Via Shutterstock.

Almost everyday Roxanne Jeri-Jackson experiences discrimination. Sometimes it’s as vicious and outright as a person screaming “faggot” to her on the street. Other times, it’s a more passive-aggressive form of discrimination, like at the group meeting she was at yesterday for a recovery program she’s in, when a man repeatedly referred to her as a “he.”

“I think he did it just to be deceitful and mean,” she says.

This discrimination is what Jeri-Jackson has had to put up with her entire life, and she’s tired of it. Yesterday afternoon, she visited the HIPS Drop-In Center—a local nonprofit that provides an array of support for people and communities impacted by sex work and drug use—to participate in the 2015 U.S. Trans Survey.

Building off the work established in the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey (which was developed and conducted by the National LGBTQ Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality from 2008-2009), the U.S. Trans Survey is the largest ever national survey to document the everyday lives of transgender people across the country.

It aims to highlight and quantify the experiences of trans people so that researchers, policymakers, and advocates can see how issues facing trans people are changing—and what improvements can be made to enrich their lives and end discrimination.

In the 2011 survey, more than 6,450 people participated with the goal of painting an objective portrait of the everyday injustices trans people face. “Transgender and gender non-conforming people face injustice at every turn: in childhood homes, in school systems that promise to shelter and educate, in harsh and exclusionary workplaces, at the grocery store, the hotel front desk, in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms, before judges and at the hands of landlords, police officers, health care workers and other service providers,” the survey found.

Via HIPS’ website.

At a very minimum, those who are participating in the survey just hope it can raise a little awareness about and spread respect to the transgender community.

“People aren’t educated about what being transgender means,” says Lauraca Potts, who also stopped by HIPS yesterday to take the survey. “All they know when they see us is ‘oh, there goes another faggot.'”

Potts hopes the survey will result in more widespread acceptance. Originally hailing from North Carolina, Potts admits that, while D.C. certainly isn’t perfect, it’s a much more accepting place for a transgender woman. “I came from Charlotte, and we don’t have anything for transgender support,” she says. “So I think it’s tremendous that [D.C.] has places like HIPS.”

But the trans community in D.C. still faces a lot of stigmatization—particular trans women who are sex workers.

Sasanka Jinadasa, HIPS’ Capacity Building and Community Resource Manager, says that she hopes this survey will help end a lot of the stigma that trans people face in their work—whether it’s sex work or elsewhere.

“We have a lot of trans folks involved in all different kinds of work,” she says. They’re interacting with the world through a lens most people don’t typically interact through. People are stigmatized to the point where they’re afraid to get help when they need it.”

She also hopes the survey will help highlight a lot of the structural discrimination the local trans community faces. “A lot of homeless shelters in D.C. don’t like or understand trans women,” she says.

Photo by Ted Eytan.

The cutoff date to take the survey is September 21st, and Jinadasa says HIPS is doing all they can to spread the word about it, mostly through word of mouth with their clients, as that’s the most effective method.

But getting clients to take the survey isn’t the most easy task. Although a lot of them know it’s important, it’s a long survey—it takes about an hour to complete. “We’ve been offering meals and stuff to help people get through it,” Jinadasa says. “We’ve probably gotten about a dozen or so people to take it.”

And those who have are grateful for its existence and optimistic about how it will help end discrimination.

“For me being transgender, kids [on the bus] will call me fag and whatnot, because of lack of knowledge,” says Diamond Colson, another survey participant.”When a person doesn’t accept me, it makes me feel like i’m not here. That I’m a ghost. That my body’s here, but no one notices me. I’m just a blank paper.”