According to recently released data from the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS), more than nine out of ten trans people claim that transitioning improved their quality of life.
94% of respondents to an “Early Insights” report from the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) who had started socially and/or medically transitioning said their lives had improved “a lot” or “just a little” among the roughly 84,000 adult survey respondents. 98% of respondents who received hormone therapy said their lives had improved to some extent, and 97% of those who underwent gender-affirming surgery said the same. Just 3% of those who had undergone some sort of transition reported feeling less satisfied with life as a whole.
Compared to their own transition, survey respondents were much more likely to report experiencing health bias. Almost half of those who had visited a physician in the previous month reported having at least one unpleasant experience, such as mistreatment, being turned down for treatment, or being physically or verbally abused.
The survey’s authors issue a warning that because it was not arbitrary, it is not statistically representative of all trans people in the United States. However, statistics like these—which were compiled from 84,170 adults living in every state and territory in the United States and represent a range of cultural, social, and class backgrounds—continue to provide significant high-level statistics and include context that refutes traditional anti-trans talking points, such as the disproven assertion that the majority of trans youth may regret transitioning.
According to NCTE Executive Director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, who announced the first report at a news conference on Tuesday, “there’s also no shortage of information accessible to lawmakers, the media, and advocates regarding our experiences and our needs.” We’re working in a pump of knowledge, at best. At worst, we’re dealing with the perilous false information that anti-trans fanatics are spreading. These escalating congressional assaults on our society are without a doubt supported by misinformation and ignorance. Nearly half (47%) of respondents said they were thinking about moving to another state because that state had anti-trans laws in place or had passed them, according to this week’s early report. Additionally, 5% of respondents moved to a new state solely because of anti-trans legislation, and 10% had actually relocated due to discrimination.
In late 2022, NCTE researchers worked with various advocacy organizations like the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, the TransLatin@ Coalition, and the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition to conduct the survey. 92,329 transgender individuals living in the United States, ages 16 and older, responded to the study. (In contrast, only 27,715 people, or less than a third of the dataset’s total size, provided responses to the 2015 USTS, which was previously the most comprehensive collection of data on U.S. trans life.) Although some data from 16- and 17-year-old respondents were also included in sections about family and school life, 44% of respondents who were under the age of four reported that their families supported their trans identity. This week’s preliminary report primarily focuses on information from adult respondents.
