In contrast to the centrality of “coming out” in the gay rights movement, transgender people may be less likely to disclose their transgender status due to the severity of anti-transgender stigma, structural factors, and differences in how transgender status and sexual identity are expressed. As a consequence, intergroup contact with transgender people may be less common than gay contact, which may limit its effectiveness. In Study 1 (N = 174), transgender contact was much less frequent than gay contact, and transgender contact frequency was not associated with anti-transgender bias, although more positive transgender contact was associated with lower anti-transgender bias, and gay contact frequency was also independently associated with lower anti-transgender bias. In Study 2 (N = 277), greater transgender “media contact” was associated with increased empathy for transgender people and decreased anti-transgender bias. In addition, several participants left unsolicited anti-transgender comments at the end of the study, and these participants tended to have less transgender contact and were higher in Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation. Our results suggest that increasing contact with the LGBT community and increasing media representations of transgender people may decrease anti-transgender bias. Future directions building on these results are discussed.
Exploring the Experiences of Heterosexual and Asexual Transgender People