Domestic violence is considered a serious health and social problem in the United States and around the world. Annually, domestic violence costs in the U.S. are estimated at 8.3 billion dollars. Domestic violence issues first came to modern attention with the women’s movement of the 1970’s. Much of the literature focuses on domestic violence within heterosexual relationships. There has not been much attention directed towards domestic violence in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This report reviews information about domestic violence, its causes, theories, and how domestic violence affects individuals in the LGBT community. / text

The single most recognized transgender woman in the 1950s and throughout much of the 1960s, Christine Jorgensen symbolized in many ways the quintessential white, upper-middle-class woman and the medicalized standard by which other transgender women were measured, including poor transgender women and transgender women of color. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, a new class of transgender women would come to denounce such an image. Holly Woodlawn, a cult icon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, viewed Christine as outdated and out-of-sync with her own gendered desires for expression. Holly gained notoriety for her outrageous role in Andy Warhol's film Trash (1970). In the film, she plays the glamorous and co-dependent role of the counter-culture sex addicted welfare queen. In the film, she denounces traditional transsexual women narratives and engenders instead new forms of gendered expressions unencumbered by sex change anxieties. Christine and Holly are but two historical transgender icons, who, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s suggested new possibilities for gendered expressions. Their public personas historicize the construction of transgender identity, making visible the classed and racialized privileging of sex change surgery and the alternative expressions embodied by poor transgender women and transgender women of color. Although unable to afford sex change surgery, poor transgender women, in particular, transgender women of color, embodied new models of gender identity beyond the gendered constructs of whiteness. / text

As my thesis project, I developed and implemented the SAGA Youth and Family Program through the Wingspan LGBT Community Center and the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance. The first chapter analyzes the use of rights discourse by advocates of transgender youth as a means to gain needed protection and concessions. The second chapter introduces the SAGA Youth and Family Program created to build supportive communities for gender-variant and transgender youth and their families and to end unnecessary isolation, discrimination and harassment affecting transgender and gender-variant youth, their families, and their communities. The SAGA Youth and Family website comprises the final chapter and is one of the three components of the SAGA Youth and Family Program.

Den här uppsatsen har för avsikt att undersöka och förstå hur det är att vara förälder till ett barn som är trans. Studien är kvalitativ och semistrukturerade intervjuer har använts. Genom de fem intervjuerna som jag har genomfört med föräldrar till transpersoner har jag undersökt föräldrarnas upplevelser och erfarenheter samt förhoppningar och önskningar i relation till att deras barn är transpersoner. Resultatet pekar i två riktningar där den ena handlar om föräldrarnas tankar och känslor och det andra om deras behov och förhoppningar. Det föräldrarna tog upp i den första riktningen av resultatet handlade om sorg, tvivel, oro men även att det har varit berikande. I den andra riktningen av resultatet berättade de om behov att träffa andra i liknande situationer, få höra positiva berättelser, önskemål om att samhället skulle vara mer accepterande mot transpersoner och mindre könsuppdelat. Resultatet har styrkts genom Antonowskys KASAM-teori och analyserats med hjälp av queerteori. Slutsatsen är att en bredare och mer nyanserad representation med tillgång till positiva och hoppfulla berättelser skulle göra de här personernas liv lättare och kanske rentav öka deras känsla av sammanhang.

Transgender representations generally distance the transgender characters from the audience as objects of ridicule, fear, and sympathy. This distancing is accomplished through the use of specific narrative conventions and visual codes. In this dissertation, I analyze representations of transgender individuals in popular film comedies, thrillers, and independent dramas. Through a textual analysis of 24 films, I argue that the narrative conventions and visual codes of the films work to prevent identification or connection between the transgender characters and the audience. The purpose of this distancing is to privilege the heteronormative identities of the characters over their transgender identities. This dissertation is grounded in a cultural studies approach to representation as constitutive and constraining and a positional approach to gender that views gender identity as a position taken in a specific social context. Contributions are made to the fields of communication, film studies, and gender studies through the methodological approach to textual analysis of categories of films over individual case studies and the idea that individuals can be positioned in identities they do not actively claim for themselves. This dissertation also makes a significant contribution to conceptions of the gaze through the development of three transgender gazes that focus on the ways the characters are visually constructed rather than the viewpoints taken by audience members. In the end, transgender representations work to support heteronormativity by constructing the transgender characters in specific ways to prevent audience members from developing deeper connections with them.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "August, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-316). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-47).

abstract: This study examines the differences in demographic and life characteristics between transgender and female prostitutes in a prostitution diversion program and identifies specialized treatment and exiting strategies for transgender prostitutes. The purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of the transgender experience in prostitution and to contribute to the descriptive literature. Participants were 465 individuals who were arrested for prostitution and attended a prostitution-focused diversion program. Differences found to be significant between transgender and female prostitutes included demographic characteristics, history of childhood sexual abuse, and experience of violence in prostitution. Implications for treatment, exiting strategies and future research are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.W. Social Work 2011

The experience of transgender people provides a unique opportunity to further our understanding of intersectionality, experienced and expressed through multiple axes of social location. Transpeople change genders in relation to androcentric, middle-class, whitenormative, and heterocentric cultural narratives. My dissertation contributes to our understandings of the interconnections of the social structural contexts of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and of how they shape the meanings we attribute to our experiences of self and identity. In addition, I show how the case of transpeople illuminates how all people draw upon hegemonic cultural constructions of intersecting social locations in processes of creating and understanding themselves. Thus, I provide insights into how individuals actively perform ("do") their own multiple social identities (such as race, class, gender, and sexuality) and how they incorporate their perceptions of others' attributions of multiple dimensions of social location. Finally, I suggest how the collective identities of identity-based social movements, such as the Transgender Movement, are rooted in racialized gendered meanings.

BACKGROUND: Researchers have attempted to modify some measures of religiosity/spirituality to address disparities in examining practices and beliefs in non-European minority groups; however, no one has modified or tested religion scales to address disparities between transgender and non-transgender populations. Research using existing scales proved inadequate with a female-to-male transsexual (FTM) population. To begin to modify instruments for applicability to a FTM population requires gaining more knowledge about this population with regard to religion. Research shows individuals who are transgender face resistance to and rejection of their identities beginning early in life. Reliance on majority religions and their concepts of divinity, embodiment--one's experience of having a particular body--and views of immutable, or essential, human qualities based on sex assigned at birth, may create significant problems when interacting with transgender populations. The significance of this study is in learning how a sample of FTMs conceptualize and experience religion to effect more competent interactions with this marginalized people. Interactions based on increased competency with and understanding of FTMs will contribute to improved long-term health outcomes and overall quality of life for this population. Further, exploring the experiences and beliefs of FTMs may challenge our assumptions and understandings about gender itself, expanding our knowledge about human experience of embodiment, and offering insights into traditional concepts of creation and humanity. RESULTS: This study reports a qualitative investigation of the understanding and experience of religion held by six FTM individuals. All participants completed five or more years of cross-sex hormone treatment with testosterone and identified as male. Methods from Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) guided analysis of semistructured interviews and sample size. Four common themes are presented: rejection of early concepts of religion; connection with others; construction of a way of life; and provision of a source of redefinition and reincarnation. The participants' understandings of religion do not principally parallel those in commonly studied populations. The study's most significant finding is that every participant had a fundamental break from religious tradition as he learned it. The researcher concludes by offering preliminary recommendations for clinical interventions and future research.