Unmooring Gender: Shifting Medical Conceptualizations of Gender

• In Event: 2157 - LGBTQ Health and Medical Issues

Abstract

In this paper, I examine shifts in medical etiologies of gender identity, focusing on the role of medical authorities in defining gender. Drawing from a qualitative analysis of an original, archival dataset, I examine the ways in which medical conceptualizations of transness have shifted over time More specifically, I closely read and code every mention of the term “transgender” and the more dated terms “transsexual” and “transvestite” in four top medical journals published in the United States. Reading references to these terms in top medical journal articles illuminates the ways in which they are understood in medical parlance and how conversations about transgender patients contribute to the medical and social construction of gender. Based on my analysis of medical journal articles, I argue that: (1) There has been a shift in the locus of gender from external genitalia an early socialization to the brain (self-conception), (2) The shift results in an unmooring of gender from sex and a medical institutionalization of Butler’s formulation of the relationship between sex and gender (sex was really gender all along); (3) The gendering of facial features and external genitalia paves the way for the marketization of racialized gender essentialism: feminine and masculine features become incorporated in a fee-for-service model. In the quest for being socially affirmed and recognized as one’s gender, such a transformation has crucial, life-changing and life-saving possibilities for people whose bodies do not align with their sexes. The shift also empowers medical providers and insurers to define idealized femininity and masculinity and limit access to such services through widely varying insurance coverage. Drawing from both medical and gender studies, this paper offers insights for medical sociologists interested in the medicalization and biomedicalization of society as well as gender and sexuality scholars interested in the complex relationship between gender, sex, and the body.

Author

• Tara Marie Gonsalves, University of California, Berkeley