Abstract:This article uses ethnographic methods to explore how transgender people engage the medicalisation of transgender experience in a U.S. context under the purview of the American Psychiatric Association. Building on sociological literature related to medicalisation, this paper argues that the lived experience of medicalisation is a non‐linear, complex process whereby individual engagement with medical authority is both empowering and constraining in the lives of trans people. Inductive qualitative analysis of 15… Show more
“…I was treated as a dependent who needed parents' permission even though children are able to access transition services without parents' permission here because it's a private matter. I could not even start on a low dose because I wasn't planning to change my legal gender, though I had transitioned socially.In each of these examples, we see the same patterns of cisnormativity noted by transmen and transwomen in prior literature (for reviews, see Johnson , ) also finds voice as a foreclosure of fluid possibilities in the lives of fluid people.…”
Section: Foreclosing Fluiditysupporting
confidence: 72%
“…My father rejected me, and I saw my mother's hideously twisted face when I was just fourteen cautiously broaching the topics. This is every day for me.A gender fluid queer wrote about this topic echoing many other respondents and work by Johnson () on the medical experiences of transgender people: They accuse non‐binary of being special snowflakes, say we're confusing gender and personality, tell us femme is a lesbian only term, but at least they haven't murdered me yet.Considering the violence enacted upon transgender populations (Stryker ), fluid people, like transgender women and men, confront this possibility (many mentioned it in responses) as a way of dealing with less extreme forms of everyday cisnormativity (see also Schilt and Westbrook for similar). Such efforts both reinforce cisgender norms and foreclose fluid possibility.…”
Section: Foreclosing Fluiditymentioning
confidence: 96%
“…I think its part of the socialization—something young transmen go through, just like teenage boys do. It's in the media and resources transmen consume, their role models encourage masculinity.In such cases, our respondents note behavior patterns that have been termed transnormative in studies focused on, for example, interactions within and between transgender communities (shuster 2017), interactions in public as openly transgender people (Garrison 2018), interactions transgender people have in order to navigate medical structures (Johnson ), and connections between transgender manhood and masculine norms (Abelson ). However, each of these examples of transnormativity also reveals how such patterns foreclose the possibility of fluidity.…”
Binary gender and sexuality are socially constructed, but they structure thought at such a deep level that even those critical of sexism and homophobia can unwittingly reproduce them, with consequences felt most profoundly by those whose gender/sexual identity defy binary logic. This article outlines a generic pattern in the reproduction of inequality we call foreclosing fluidity, the symbolic or material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization. Based on 115 responses from people who are both sexually and gender fluid and a reading of existing sociologies of gender and sexualities from a fluid standpoint, we demonstrate how lesbian/gay/straight, cisgender, and transgender women and men—regardless of intentions—may foreclose fluidity by mobilizing cisnormative, transnormative, heteronormative, and/or homonormative beliefs and practices. Examining patterns of foreclosing fluidity may provide insight into (1) the further incorporation of fluid people and standpoints into symbolic interactionism, and (2) the reproduction and persistence of sexual and gender inequalities.
“…I was treated as a dependent who needed parents' permission even though children are able to access transition services without parents' permission here because it's a private matter. I could not even start on a low dose because I wasn't planning to change my legal gender, though I had transitioned socially.In each of these examples, we see the same patterns of cisnormativity noted by transmen and transwomen in prior literature (for reviews, see Johnson , ) also finds voice as a foreclosure of fluid possibilities in the lives of fluid people.…”
Section: Foreclosing Fluiditysupporting
confidence: 72%
“…My father rejected me, and I saw my mother's hideously twisted face when I was just fourteen cautiously broaching the topics. This is every day for me.A gender fluid queer wrote about this topic echoing many other respondents and work by Johnson () on the medical experiences of transgender people: They accuse non‐binary of being special snowflakes, say we're confusing gender and personality, tell us femme is a lesbian only term, but at least they haven't murdered me yet.Considering the violence enacted upon transgender populations (Stryker ), fluid people, like transgender women and men, confront this possibility (many mentioned it in responses) as a way of dealing with less extreme forms of everyday cisnormativity (see also Schilt and Westbrook for similar). Such efforts both reinforce cisgender norms and foreclose fluid possibility.…”
Section: Foreclosing Fluiditymentioning
confidence: 96%
“…I think its part of the socialization—something young transmen go through, just like teenage boys do. It's in the media and resources transmen consume, their role models encourage masculinity.In such cases, our respondents note behavior patterns that have been termed transnormative in studies focused on, for example, interactions within and between transgender communities (shuster 2017), interactions in public as openly transgender people (Garrison 2018), interactions transgender people have in order to navigate medical structures (Johnson ), and connections between transgender manhood and masculine norms (Abelson ). However, each of these examples of transnormativity also reveals how such patterns foreclose the possibility of fluidity.…”
Binary gender and sexuality are socially constructed, but they structure thought at such a deep level that even those critical of sexism and homophobia can unwittingly reproduce them, with consequences felt most profoundly by those whose gender/sexual identity defy binary logic. This article outlines a generic pattern in the reproduction of inequality we call foreclosing fluidity, the symbolic or material removal of fluid possibilities from sexual and gender experience and categorization. Based on 115 responses from people who are both sexually and gender fluid and a reading of existing sociologies of gender and sexualities from a fluid standpoint, we demonstrate how lesbian/gay/straight, cisgender, and transgender women and men—regardless of intentions—may foreclose fluidity by mobilizing cisnormative, transnormative, heteronormative, and/or homonormative beliefs and practices. Examining patterns of foreclosing fluidity may provide insight into (1) the further incorporation of fluid people and standpoints into symbolic interactionism, and (2) the reproduction and persistence of sexual and gender inequalities.
“…In a parallel, Serano (2007), a transwoman and biologist, provides a scathing critique of sociologists' emphasis on gender as socially constructed, when many transgender people experience gender as internal and intrinsic. In the same vein, a qualitative study found that transgender people appreciate medicalization, because it validates activism (being transgender is not a "choice") and facilitates gender-affirming medical services (Johnson, 2015(Johnson, , 2019). Yet transgender people also report discomfort at the pathologization of inclusion in the DSM, even with the update from "gender identity disorder" to "gender dysphoria" with the DSM-5 (Johnson, 2019).…”
Section: Pride Identity and Activismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the same vein, a qualitative study found that transgender people appreciate medicalization, because it validates activism (being transgender is not a "choice") and facilitates gender-affirming medical services (Johnson, 2015(Johnson, , 2019). Yet transgender people also report discomfort at the pathologization of inclusion in the DSM, even with the update from "gender identity disorder" to "gender dysphoria" with the DSM-5 (Johnson, 2019). Addressing tensions that apply to many DSM diagnoses (e.g., mental illness and learning disabilities), Johnson (2019, p. 529) concludes: "If medicine is to maintain its authority over human problems and its role in finding solutions for those problems, it must expand its models to account for the diverse and polymorphous components of health and wellness or risk promoting partial understandings that eclipse lived experience and prevent comprehensive healing.…”
Complete and accurate understandings of stratification depend on more regular consideration of disability. To build sociologists' recognition of disability as a socially constructed axis of stratification, we first demonstrate the construction of the disability category through classic legitimating processes: moral attributions, biological attributions, separation, and dichotomization. Expanding understandings of basic processes of stratification, we then document the centrality of disability in the social construction of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and age. Finally, we show various ways disability functions as an axis of stratification in intersection with other key axes of stratification.
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