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Transgender and Nonbinary Communities and Policy in the United States

Transgender describes people whose gender differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Nonbinary is an umbrella for genders not contained entirely within the categories of woman or man. People may use both terms, one of them, another gender term, or no fixed label.

Trans and nonbinary communities include people of every race, class, disability status, religion, sexuality, age, and region. Social or medical transition can include changes in name, pronouns, clothing, documents, hormones, surgery, voice, or none of these. No particular intervention determines whether a person’s gender is real.

History and Community

Gender-diverse people existed long before contemporary terminology. In the United States, trans people built networks through private correspondence, nightlife, performance, social clubs, medical institutions, publications, and political organizations. Black and Latinx trans women and gender-nonconforming people were central to ballroom, street-youth organizing, mutual aid, and resistance to police violence.

Medical classification created pathways to some forms of care while also subjecting trans people to gatekeeping and psychiatric control. Community organizing challenged the requirement that people prove a narrow, binary, heterosexual, or socially respectable identity to receive recognition or treatment.

Policy and Daily Life

Legal and administrative recognition varies across documents, agencies, states, schools, employers, health systems, and carceral institutions. Name and gender-marker processes, insurance coverage, school participation, bathroom access, sports rules, military service, family law, and access to gender-affirming care have all been areas of repeated policy conflict.

Policy changes reach daily life through records that do or do not match, exposure to harassment, travel risk, medication continuity, privacy, employment, housing, and the ability to use public facilities safely. Trans people of color, disabled trans people, young people, poor people, immigrants, and incarcerated people often face the greatest practical consequences.

Language and Respect

Names and pronouns are determined by the person using them. A previous name should not appear unless the historical fact is necessary and the person has made it public. ‘’Trans woman’’ and ‘’trans man’’ use ‘’trans’’ as an adjective; terms that frame trans people as deceptive, imitative, or medically illegitimate reproduce a history of discrimination.

Nonbinary people may use they/them, he/him, she/her, neopronouns, multiple pronoun sets, or no pronouns. Pronouns do not by themselves establish a specific gender identity.

Culture & Context Reference File LGBTQ+ Culture Transgender and Nonbinary Culture