Correcting myths underlying anti-trans legislation: Qualitative meta-analysis on transgender identity development

Transgender people have been under increasing legislative attack and scrutiny, particularly since 2020. This article presents a qualitative meta-analysis that examined the functions and meanings of gender within transgender identity development. Using a critical-constructivist grounded theory qualitative meta-analytic approach, we reviewed 27 qualitative studies (including 426 total participants) based in the United States to understand how trans participants’ identities developed. There was great diversity in participant sexual orientations and gender identities. Findings indicated that trans identities supported participants in claiming their internal sense of gender, which allowed them to overcome their internalized transphobia and surrender to their deep need to explore their authentic experiences of gender and to identify its discordance with cisheteronormative genders. These findings indicated that transgender identities and communities have functioned in a manner that is sharply different from that which is represented in the rhetoric that underpins anti-transgender legislation. The qualitative meta-analytic results provided a set of evidence-based corrections to counter contemporary myths that frame transgender identity development as characterized by manipulation and pathology. By replacing these myths with descriptions of gender tied to self-agency, selfexpression, and self-celebration, our findings can be used in advocacy by policymakers, activists, researchers, and counseling psychologists working with trans populations and combatting anti-trans legislation.