The Cultural Competence
Transgender Issues in the Aging Community
Pronouns, Microaggressions, Life as an elderly transgender person. This counts towards Cultural Competence requirements.
Program Description
As traditional and legal constraints on men and women’s behavior loosen, growing numbers of people describe themselves as “non-binary.” As older adults who have lived as transgender for decades age and need more care, they are more likely to run into discrimination and lack of understanding.
Transgender older adults face profound challenges and experience striking disparities in areas such as health and health care access, physical and mental health, employment, housing and more.
Our speaker, Rena McDaniel has extensive experience working with trans people of all ages, and she shares this with us here.
Learning Objectives
Be able to use the correct basic pronouns in working with transgender people.
Understand the points on the gender spectrum
Recognize the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity
Understand the meaning of “micro-aggressions.”
Become sensitive to the way these micro aggressions can be very hurtful.
Become aware of the difficulties many older trans people face in their later years.
Interviews
Transgender in the Aging Community - Rena McDaniel, MEd, LCPC, Certified Sex Therapist
We live in a binary world. Either/or. Male/Female. Most people are comfortable with their gender identities. It’s part of their nature and perhaps they rarely consider or have any strong sense of being male or female. Most gay people never doubt their gender identities. Plenty of transgender people are homosexual, but as we see with Katlyn Jenner (formerly Bruce Jenner), many are not. The Williams Institute, a think-tank in Los Angeles, recently came up with an estimate of 1.4 million Americans – 0.6% of those aged 16-65 -- who consider themselves transgender. As traditional and legal constraints on men and women’s behavior loosen, growing numbers of people describe themselves as “non-binary.” Facebook offers users a list of over 70 gender identities, from “agender” to “two-spirit,” as well as the option to write in their own. The media has been covering this extensively, and especially controversy spins around the subject of young kids wanting to transition, which, of course, would be permanent. There has been less coverage around the problems and issues of older adults who have lived as transgender for decades. As they age and need more care, they are more likely to run into discrimination and lack of understanding. Transgender older adults face profound challenges and experience striking disparities in areas such as health and health care access, physical and mental health, employment, housing and more. Our speaker, Rena McDaniel has extensive experience working with trans people of all ages, and she shares this with us here.
“The speakers did a great job. I love the flexibility of listening at my leisure.”
... Christine S.
LCSW