"Transgender Questions, Transgender Answers": Comparing In-Community Knowledges By/For Transgender People with Institutional Research About Transgender People

• In Event: Monsters, Cyborgs, Humans: Trans STS and the Reassembly of Science and Technology I

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence of healthcare environments’ hostilities toward transgender people has been passed among transgender communities for decades, and our firsthand knowledges of these institutional failures to provide care are increasingly being affirmed through research focused on the existing barriers preventing transgender people from equitable access to healthcare. While this benefits us in that more medical providers are aware of transgender people’s generally-substandard experiences in healthcare settings, this body of literature does not necessarily address our immediate health and medical information needs. In response to these information voids, we often rely upon in-community care networks to alleviate our information needs around health and medicine; increased access to digital networked communication technologies supports and facilitates the development and maintenance of these care networks. I intend to compare contemporary health and medical research about transgender people to the self-described health needs of transgender people. I will begin with a discourse analysis of questions about health and/or medicine posted to r/asktransgender; this subreddit is one of many digital spaces in which transgender people actively seek and offer knowledge and resources amongst ourselves. I will then compare my findings to contemporary health and medical research publications positioned as "for" or about transgender people, with attention given to these publications' relevance to the information needs expressed on r/asktransgender. This historically-excluded community has collectively produced our own knowledges in response to epistemic injustices perpetuated against us by historically-dominant institutions; bringing attention to these in-community practices can expand our understanding of health/medical knowledge production practices more broadly.

Author

• Claire McDonald, The Information School, University of Washington