12% of white LGBTQ+ youth attempted suicide in 2021.
We often assume a person's gender based on their appearance and then address them with the pronouns or honorific appropriate for that gender. But what if we assume wrong? We may end up misgendering that person.
"Using someone’s correct personal pronouns is a way to respect them and create an inclusive environment, just as using a person’s name can be a way to respect them. Just as it can be offensive or even harassing to make up a nickname for someone and call them that nickname against their will, it can be offensive or harassing to guess at someone’s pronouns and refer to them using those pronouns if that is not how that person wants to be known. Or, worse, actively choosing to ignore the pronouns someone has stated that they go by could imply the oppressive notion that intersex, transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people do not or should not exist."
2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. The Trevor Project. (2022). Retrieved September 15, 2022, from https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/
UCLA School of Law. (2021, March 23). Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. Williams Institute. Retrieved October 6, 2022, from https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/
Ybarra ML, Goodman KL, Saewyc E, Scheer JR, Stroem IF. Youth Characteristics Associated With Sexual Violence Perpetration Among Transgender Boys and Girls, Cisgender Boys and Girls, and Nonbinary Youth. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(6):e2215863. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.15863. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2792857