“We’ve Been Here All Along:” The Collective Resilience of Transgender and Gender Diverse U.S. Service Members

Jacob R. Eleazer, Landon Marchant, Amber Kizewski, Georgina Gross, Allison Warren, Laurie McCubbin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people in the United States face high rates of minority stressors, such as social rejection, homelessness, discrimination, and identity-based violence (James et al., 2016). Transgender and gender diverse service members are also exposed to unique military-specific stressors such as discriminatory military policies, combat stress, and military sexual trauma (Tucker et al., 2019). However, little is known about TGD troops’ experiences of resilience when navigating stress and trauma exposure during their military service. A transaffirmative participatory research design and interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) analytic method were used to explore how troops made sense of their experiences of oppression and resilience. Researchers interviewed TGD service members (N = 40) about their gender identity and military service. Superordinate themes included: (a) understanding oppression; (b) survival strategies; (c) individual stress and resilience factors; and (d) collective resilience factors. Results suggest that both intrasubjective and intersubjective factors impacted how TGD troops made sense of their experiences of oppression and resilience.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)382-396
Number of pages15
JournalPsychological Services
Volume20
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 10 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association

Keywords

  • collective resilience
  • military
  • minority stress
  • oppression
  • transgender

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Clinical Psychology
  • Applied Psychology

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