U.S. Pays $200k to Study Impact of Stigma, Minority Stress on “Gender Nonconforming People”

The Trump administration is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct research on transgender health, including “gender nonconforming people of all ages,’ according to a U.S. government grant announcement. The money will flow through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency and will focus on both youth and adults who are questioning their gender identity as well as individuals who are making or who have made a transition from being identified as one gender to the other. “This group encompasses individuals whose gender identity differs from the sex on their original birth certificate or whose gender expression varies significantly from what is traditionally associated with or typical for that sex,” the government document states.

The taxpayer dollars will fund “exploratory or developmental research” on the health of transgender and gender nonconforming people and will address the medical, sociological, psychological and structural causes and consequences of transgender and gender nonconforming identities. “Investigations of the social determinants of health in these populations are needed, including understanding the impact of stigma, the high impact of HIV, minority stress, education, employment, violence, homelessness, and incarceration,” the government announcement says. “More information is needed on relationships with partners and family, as well as on sexual and reproductive health. Successful aging, including the impact of life events, experiences, and interventions such as hormone therapy and surgery are other important topics to investigate. It will also be important to learn more about brain development, resilience, and end-of-life issues.”

The areas of research sought are vast and include the development of methods responsive to the heterogeneity of transgender and gender nonconforming populations. This is further described as gender identity and fluidity, sexual orientation, developmental stages, hormonal regimens, surgical procedures and racial/ethnic differences. The government also wants to obtain data on the incidence and prevalence of childhood gender-variant or transgender and gender nonconforming identities continuing into adolescence and adulthood gender identity development and change within diverse racial and ethnic groups. Uncle Sam also wants to know if a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is stigmatizing, the effects of hormone therapy on the fertility of transgender and gender nonconforming individuals and the health consequences of body fillers such as silicones. The administration also wants to develop methods to better understand non-response and non-participation among transgender and gender nonconforming persons in scientific surveys and other studies. “Hispanic-serving institutions” and “historically black colleges and universities” are especially encouraged to apply for the public grants to conduct this important research for American taxpayers.

For more than a decade Judicial Watch has reported on the large sums of taxpayer dollars spent to accommodate transgender individuals, especially convicted felons serving sentences in American prisons nationwide. This includes hormone treatments, laser hair removal, makeup and costly sex-change surgery. Under the Obama administration the Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered all federal prisons to treat an inmate’s “gender dysphoria” like a medical condition and threatened to take legal action against state prisons that didn’t comply. In 2010 a federal court in Wisconsin ruled that a state law prohibiting the use of taxpayer money for transgender prisoners’ costly hormone treatments violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A few years later, a federal judge in Massachusetts determined that laser hair removal was a constitutional right for a transgender inmate. In 2014 a federal board ruled that the U.S. government’s health program for the elderly and disabled (Medicare) could no longer refuse to pay for the costly sex reassignment operations of transgender patients who claim to have gender identity disorder.

Shortly before leaving the White House, the Obama administration ordered the U.S. Army to pay damages for discriminating against a transgender worker by denying the one-time man access to the women’s bathroom after he “transitioned” to female, thus changing his “gender identity.” Additionally, the administration determined that the Army also discriminated against the employee by failing to use his new female name (Tamara Lusardi) and instead continuing to use the name the man was originally hired under. The case involved a military veteran who worked as a civilian software specialist at the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) in Redstone, Alabama. Lusardi served in the Army from 1986 to 1993 and claimed he suffered in a hostile workplace when management and co-workers kept calling him “sir” after becoming a woman and legally changing his name.