Internalized Transphobia Test (TIS)
Bockting et al. 2020 · 26 items · how much social bias has settled inside?
For transgender people: how much have you internalized society's negative messages about being transgender? Four dimensions — pride in your identity, investment in passing, alienation from the transgender community, and shame. 26 items, about 5 minutes. A research scale, not a diagnostic tool.
How much of society's messaging about being transgender has become your own inner voice?
Internalized transphobia is discomfort with your transgender identity that comes from absorbing society's normative gender expectations. It is not a judgment you arrived at on your own — it is what happens when messages like "being transgender is wrong" or "you should pass as cisgender" get repeated often enough that they turn into self-evaluation.
Bockting and colleagues (2020) built the Transgender Identity Survey (TIS) at the University of Minnesota to measure this process. Starting from open-ended questionnaires with 12 transgender participants, expert review produced a 60-item pool, and factor analysis across two large samples (a community sample of 430 and an online sample of 903) reduced it to 26 items in four dimensions:
- Pride — positive feelings about your transgender identity; less pride means more internalized stigma
- Passing — how much being perceived as cisgender matters to you
- Alienation — psychological distance from the transgender community
- Shame — feeling defective, embarrassed, or wishing you were not transgender
Reading your results
- The four dimensions are related but independent — the profile tells you more than the total.
- The researchers caution that investment in passing may reflect internalized stigma or an autonomous choice about gender expression; nonbinary transgender people typically do not treat passing as a goal.
- Internalized stigma can be loosened: shame lightens when it is spoken in a safe relationship, and community support is one of the most effective buffers against stigma.
Result Interpretation
After completing the 26 questions, you'll receive an immediate, detailed report with:
- Your score — calculated automatically based on your responses
- Score interpretation — what your score means in practical terms
- Dimension breakdown — separate scores for each sub-scale
- Context — how your results compare to general population norms where available
All results are displayed on screen. No account or login needed.