Factors associated with frequency of gender identity nonaffirmation microaggressions among transgender persons

Abstract

Gender-based victimisation (GBV) is commonly experienced by transgender individuals, and can include physical or sexual violence; social, workplace, or housing discrimination; or family or social rejection. In addition to overt forms of GBV, transgender individuals experience gender identity-related microaggressions: subtle, frequently-occurring aversive events that convey nonaffirmation or rejection of an individual’s gender identity. The degree to which a transgender individual is socially perceived as the gender with which they identify, sometimes referred to as passing, as well as sociodemographic factors such as annual income and race/ethnicity, have been previously linked with experiencing overt GBV. This study aimed to quantitatively assess whether self-rated degree of passing, age, annual income and being a person of colour were associated with the frequency with which transgender individuals experience less overt identity-related victimisation in the form of gender nonaffirmation microaggressions. Among an age-diverse sample of US adolescent and adult transgender persons ($n$ = 224) who responded to 14 situational prompts of nonaffirmation microaggressions, adolescents experienced the highest average weekly frequency of nonaffirmation microaggressions (M = 2.16, SD = 1.48). Factors significantly associated with increased average weekly frequency of nonaffirmation microaggressions included lower degree of passing and lower income, while older age was associated with lower frequency of microaggressions.

Keywords:

• Transgender
• minority stress
• microaggressions
• sociodemographic
• passing

Disclosure statement

The second author is a research fellow for the Caitlyn Jenner Foundation, which provided initial funding for this research.

Notes

1 See Parr and Howe (2019) for findings related to microaggression intensity and socioemotional response items.

2 Group differences in mean weekly frequency of nonaffirmation microaggressions were assessed using a Welch’s $t$-tests for independent samples. The logarithm of frequency was used to correct for nonnormality.

3 For ${\chi }^2$-tests of differences between groups, $p$-values were derived using a Monte Carlo procedure (500 replications) for exact estimation. As a result, degrees of freedom are not reported.

4 For passing model predictors, median $r$ = .12 (range = -.06–.14), and for sociodemographic model predictors, median $r$ = .01 (range = -.21–.48).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded in part by the Caitlyn Jenner Foundation.