosecution of hate crime laws. With the publication of a new National Transgender Discrimination Survey of 2015, it is time to reevaluate these assessments of the status of transgender civil rights in the United States.