He Got That Right

We live in a patriarchal culture,” said Rushsam, who is a transgender woman. “So as a group, you are going to find gay men doing better than the lesbian community. And behind them, the trans community is lagging well behind the gay and lesbian community.”

This is not something that we didn’t know; being trans is not like being gay or lesbian, it is kind of obvious when you change gender and for trans-women the change in status is even more obvious.

The fragile financial world of transgender people: Costs of coming out
PennLive
By John Luciew
July 31, 2013

Want to feel the swift hand slap of discrimination and the sting of devastating economic consequences? Go from living your life as a man to coming out as a woman.

Perhaps no other group experiences the level of overt discrimination and direct adverse economic setbacks as do transgender people. And it all begins when they come out.

As John Luciew writes we live in a patriarchal culture and when a trans-woman transitions she gives up “his” male privilege and that is on top of discrimination of being transgender. For some it is too much to bear, some detransition and other go into depression and suicide.

The article then points out,

“We’ve seen a lot of transgender people who were making a very, very good living before they came out who lost everything,” said Goropoulos. “And not because they lost their skills overnight.”

I have a friend who have masters in computer science and could not find jobs in her field and I know of another person who has a PhD who cannot find work at her level of expertise.

John Luciew goes on to write that when trans-women do find jobs it is often for less money while trans-men usually find jobs that pay more. While that reflects what is seen in the general population; however, it is even more pronounced for the trans-population because of discrimination.