On the pink and blue continuum, where does yellow fit? Transgender students were probably asking themselves exactly that question as they arrived on campuses this fall.
In the broadest use of the term, transgender students do not feel accurately represented by the gender label they were assigned at birth. They face daily reminders of their own invisibility: If their campus lacks an adequate number of single-stall restrooms, or the student-record system has no space for their preferred name, or all housing options are segregated by sex, the college’s message to transgender students is one of exclusion.
As those of us who work in campus counseling offices know so well, developing a sense of belonging, a critical task for all college students, correlates with psychological well-being. Developing a sense of belonging in a system where you are constantly reminded that you don’t actually belong becomes a very creative — and stressful — task.
Indeed, most transgender students experience some level of “minority stress” — chronic stress resulting from interpersonal oppression, prejudice, and discrimination faced by members of stigmatized groups. They have unique stressors not experienced by their cisgender counterparts — those whose gender labels match the sex they were assigned at birth. These stressors are chronic and unavoidable, as well as socially based or institutionalized. When a transgender student is also a person of color, differently abled, poor, and/or gay, lesbian, or bisexual, their minority stress matrix becomes exceedingly complex.
Minority stress affects even those transgender students who have already consolidated and integrated their identities and have good social support and financial resources. For example, I often hear from transgender students who are upset that their professors still address them as “Ms. Rodriguez” or “Mr. Chen.” Imagine being consistently misaddressed in class. Our faces might flush as we are called upon, and, feeling self-conscious, we might offer a mediocre response. Or we might stop raising our hands in class, and our class-participation grade would suffer. If you are an instructor who prefers some formality in the classroom, “scholar Rodriguez” or “student Chen” or even “learner Jones” would meet your purpose and allow all students to feel respected and supported.
In another example, a student might have three classes in a row in a building with no gender-neutral bathroom. So the student has to seek out a bathroom elsewhere that feels safe, and regularly shows up late to the final class. This can be difficult to explain to the professor when there are bathrooms — one labeled for men, the other for women — just outside the lecture hall.
Such experiences can leave transgender students emotionally exhausted in a way their peers are not.
In addition to minority stress, transgender students also experience the same psychological and emotional concerns facing their cisgender counterparts, including difficulties adjusting to college, depression, anxiety, romantic losses, and problems getting along with roommates. Transgender students need equal access to campus counseling services. Because mental-health providers are ethically prohibited from providing services outside their areas of competence, they may need to seek out specific training and supervision before working with transgender clients. In 2010 the American Counseling Association published an article spelling out the kinds of competencies providers need to counsel transgender clients — such as understanding how pressure to be gender-conforming may affect personality.
Along with minority stress and mainstream stresses that can affect all students, some transgender students also must deal with the unique stress of making decisions that involve medically transitioning from the sex assigned at birth to another sex. To be clear, many transgender people do not need or want medical intervention to live fully and authentically in the gender with which they identify. For others, hormone treatments may be the only intervention they seek. But some choose to pursue surgical procedures. Campus mental-health providers who have established competence for working therapeutically with transgender clients can help them in that decision-making process. Competent providers are able to write letters of support to medical professionals when required.
Meanwhile, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health has established standards of care for working with transgender people. College counseling centers frequently use these standards as a guide for their work with transgender students who request medical interventions.
Colleges have immense power in shaping the lives of transgender students.
Transgender college students indeed have a full plate. If you’re a college administrator, professor, or campus-life professional who would like to better understand transgender people, I recommend reading The Lives of Transgender People by Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin. But don’t stop there: Colleges have immense power in shaping the lives of transgender students, and administrators should be aware of some very concerning statistics.
In 2011 the National Transgender Discrimination Survey asked 6,450 respondents about a variety of factors, one of them being experiences in education. The survey found that 63 percent of respondents said they had experienced a serious act of discrimination because of their identity and or expression, and 15 percent reported harassment so severe they had to leave school or college. Nineteen percent said they had been denied access to appropriate housing, and 5 percent had been denied campus housing altogether. More than a quarter said they had been denied access to essential gender-appropriate bathrooms. Eleven percent either could not obtain or lost financial aid or scholarships because of their gender identity or expression.
The numbers are even higher if we take out white-identified respondents and look only at those who identified as members of racial or ethnic minority groups. The survey also found that mistreatment at school or college correlated with lower rates of job success, higher rates of homelessness, and other negative outcomes.
The resilience of transgender students gets them to campus. Once they are there, colleges must do a better job providing equal access to the education and support they deserve.
Faughn Adams, who identifies as genderqueer, is a clinical psychologist with Emory University’s Counseling and Psychological Services.