Dying to be (A)Gendered: An Exploratory Content Analysis of Trans/Nonbinary People’s Experiences with Eating Disorders

Abstract

Recent studies have found trans individuals to experience high rates of eating disorders. Prior studies have mixed findings of eating disorder rates of trans/nonbinary people with eating disorders. Recent and prior studies, though, have primarily originated within Public Health and Psychology, with little to no research examining trans/nonbinary people's experiences with eating disorders in the field of Sociology. As such, we analyzed 16 blogs and vlogs (video blogs) of trans/nonbinary people speaking and/or writing about the onset of their eating disorders, reasons for development of eating disorders, and experiences in accessing treatment. Content analysis of these blogs and vlogs serve as an exploratory analysis to provide suggestions for future research, including: institutional cisnormativity in eating disorder treatment, the use of eating disorders as a way of coping with the anxieties of doing gender in a binary society, and the relations of body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria.Eating disorders are "a constellation of social, economic, and psychological factors" of individuals who do "not feel entitled to exist" (Bordo 2003:47). This constellation of factors produces individuals who internalize a societal "tyranny of slenderness" to its extreme and individuals who internalize the cultural dictation to indulge and then repent for (or purge) that indulgence (Bordo 2003). This constellation of factors differs according to individuals' differential access to resources and varying, intersecting vulnerabilities. For trans people, one such factor may include how bodies are gatekept in the process of seeking gender affirmation surgery. For example, in preparing for gender confirmation surgery, the webpage of Dr. Marci Bowers (2017), a renowned gender confirmation surgeon in the United States, tells potential patients that they must weigh less than 210 pounds "unless height/weight proportional." In a recent interview (Rodriguez 2017), Pilipinx, trans activist and artist Kay Ulanday Barrett highlighted that his "general practitioner initially refused to clear him for top surgery. . .because of his BMI." Cissexism, or the cultural and systemic ideology that denies, denigrates, and pathologizes individuals whose genders do not align with their sex assigned at birth, alienates individuals from their bodies and erects barriers to accessing resources, such as eating disorder treatment. While the fields of Public Health and Psychology are increasingly analyzing

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Men in online eating disorder recovery spaces: Gendered barriers, content moderation, and narrative experimentation

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