Long Reads

The Next Civil-Rights Movement

Will America accept transgender people?

The 700,000 or so transgender people in the United States are, Eliza Gray writes in The New Republic, “some of the least protected, most persecuted people in the United States.” One transgender person is murdered each month; more than one-third have attempted suicide; more than one-quarter say they’ve lost a job due to discrimination. Gray tracks the story of one particular transgender woman, Caroline Temmermand. In 2009, at the age of 55, she came out as transgender and soon thereafter began telling her family and children. Last spring, she organized a vigil for Chrissy Lee Polis, the transgender woman whose attack was caught on video camera after she attempted to use a woman’s bathroom in a McDonald’s. “Transgender people clearly need more protection from our laws and society,” Gray writes. “But they can’t win these victories on their own.”