On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminated homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. This represents a before and after in the society in which we live. Even so, currently there is still great discrimination regarding gender issues, such as homophobia and transphobia.
Transphobia is a relatively new concept, specifically it emerged in the late 90s in the United States. However, the attitudes that this term describes have been present throughout history, even though we would not have conceived or understood it as we would today. Are you interested in knowing what it is about? Find out in this Psychology-Online article, in which we will go in depth about qWhat is transphobia, its main characteristics and examples.
What is transphobia
The meaning of transphobia refers to the fear, repulsion and obsessive aversion towards transsexual people.transgender or transvestites. It refers to the irrational fear of those people who do not identify with the biologically assigned gender or simply tend to dress the way the opposite sex does. Transphobia is also known as cissexism, transprejudice, trans-misogyny, referring to trans women, or trans-androphobia, when referring to trans men.
It is interesting to note that the term transsexuality was introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, almost at the same time that the term homosexuality was eliminated. However, this concept has been changing over the years in different manuals, including the DSM-5, which currently speaks of . Dysphoria refers to the discomfort caused by the discordance between gender identity and biologically assigned sex.
Furthermore, including the term transsexuality in manuals has not guaranteed that in many countries the health care that these people require is provided. In fact, in many places in the world transsexual individuals are persecuted, condemned and mistreated. This helps to understand that in the There is an important cultural component to transphobia. For example, in African culture the existence of transsexuality is repressed and denied.
Characteristics of transphobia
Transphobia manifests itself in various ways. Some of the characteristics of transphobia are:
- Consider transsexual people inferior, abnormal or sick.
- Threaten, insult, abuse, discriminate, intimidate and manifest physical and/or psychological violence towards them.
- Express dislike and prejudice against them.
- Do not accept what the trans person identifies with and refuse to use the pronoun they want.
Types of transphobia
There are different types of transphobia. Let’s see which ones there are:
- Direct transphobia: discrimination and physical and/or verbal violence is intentionally expressed towards these people. For example, when they are denied medical treatment for the simple fact of being transsexual.
- Indirect transphobia: in passive rejection. The person does not have the intention of causing harm to the other and simply does so out of ignorance. For example, in the non-discrimination policy, transsexuals are often excluded.
Examples of transphobia
Below are examples of transphobia in different areas in which this type of phobia occurs:
- School environment: in educational centers there is a lot of violence of this type and, sometimes, this means that students abandon their studies. This population frequently presents self-esteem problems and other psychological problems. In addition, it is also important to highlight that cyberbullying or virtual bullying is very common among adolescents. This is important, as abuse is no longer limited to just the school environment. Discover the different ones.
- Family environment: another example of transphobia is abuse and family mistreatment usually increases in the cases of transsexual people. Many times this sexual identity is not accepted by families, who act in a transphobic manner directly or indirectly.
- Work area: currently, in our country the unemployment rate for this group is around 85%. These data reflect that job placement for this population is very complex, since the business sector is usually not willing to hire them. This involves isolation and a certain degree of social exclusion, which has an impact on their mental health. Transphobia also manifests itself through workplace harassment. In this article, we tell you.
Unfortunately, transphobia is a major problem in our society. On many occasions we may not be aware that some of our attitudes may be transphobic. However, at present there are many associations that fight against transphobia and this is gradually impacting a change in the mentality of the population, although there is still a long way to go.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to What is transphobia: characteristics and exampleswe recommend that you enter our category.
References
- American Psychiatric Association. (2014). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5). American Psychiatric Pub.
Bibliography
- Barffusón, R. (2018). For a life free of homophobia and transphobia. The Word and the Man, magazine of the Universidad Veracruzana, 1(43), 38-41.
- Grau, J.M. (2017). From transsexualism to gender dysphoria in the DSM. Terminological changes, same pathologizing essence. International Journal of Sociology, 75(2), 059.
- Martínez, DB (2011). Transsexuality, health and human rights. Journal of Sexual Anthropology Studies,1(3) January-December
- Platero Méndez, RL (2014). The agency of trans* young people in confronting transphobia. International Journal of Political Thought,9.