Marital Status and Perceived Discrimination among Transgender People

Despite calls for increased attention to the experiences of transgender people, scientific understanding of the stigma and discrimination this population experiences is limited. We integrate minority stress and marital advantage perspectives to assess marital status differences in transgender-related perceived discrimination among transgender people in multiple life domains: the workplace, family, health care, and public accommodations. We analyze one of the first and most comprehensive large-scale samples of transgender people in the U.S. (N = 4,286), the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. We find that married transgender respondents tend to report lower levels of perceived discrimination than their cohabiting and previously married transgender counterparts. Married transgender respondents do not, however, report lower levels of perceived discrimination than their never married counterparts, once all covariates are accounted for. These marital status differences appear primarily among transwomen but not transmen. Economic resources account for some, but not all, of these differences.