New study says 3 in 5 Australians will purposely misgender trans people

A new study of several English-speaking countries shows that Australia is the second-most likely to misgender trans people as a purposeful act of disrespect.

A new Ipsos study says only 2 in 5 Australians willing use the correct pronouns for transgender people. Source: Getty Images / llewellyn_chin

A new survey, titled 'Global Attitudes towards Transgender People', has been released, and shows that Australia comes close to topping the list of countries most likely to misgender transgender people as an act of disrespect.

The data for the Ipsos survey was collected between October 24 and November 7 last year, and surveyed participants from 27 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States of America.

It found that people from the United States were most likely to purposely misgender a transgender person, with Australia coming a close second.

According to the survey results, only two in every five people from the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom were willing to refer to a transgender man with the pronouns 'he/him', and a transgender woman as 'she/her'.

Only one in every five people from these countries said they would use the gender-neutral pronoun 'they', to refer to a non-binary or gender non-conforming person. 

71 per cent of Australian respondents, however, said that they believed their country was becoming more accepting of transgender people. Comparatively, the average from the countries surveyed on this was 59 per cent.

You can read more details of the study here.