What is it about?

Many believe that the creative arts are a "safe space" for people in the LGBTQ+ community, but are the arts really that safe? We interviewed a handful of transgender music, theater, and art majors about their feelings and experiences in their college creative arts programs. We found that the arts do provide creative exploration and freedom of expression that can help with feelings of safety, but transgender college students also still experience big problems with gender-related bias and discrimination during their studies in the creative arts.

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Why is it important?

College leaders, faculty, and staff must understand the needs of their increasing transgender student population to make sure that this group of students is physically and emotionally safe and able to graduate successfully. We provide recommendations that colleges can adopt to help their transgender students succeed in the creative arts, including 1) inclusive and justice-oriented curriculum, 2) classroom and performance strategies that include, rather than ostracize, transgender students, and 3) greater awareness of resources that can support transgender students' physical needs.

Perspectives

I was inspired to conduct this research because I personally experienced gender discrimination as an undergraduate music major. In reading existing studies, I found that there is a lot of research documenting gender discrimination towards ciswomen musicians like me, but very few studies that explored gender discrimination towards transgender musicians. It is my hope that this article can inspire some positive changes to make the creative arts more inclusive and supportive for my transgender loved ones and the transgender artists still to come.

Paige Zalman
Carnegie Mellon University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The “traditional queer safe space” or “kinda, not really?”: Experiences of transgender, nonbinary, and androgynous college students in the creative arts., Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, October 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/dhe0000533.
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