Hey! It’s trans awareness week, so time for your seventh favourite trans palaeontologist to hit you with some #transfacts! (A thread) #TransAwarenessWeek #TransWeek

To be upfront about my involvement in this. I’ve been transitioning for a few years now, and have done advocacy and campaign work at the university and local level. Also, I was in that one advert and got hit by a bus once.

You’ve probably heard that ~50% of trans people have considered or attempted suicide. This is a harrowing statistic that reflects on how society, and communities, treat and vilify trans people, and how the media, especially in the UK, demonises trans people daily

In fact, with a supportive community, and the ability to transition, it turns out, unsurprisingly, that suicide rates decrease. Suicide rates noticeably fall with family and social acceptance and how far into transition someone is (see Bauer et al 2015; Moody et al 2013)

In fact, the studies that ‘gender critical’ (read: transphobic) people spread to debunk these findings, actually show the opposite of what they claim, and the research shows suicide rates falling to that of the general population post-surgery, for example (Dhejne, at al 2011)

See also: Gorton at al 1988; Murad et al 2010, De Cuypere et al 2006; Lawrence, 2003, and many more studies (special thanks to /u/growflet on Reddit for the citations)

You may have also seen a lot of buzz around ‘trans regret’. The actual rate of detransition is near-zero as demonstrated by this helpful (and hilarious) pie chart. Where detransition happened, most cited lack of acceptance and danger as their reasons for desistance

And for all those people with ‘legitimate concerns’ about trans participation in sports. Just take a look at this infographic. Trans people aren’t our here winning left and right, quite the opposite

In fact, the current standards for most relevant organisations require trans women to have testosterone blocked for at least a year, which brings them into the lower end of the female range of T levels, so they have reduced ability to build muscle

Continued concern trolling about ‘bone structure’ etc, is pretty barefaced misogyny and racism. If you insist a certain shoulder width is not ‘female enough’, there are a lot of athletes you’re dismissing outright there, and it‘a qWhite obvious what you’re implying

Trans people also don’t transition for sex, and the idea that sexuality is the sole reason for transition is a harmful myth. The amount of people who assume I transitioned to date guys is weird AF, since I’ve never dated one...

but this myth about trans women as fetishists disguised as lesbians is egregious horseshit too. Trans people, when surveyed, are about 1/3 straight, 1/3 bi, 1/3 gay and truthfully most of us have so many body confidence issues that we never approach people anyway

Also, the kind of people that are horrified about trans people dating women are the last people we’d want to date. Obviously. Usually when we’re on tinder we just get inappropriate questions about our genitals, and asked if we’re okay sleeping with their boyfriends too

If you want to support trans people right now, you can show solidarity with the community by attending one of the Transgender Day of Remembrance vigils in your city on Nov 20th, where we commemorate those of us who have lost our lives in the last year

You can also donate to places that aid us and advocate for us, such as Action for Trans Health, Mermaids, Stonewall, ACLU, or individual Gofundmes, a lot of us have them because so many of our needs aren’t funded, and many of us end up homeless and jobless

Anyway, if you want to support our trans palaeo niche here are a few follows for you: @Laelaps @janussif @CrocBlob @Corvinaesaur, and for some less niche trans follows @KatyMontgomerie @kat_blaque @transscribe @lux_banana @MagsVisaggs (and too many more to mention)