In America, the rates of homelessness for transgender people have increased. Transgender people have always received discrimination in terms of society, school, work, and as well as at home. Now, they are being discriminated against in terms of housing and shelter. The article states “according to the 2017 U.S Trans Survey, a survey of more than 27,000 transgender people across the U.S… 30% have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. Twelve percent report at least one episode of homelessness in the last year”(Dechants 2020). The discrimination against them makes them not want to seek help because of fear. Due to this, the HUD has made it a requirement to treat all clients equal and respect everyone’s gender identity. While this can be seen as good news, it has it’s cons. For example, “some shelters are run and founded by private, and often religious, organizations, and therefore do not have to follow this rule”(Dechants 2020). Another disadvantage is most people aren’t aware that if they aren’t meeting basic needs they can submit a complaint comment.
A lot of people don’t understand the difference between gender and sex. Sex is biological, it’s what you are labeled as when you are born. Whereas gender is the behavioral, physical, and personality traits. Gender identity, is what the person chooses to identify themselves as. The term transgender is used when the sex you are born with is different from your gender identity. Meaning someone can be born as a male and identify as a female and vice versa. This article is an example of gender inequality because the transgender community is receiving unequal treatment. They are being discriminated against in society. This has lead a lot of the transgender community members to the streets. While in the streets they still receive unequal treatment. Not all of them can receive shelter or housing. The situation got so bad that the HUD had to create a rule called the Gender Identity Rule that required all HUD funding recipients to treat all clients equal regardless of their gender identity and to place them in homes that match their gender and not their sex. While this is a step forward for the trans community, a lot of people aren’t aware of this change. So most of them still suffer from homelessness. This is one if the biggest forms of gender inequality. People are not treating trans people as people.
From this article I learned about the transgender homelessness issue. Before reading this article I wasn’t aware that so much of the trans community was suffering from homelessness. I was also unaware of how bad shelters treat trans people. I had never thought about it until I read the article. Now knowing this information I hope something is done to solve it. Trans people should not be treated any different just because they don’t identify with their sex.
Word Count 488
Sociology 201 