“They Don't Identify With Us”: Perceptions of Police by Australian Transgender People

ABSTRACT

Previous research indicates that transgender people are one of the most victimized groups in Western society and are more likely than other people to be ill treated by police. However Australian research examining transgender people's perceptions of the police and policing is lacking. It is also an area of research needing systematic inquiry. Using in-depth interviews conducted with members of the transgender community (N = 21) in one Australian state, the current research builds upon previous work examining how transgender people view police. Overall, the research determines that transgender people's perceptions of police form around negative perceptions of intergroup difference. They also form around an expectation that police will treat transgender people badly because of their gender expression and police perceptions of normative gender identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• legitimacy
• police
• policing
• transgender

Notes

1. Harper and Schneider (2003) state that a ‘lived experience’ refers to first-hand accounts and impressions of living as a member of a minority group.

2. For the purpose of this article, minority groups are defined as groups having external behaviors or other features that distinguish them from the general population, thereby affording them a subordinate identity group status which results in significantly less control or power over their lives than other members of dominant or majority groups (United Nations Human Rights, 2010).

3. No Internet Protocol (IP) addresses were collected as part of this research.

4. The particular Australian state where the research took place has been de-identified as part of the ethics agreement since members of two online transgender forums situated in this particular area requested anonymity of the geographical location.

5. Although other Australian studies use different terminologies to identify the diversity of the transgender community (see Dane et al., 2010), the terminologies used in this research are similar to those used by Cummings (2007) and The Gender Centre (NSW/QLD) and other members of the transgender community in this particular geographical area to identify different transgender identities.

6. Although it is acknowledged that the term ‘Pre-Op’ is often problematic since it categorises individuals by surgical status and places emphasis on a procedure that can be difficult to obtain for some transgender people, this terminology was used by the individual to self-identify in this research.

7. In the Australian state where this research took place these identifiers are commonly used by members of the transgender community to categorise themselves and others within their community. As such, it was determined that for the purposes of this research the sample would not be subject to data reduction techniques to reduce these categories to a discrete set of only transgender male and transgender female participants.

8. Seven participants stated that they were not in a committed relationship. However, none of these participants disclosed any other additional information regarding their relationship history. Therefore it could not be determined if any of the seven had been previously married, divorced or in any other types of relationships.

9. At the time of the interviews, each of the unemployed participants admitted that they were actively seeking employment and none of them were students or homemakers or retired.

10. The questions included in the interviews were devised by the researcher and based on questions used in previous studies measuring group identification and as such, each of the questions was deemed to be reliable in their ability to measure the nature of perceived group difference (Smith, Tyler, Huo, Ortiz & Lind, 1998; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler & Wakslak, 2004).

11. During the construction and adaptation of the in-depth interview questions, two transgender community members were consulted so that appropriate questions regarding ‘life histories’ could be included.