Mona Rae Mason on some facts from The Transgender Project

Mona Rae Mason is one of those woman you just want to get to know. When you see her picture her smile is inviting, her demeanor relaxed with a hint of high energy coiled up inside her. And she’s been the field coordinator for the National Development and Research Institutes’ The Transgender Project:

Over the years, psychologists and medical professionals have conducted numerous small-scale and highly focused studies of various segments of the Transgender Community, yet precious little is known about how we actually live our lives; who we are; what we do and why; where we come from; and where we are headed.

The Transgender Project is designed to describe the economic, social and personal, family and workplace experiences of male to female trans-persons, how these experiences change over the course of our lives, and the impact of these experiences on our mental and physical health.

(We perked up a post on The Transgender Project back in February 2006 before results were revealed)

While The Transgender Project is tightly focused on NY, the results are interesting in that, at some level, they certainly apply to the transgender community at large. Mona shared some of the results of The Transgender Project study with attendees of the Central New York Health Systems Agency’s, “LGBT Stories: Reflections and Voices from Within”. The program, from their site, is “designed to promote information-sharing among the LGBT community and service providers using a format of storytelling & open discussion”.

One point Ms. Mason shared was about how the lack of acceptance of trans-people, when they come out, can be devastating. But while we might think of this as emotional or physically abuse, it can be far worse: losing a place to live when you a young teen trans-woman and you end up on the street. Mona shared the following,

These young transgender women, expelled from the home or forced to leave, end up on the street, homeless and hungry. Cold and hunger drive people to do things they would otherwise never do. Sex work soon becomes the only means by which they can survive.

It comes as no news to anyone here in this room, that the greater the number of different sex partners one has, the greater one’s chance of contracting HIV or an STI become. But what may surprise you is that this condition of family initiated homelessness is primarily a cultural phenomenon predominate in the African American and Latina segments of the transgender community. This homeless situation, in conjunction with the inability to find employment and shelter, and relying on sex work for survival are some of the direct correlates to our findings that show us that 48.1% of African American and 49.6% of Latina transgender women in our study tested positive for HIV at baseline.

That fact is astonishing. It parallels some of the thoughts that Walter Bockting, WPATH President, shared in a recent interview in “The Body” and that we blogged about at Beck’s Cafe here. It’s about survival, safety and acceptance. Is it any surprise those are the three bottom parts of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

Mona had a few other thoughts to share as well. Depression, bi-polar disorder, personality disorders and other psychologically visible “abnormalities” can often be symptoms of not dealing with some inner real source of conflict and being transgender is one of those conflicts. The Transgender Project found that:

The rate of lifetime major depression in this study of male to female transgender persons was 54.3%. That is almost three times higher than the corresponding estimate for the general population….Suicide ideation for this same group was at 53.3%, again three times higher than the general population.

And she offers a challenges to health care providers and educators (and by proxy to each of us) who deal with glbt youth “but what of our gay and transgender kids who have left or quit school? Are we asking them, or even pushing them, to get that GED so they might be able to get a job, or are we just handing them condoms and telling them to be safe? That is simply not enough.”

Ms. Mason’s keynote is well worth a full read; so take your tall glass of ice coffee and please, have a read, you’ll be challenged to think and, possibly, to action. Mona’s keynote from the “LGBT Stories: Reflections and Voices from Within” conference is at her blog, “Mona Mason-Thoughts On Transgender” here.