Supporting the T in LGBT: Increasing Motivation for Collective Action for the Transgender Community Among Cisgender Sexual Minorities

The LGBT+ community represents a range of gender and sexual minorities who have fought for equal rights and acceptance throughout history. Pride parades, protests, demonstrations, and awareness-raising campaigns are just some of the collective actions that LGBT+ members utilise to combat discrimination and hates crimes. Yet while there has been some marked progress for sexual minorities (i.e., legalisation of same-sex marriage in many countries), similar progress for transgender people -the T in the LGBT- has lagged behind. This somewhat unenthusiastic support for transgender rights is evident across many groups, however, more surprisingly it also permeates the LGB+ community. This is evidenced in qualitative research as transgender people report experiencing isolation, exclusion, and even discrimination from LGB+ members (Hutsell, 2012; Parameter et al, 2020). Taken together with the fact that transgender people experience a plethora of other hardships (e.g., elevated levels of violent hate crimes and suicidality), it is vital that this lack of support inside the LGBT+ community is investigated further (Williams Institute, 2022, 2020). Firstly, it is essential to understand why support for transgender rights is not stronger among LGB+ people, by exploring what underpins negative attitudes and the lack of support for transgender rights among some LGB+ individuals. Ultimately, then exploring how to effectively boost this support by understanding factors that encourage LGB+ individuals to stand up for the T in LGBT through collective actions.
With the support of the ESRC SWDTP, I plan to shed new light on this important, yet overlooked issue within the research community. I will do so across a series of at least three mixed-methodological studies and some follow up studies as and where needed. In fact, I have already started designing a pilot study as part of my MSc degree at Exeter under the supervision of my proposed supervisors, Dr Begeny and Prof. Barreto, where we will start to investigate different potential predictors of LGB+ collective action for transgender rights. Building upon this MSc study (cross-sectional data), I will run a series of studies that will cumulatively aim to develop an appropriate intervention to boost these intentions. Each of the proposed studies will control for the individual difference factors investigated in the MSc project. LGB+ participants will be recruited using Prolific Academic, where there are currently 19,438 available for recruitment.

The proposed project aims to add to the collective action literature and fill a gap in its theory by examining an example of collective action in which there is no clear advantaged group (Hassler et al, 2020). In addition to adding to theoretical advancements it is hoped to provide a refreshing outlook on what is often a very negative field of research, by starting the development of a collective action intervention. The findings of the study are hoped to be disseminated to various inclusive LGBTQ+ and transgender charities and organisations (e.g., Stonewall and Mermaids).