Transgender Individuals’ Access to College Housing and Bathrooms: Findings from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey

Abstract

Within higher education settings, transgender people are at risk for discrimination and harassment within housing and bathrooms. Yet, few have examined this topic using quantitative data or compared the experiences of subgroups of transgender individuals to predict denial of access to these spaces. The current study utilizes the National Transgender Discrimination Survey to research this issue. Findings indicate that being transgender and having another marginalized identity matters for students’ access to housing and bathrooms. Trans women are at greater risk than gender-nonconforming people for being denied access to school housing and bathrooms. Implications for practice and research are detailed.

KEYWORDS:

• transgender
• higher education
• discrimination
• housing
• bathrooms

Notes

¹The NCTE survey asked participants to designate their primary gender identity today. One response option was “part time as one gender, part time as another,” which captures those who either are just beginning to transition or who may identify with different genders in different contexts. This subgroup of transgender people has received little attention in the literature (Grant et al., 2011).

²Tables 2 through 5 and Figure 1 are adapted from Seelman, 2013.

³The data presented here for model fit and Nagelkerke R² are for the original data prior to multiple imputation. SPSS version 20 does not produce pooled results for model fit and Nagelkerke R² for imputed data.

⁴This statistic is calculated using the inverse odds ratio: 1 / 0.32 = 3.13.