The Effects of Medicalizing Gender: How Western Transmedicalist Rhetoric Contributes to the Oppression of Transgender People and Other Minority Groups
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Date
2022-04
Authors
Norfleet, Lee
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This paper delves into the wide array of effects that attempting to explain the existence of transgender people through a Western, medical lens has on the community as a whole. Transmedicalism, as this view on trans people is most commonly known by, is deeply intertwined with colonization, racism and classism, and therefore perpetuates the White supremacist ideals held up by these societal concepts. It opens the door for pseudoscientific misinterpretations of trans identities, while closing the door to important medical interventions for transgender people of color and other disparaged trans people who would benefit greatly from them. Under the surface, the medicalization of gender that transmedicalism hinges itself upon works to divide the transgender community in an attempt to weed out those who do not conform neatly to society’s expectations of gender.