Transphobia in the United States has changed over time. Understanding and acceptance of transgender people have both decreased and increased during the last few decades depending on the details of the issues which have been facing the public.
The 2020s saw the emergence of an anti-LGBTQ movement, closely associated with Trumpism. This movement places particular emphasis on opposing transgender rights. Targeting of transgender people has escalated under the second Trump administration. As a result, there are few federal protections left for transgender Americans. President Donald Trump's executive orders have rolled back protections. Some orders even erase the legal existence of transgender people. State, local, and other governmental bodies in the United States have enacted anti-transgender legislation. Social issues in the United States also reveal a level of transphobia. Because of transphobia, transgender people in the U.S. face increased levels of violence and intimidation.
American viewpoints on transgender people Gender nonconforming people often face discrimination, shaming, or other types of gender policing in their daily lives. A 2023 poll found that a slight majority of Americans are against anti-transgender legislation. While the majority of Americans supported openly transgender people serving in the military, the percentage decreased from 71% to 66% between 2019 and 2021. A 2024 AP VoteCast survey of more than 120,000 American voters found that "more than half of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far."
A 2021 Gallup poll found that 62% of Americans believed that transgender people should only play sports on teams that match their gender assigned at birth. Many professional sports leagues in the United States allow transgender players to participate with various types of guidelines and inclusion levels. The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference allows transgender students to compete according to their gender identities. FIDE has banned trans women from participating in women's chess events stating that they have "no right to participate." FINA effectively barred all transgender women from competing in professional women's swimming, with the exception of athletes who "can establish to FINA's comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later".
Native Americans in the US often use different terminology to describe their non-binary gender identities based on their cultural values. Two-Spirit is used in some cultures, and the Navajo have nádleehé. The Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Zuni Pueblo, also have specific terms for individuals who present outside of the gender binary.
Government protections
Historically, transgender individuals and communities in the US have been marginalized and received few legal protections. Attempts to protect LGBT people legally in the US workplace has been tried unsuccessfully since 1994 with the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). However, individual court cases, such as Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, prohibit discrimination of employees "based on their perceived failure to conform to socially constructed characteristics of males or females."
The United States State Department amended its policy in 2010 affecting gender markers on Social Security cards and United States passports. The change, which was still in effect in 2018, allowed individuals to provide information from their physician about updating gender on these documents. State IDs and driver's licenses are updated for gender on a state by state basis.
In 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, transgender employees are protected from discrimination in the workplace. The Biden administration has created some protections for transgender people. In July 2022, the United States Department of Health and Human Services proposed the restoration of nondiscrimination policies that would protect transgender people. In April 2023, Governor Phil Murphy established New Jersey as a "safe haven for gender-affirming health care."
States reflecting a more conservative population are more likely "to have more restrictive views on civil rights issues" which also informs their attitudes on transgender people.
The second Trump administration has rolled back most protections that transgender people once had in the US. The federal government officially does not recognize the existence of transgender people. The government bans the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care for youth 19 and under. The administration is working to ban transgender people in the military and in the civilian government.
Anti-trans attitudes Public opinion in the United States about transgender people is often similar to attitudes about LGBTQ individuals, with the difference being that "attitudes towards transgender individuals are significantly more negative." Data published in 2024 showed 80% of Americans supported LGB people living as they choose, but only 67% supported the same for transgender people. Some anti-transgender attitudes are based on the idea that gender is "natural and so, by extension, transgender people are unnatural." Because some Americans believe transgender people are unnatural, that also automatically makes them dangerous in their perceptions. Others argue that their religious beliefs prohibit them from using gender identity in place of biological sex, although the Bible does not mention trans people.
Some anti-trans activists associate trans women with predatory sexual behaviors. This idea is rooted in certain forms of second-wave feminism, advocates of this idea describe trans women as "rapists and boundary-violators trying to invade women's space", while trans men are regarded as "tokens". This has been refuted by research; a study of the effects of Massachusetts' anti-discrimination laws for restrooms found no evidence that cisgender women were placed at risk by the laws. Further, evidence has been found that the risk of assault for transgender children is reduced when they are allowed access to restrooms and locker rooms which match their gender identity. Some anti-trans activists believe that "LGBT ideology" will destabilize the United States government and that LGBT people are a security threat. Some groups and individuals have also argued that transgender soldiers are a threat to military readiness, although there is no evidence to suggest this.
Some socially conservative Americans also conflate people who dress in drag with transgender presentations. Christopher Rufo has implored conservatives to call drag queens "trans strippers", which, according to Nathan J. Robinson, is an inaccurate description of drag performances. Michigan Republican, Tudor Dixon, has called drag queens "sexualized performers." This is in contradiction to the history of drag performances which are not inherently sexual in nature.
Some people who oppose transgender rights argue that "irresponsible parents" and young people are rushing to make decisions about their trans identities, and that these decisions are largely based on social contagion. Conservative activists question the need to talk to children about their gender or sexual identities. A 2018 paper published by Lisa Littman in PLOS One described a hypothesis of rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD). Despite the fact that follow ups on Littman's study did not show support for her ideas, the paper she published has been used to justify anti-transgender legislation and policies in Florida and other US states. Social contagion ideas suggest that being transgender is a transmissible "disease" between vulnerable individuals. It also implies that being transgender is a medical issue to eradicate from the population, rather than a difference in gender identity. Activists who oppose gender-affirming care claim that physicians and parents are putting children through "irreversible medical treatments" without proper safeguards. Some states have pushed for laws banning gender-affirming care by claiming that medical treatment for transgender youth is "child abuse." Social media accounts, such as Libs of TikTok, have helped spread a moral panic about gender-affirming care. Many groups and individuals, despite a lack of evidence for their beliefs, have contributed to a culture war around transgender people. Arguments against gender-affirming care ignore that it has an extensive history of medical use.
Colonialism has also affected transgender identities. Hispanic LGBTQ+ organization, QLatinx, describes how "racism, sexism, heterosexism, xenophobia, and transphobia share a common root source of oppression that ultimately works to sustain white supremacy and heteropatriarchy." The structures of racism, homophobia and transphobia all share the feature of inciting violence against people perceived as part of those categories. Anti-trans beliefs also have a negative effect on some Native American cultures that have two-spirit or indigenous transgender individuals.
Some transphobic ideas are also internalized by transgender people. This is called Internalized transphobia and can be expressed by the individual feeling shame, isolation, "and a harmful internalization of cisnormative gender expectations."
Overall, transgender lives are often seen as less important than cisgender lives and violence and discrimination against them can be normalized by transphobic Americans.
Early history When European settlers colonized North America, they came into contact with indigenous people who had different ideas about gender and gender identity. Europeans used many tactics to impose their own gender roles and ideas onto Native peoples. The French colonizers called many third gender indigenous people "berdaches."
Encounters with Spanish colonizers led to a massive genocide of many of the Indigenous peoples of California, including "third-gender people, who were lost not by 'passive' colonizing collateral damage such as disease or starvation, but through active, conscious, violent extermination." When colonists discovered other genders among indigenous people, they worked to end the practice "through the twin disciplinary actions of physical and spiritual punishment and regendering".
As roles for indigenous non-binary people disappeared in their cultures these individuals "found themselves rejected by their families and communities."
Colonists themselves often did not fit into binary gender roles. Many non-conforming people fought in the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War, signing up and continuing to live in their chosen gender role afterwards. Many anti-transgender ideas were already being pushed into American colonial culture by the eighteenth century. Transgender women in the 18th century faced violence and "even capital punishment." By the late nineteenth century, the idea that gender and sexuality are part of a spectrum began to spread.
20th century Before the 1910 publication of Transvestism by Magnus Hirschfeld, most individuals who would now be considered transgender were termed "inverts," a term that also included homosexuals. The term transsexual was described by doctor David Oliver Cauldwell in the American medical literature in 1949. Prior to these medical terminologies, there were categories created by transgender people themselves, such as "men-women" and "women-men." In 1900, a transgender woman, then known as a "man-woman," was killed, and her body salted and stuffed into a trunk by her father. Her story was one of many violent accounts such people faced in the early 20th century.
After 1953, Christine Jorgensen's widely popularized "sex change operation" led to a depiction of her in both medical literature and popular media as a "sick, abnormal" person who was "rescued" by modern medicine.