Both, and: Transmedicalism and resistance in non-binary narratives of gender-affirming care

Abstract

While gender dysphoria is a real and acute distress for many transgender people, it is not universal, and it is experienced and oriented to in a myriad of ways. However, its status as a prerequisite for gender-affirming care can lead trans people to feel compelled to amplify its salience in their pursuits for medical support. Through a critical discourse analysis of non-binary healthcare narratives, I trace the relationship between linguistic practices in these care interactions and the gender and sexual logics of the transmedicalist model of transgender care. With a focus on excerpts that center on individuals’ descriptions of dysphoria in the consultation room, I contend that these experiences are not straightforward accounts of assimilation to transmedicalist expectations. Rather, when read from a trans linguistic perspective, these strategies are examples of non-binary patients enacting their own interventions on a process over which (it may seem) they have minimal control and present a critical thirding (Tuck 2009) of a dichotomous view of either transnormativity or resistance.