Objectification and Minority Stress in Transgender Women

Contributor: Staff at Carolina House

While research remains sparse regarding those in the transgender community and especially regarding the intersection with disordered eating behavior, some recent studies have revealed the links between these aspects of one’s identity.

While many things are still unknown, there is a clear understanding that transgender women are often the victims of gender-based oppression. Often objectified and subjected to minority-stress variables, they tend, eventually, to suffer from poorer mental health outcomes and are placed at greater risk for developing an eating disorder.

Throughout any given day, a transgender woman may have to deal with sexual objectification, the social-cultural standards of attractiveness (for which she already identifies as “other”), constant body surveillance, and body dissatisfaction. On a global level, she has to confront minority-stress variables like anti-transgender discrimination that compound her personal dissatisfaction and likely contribute to the severity of eating disorder symptomatology [1].

There have been reports in the U.S. that transgender women have a highly increased obsession with how they look and that they are more likely to develop an eating disorder or to misuse diet pills [2]. Often, the concern about their body shape is the root of these unhealthy weight and body compensatory behaviors. One such reason may be because of the distress they face because the sex they were assigned at birth is incongruent with their identity.

So, for transgender women, disordered eating and weight loss is a way for them to identify with femininity. However, this is often just the tip of the iceberg, as trans women have to deal with more than just the incongruence of their gender identity.

The sexual objectification of women

Knowingly or unknowingly, today’s society places high standards on women to appear sexually attractive or desirable. Women go through sexually objectifying experiences like catcalling or street harassment, and it seems as though society has accepted sociocultural standards of attractiveness where a woman must be “slim yet curvy.”

What follows is pressure for women to monitor and survey their bodies time and again in the almost impossible pursuit to ensure that they fit such strict standards. This constant body surveillance promotes dissatisfaction with one’s self should they not live up to the standard. Often, the result is that women will engage in unhealthy behaviors like disordered eating just to try to compensate for what they perceive as their flaws.

Transgender women are subject to all of these pressures, with the added weight of particular degrading stereotypes that insist they are not “real women.” For these women who may be labeled so unjustly, they begin to believe that they should seek medical and cosmetic interventions to look “passable.” Of course, for a transgender woman, the disagreement between their real and ideal body is stark, and ideals of thinness may lead to body image concerns and attempts to suppress the “masculine” characteristics they may have [1].

Minority stress

In addition to their sexual objectification, transgender women also end up on the receiving end of marginalization, discrimination, and stigma due to a devalued social status or group identity. Their communities often lack trans-affirming social and structural supports, and, without well-trained mental health and medical professionals, they remain susceptible to the negative outcomes of minority stress [3].

Anti-transgender discrimination indirectly, albeit powerfully, contributes to one’s internalization of maladaptive beliefs, undue focus on body surveillance, and body dissatisfaction. The stigma and sexism that transgender women face often provide a difficult backdrop for true healing and recovery.

Dehumanization of transgender women

It is difficult to disentangle the sexual objectification and discrimination experiences that transgender women face. Today’s social climate consists of gut-wrenching tales of trans-misogynistic violence toward these individuals. In 2017 alone, it was reported that 29 transgender women were murdered.

Similarly, there were 26 reported deaths of transgender women in 2018. What’s more, sexual violence against this population is reported at an alarming 1.8 times more frequent than for all other survivors [4,5]. Generally, transgender women also face economic insecurity in both employment and housing, as sociocultural protections do not always exist in these environments.

For these reasons, transgender women are often drawn to fields of work with fewer regulations and find employment as sex workers, where they are further objectified and often learn confusing and unhealthy patterns of relying on others to affirm their gender-congruent bodies.

Transgender women who have been through such experiences, coupled with diminished self-esteem due to stigma and discrimination, may interpret instances of sexual objectification as evidence that others value their physical appearance and affirm their gender expression.

They may embrace sexual advances that don’t initially appear threatening. However, in doing so, they may be contributing to the formation of unhealthy habits like disordered eating in order to continue being viewed as a sexual object in a world where many refuse to acknowledge their presence at all.

These sexual objectification experiences, along with the hypersexualization and stigmatization that transgender women experience, play a key role in the development of eating disorder pathology. On a global level, this marginalized community requires repair for the years of economic and societal damage that they have faced. This will take time, although the work has already begun on an individual level with LGBTQ-inclusive eating disorder treatment provided by supportive treatment professionals.

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Sources:
[1] Brewster, M. E., Velez, B. L., Breslow, A. S., & Geiger, E. F. (2019). Unpacking body image concerns and disordered eating for transgender women: The roles of sexual objectification and minority stress. Journal of Counseling Psychology,66(2), 131-142. doi:10.1037/cou0000333
[2] Diemer, E. W., Grant, J. D., Munn-Chernoff, M. A., Patterson, D. A., & Duncan, A. E. (2015). Gender identity, sexual orientation, and eating related pathology in a national sample of college students. Journal of Adolescent Health, 57, 144–149. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.03.003
[3] Vance, S. R., Jr., Halpern-Felsher, B. L., & Rosenthal, S. M. (2015). Health care providers’ comfort with and barriers to care of transgender youth.
[4] Human Rights Campaign. (n.d.). Violence Against the Transgender Community in 2018. Retrieved April 5, 2019, from https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgender-community-in-2018
[5] Ahmed, O., & Jindasurat, C. (2014). A report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs: Lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected hate violence in 2013 (2014 released ed.). New York, NY: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Retrieved from https://avp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2013_ncavp_hvreport_final.pdf

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About the Sponsor:

Carolina House is an eating disorder treatment center that serves people of all genders, ages 17 and older.

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The opinions and views of our guest contributors are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope but an effort to offer a discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.

We at Eating Disorder Hope understand that eating disorders result from a combination of environmental and genetic factors. If you or a loved one are suffering from an eating disorder, please know that there is hope for you, and seek immediate professional help.

Published on April 23, 2019.
Reviewed & Approved on April 12, 2024, by Baxter Ekern, MBA

Published on EatingDisorderHope.com