Synapse – The UCSF Student Newspaper – Zahra Kassamali – Staff Writer
The transgender population is a group grossly overlooked in healthcare. Considering even the most basic questions on a medical history, the transgender patient runs into a dilemma at the point when asked, male or female? The simple issue of pronouns becomes convoluted when we consider gender and sex.
Sex is considered a biological characteristic; in other words, what a person is defined as at birth. Gender is more expansive and includes psychological characteristics and self-definition. Therefore, one may be born male but identify as female. This person would therefore be a transgender female, or simply identify as female. Because of the lack of exposure clinicians generally have with transgender people, they are often unaware of the appropriate care to provide.
Transgender people experience barriers in all areas of their life. At the Global AIDS Week of Action held a few months back, I learned some cold facts from Dr. Lori Kohler, medical director of the Family Health Center at San Francisco General and an assistant professor at UCSF. Firstly, the African American transgender female population has the most rapid rate of HIV infection in our country. Second, transgender women are over-represented in the male prison population. In some places, they number one out of 50 prisoners; this rate is much higher than their proportion within the general population. One of the reasons behind the high numbers of transgender women in prison is that they face more difficulty procuring legal employment. According to Kohler, 50-60 percent of this population cannot find jobs. As a result, many find work on the fringes of society, such as in the sex industry.