“Trans Healthcare is Healthcare”: Gender Dysphoria and Biological Citizenship in a Shifting Biopolitical Landscape

• In Event: Sociology of LGBTQ+ Rights in Times of Crisis

Abstract

Trans identity has long been understood as a medicalized identity, as trans people themselves seeking gender-affirming healthcare like hormone replacement therapy and surgeries must engage with and submit to medical establishments to access this care. This medicalization is connected to state biopower, as many trans people must undergo medical treatment to be legally recognized as their desired gender and sex categories. As medicalization has become more ubiquitous, the state has moved to regulate transness in different ways, most importantly in ways which seek to eliminate transness from public life. Using interviews with trans people seeking gender-affirming care, as well as providers of that same care, I analyze how trans people and their providers make sense of gender dysphoria diagnoses and medicalization in light of a shifting biopolitics of the state. Preliminary findings indicate that both providers and recipients of care recognize that although gender dysphoria diagnoses and medicalization contribute to inequality, they also legitimize diagnoses due to increasing threats to transgender people and healthcare by the state. I connect these findings to theories of biopolitics, biopower, and biological citizenship to understand these tensions and contradictions in the administration of trans life in an increasingly hostile culture.

Author

• Emily Via, University of Illinois-Chicago