Transnormativities

Abstract

This chapter is part of a wider conversation around the regulation of trans people’s lives – a discussion that is particularly pertinent to the healthcare sector. While our perspectives are largely informed by Aotearoa New Zealand and Pacific contexts, we situate them among global trends in gender healthcare, impressing the need to continue these critical conversations. We have divided our contributions into three sections. To begin with, we provide key examples of how we may understand gender dynamics and the formation of transnormativities (i.e., expectations around how trans people should exist), based on the concepts of majoritarianism and minoritarianism. We argue that transnormativities tend to function as a mechanism of control, limiting the degree to which trans and gender non-conforming people have agency over their lives, and typically define trans experiences relative to cisgender norms. In the second section, we concentrate on the ways that invisibility and hypervisibility are products of majoritarian categorization, which determine who gets recognized, given space, erased, ignored or a combination of these. We use examples of policy, practice, and standards of care to highlight how healthcare practices currently reify transnormativities. In response to this, we provide suggestions for ways that healthcare providers can collaborate with trans people to de- and re-territorialize these contexts to better serve the needs of trans people. In the third section, we emphasize the entangled nature of majoritarian categories – in particular, gender, sexuality, race, age, class, imperialism and (dis)ability – to encourage healthcare providers to embrace the inherent complexity of engaging with people, and to facilitate a better understanding of how healthcare providers can engage with trans people in practice.