Trans Body Research Articles

"I'm not getting paid to give you a TED talk on how my trans body works". Experiences of hysterectomy gender affirming surgery: A qualitative study.

To explore the experiences of care surrounding hysterectomy as part of gender affirming surgery. An in-depth reflexive thematic analysis from accounts by 10 out of 12 people was undertaken. Experiences were then mapped to the surgery journey as a template for developing system responsiveness. No one person's experience of the procedure was affirmed across the entire surgery journey. Transgender health literacy was central to inclusive practice as it mediated bodily autonomy being upheld. The physical care environment influenced the experience, for example, the waiting room was marginalizing (intimidating), with a gendered clinic name and toilets. Some participants took a female support person/partner so that "people looking would assume that I was there supporting her, not the other way around." Communication misalignments were evident around information provided/understood about fertility and ovarian preservation. Participants were also placed in the position of both receiving care and providing education: "I also shouldn't have to be going in there for treatment, and then being expected to educate the medical professional that's meant to be helping me… I'm not getting paid to give you a TED talk on how my trans body works." The experiences mapped across the surgery journey highlighted multiple levels of service provision development needed to foster inclusive practice, for example, from workforce education to healthcare policy. Healthcare for transgender people can be unsafe and inequitable. Increasing transgender health responsiveness across the surgery journey will facilitate better alignments in communication and uphold bodily autonomy, leading to safer and inclusive practice.

(De)Constructing the Vulva: Locating the Labia in Trans "Vaginoplasty"

Abstract: The surgical construction of a vulva in transgender 'vaginoplasty' offers a unique opportunity to deconstruct the sociocultural standing of the vulva at large. Social apprehension of the vulva is broadly 'dis-eased,' in Christine Labuski's terms: profoundly and bioculturally disparaged. Synecdochically erased, and with its function effaced against the reproductive, heterosexed vagina, the vulva is situated at the paradoxical intersection of excess and lack, simultaneously invisibilised and threateningly, shamefully visible. This disparagement bears professional ramifications: medical science reflects the sociocultural context in which it is produced and (re)produces precisely this culture. Through trans 'vaginoplasty,' the trans body is surgically inscribed with this dis-eased vulvar script, manifesting as social text upon which the vulva may be read. Systematic reviews of surgical literature, analysed here with respect to the clitoris and labia minora as structures central for female sexual pleasure, reveal how surgeons (re)produce the fictitious dichotomy between vulvar appearance and vaginal function and (re)erase non-heteronormative sexuality. The trans vulva thus illustrates the sociocultural position of the vulva, literally constructed in this image: linguistically invisibilised, it is the heterosexed vagina which takes precedent, at cost of vulvar cosmesis, and in disavowal of vulvar function, the vulva relegated to an academic, surgical and otherwise afterthought.

Reflecting on Celeste: Abstracting Trans Representation

Transgender representation is a complex subject and what constitutes “good” and “bad” representations has been scrutinized by trans, feminist and queer scholars, as well as fans of visual culture. A significant case study in trans representation and interpretation is the platformer Celeste (2018). The game's passionate and active fandom began to speculate about the potential trans narratives present in the game, including whether the main character, Madeline, was a trans woman. In 2020, game director Maddy Thorson confirmed that Madeline was trans. While many fans celebrated this retroactive identification, the value of Celeste as a trans artwork lies beyond Madeline's trans body. This article argues that, while representation matters, abstract or conceptual trans representation is an important tool that avoids conditional and limited trans representations that rely on a specific type of body. Abstraction centres experience, allowing for more creative, playful and intersectional ways of art becoming trans.

Desire for Trans Ancestors

In this article, the relationship between the affective histories of queer and trans activism and the reading and writing of contemporary fictional trans literature is explored. The focus lies on the analysis of Jordy Rosenberg’s (2018) Confessions of the Fox, which allows for an investigation into how trans histories can be written and read. The article emphasizes the intricate interplay between literature and history, specifically examining the tensions and pleasures that arise from balancing authenticity and fictionality. Additionally, the role of literature as a medium for expressing emotions and inspiring activism is considered. Confessions of the Fox tells the story of a fictional transmasculine literary scholar who discovers a mysterious manuscript that reveals the trans identity of 18th century London’s infamous thief and jailbreaker Jack Sheppard. The narrative of Confessions of the Fox establishes an analogy between human bodies and written texts, specifically referring to the trans body. In this article, I argue that the narrative itself approaches the body and the manuscript through the affect of desire. Drawing on the concept of textual desire, as found in Roland Barthes' (1975) The Pleasure of the Text and in the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1985), the article analyzes the relationship between text and readership to trace pleasurable and ethical encounters with otherness. Overall, the article puts forward the idea to consider reading practices as a tool through which we can investigate the significance and ramifications of queer and trans histories and activism. Keywords: trans literature, historiographic metafiction, Confessions of theFox, textual desire, queer reading, trans reading, authenticity, trans literacy

Unlocked doors: the trans glitch in Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy

Abstract This article explores the glitch as a trans mechanic of speculation in Kitty Horrorshow’s (2016) video game Anatomy. Through the glitch, Anatomy rewrites the “walking simulator” in favor of a non-linear form of movement that relies on gaps and breaks in the structure of the game. Drawing on scholarship in trans studies including Eva Hayward’s work on the scar as a site of trans possibility and Lucas Crawford’s examination of the relationship between architecture and trans subjectivity, I read Anatomy as one ludic form of trans worldmaking which unsettles the relationship between the trans body and the space of the house, and the relationship between the player and the act of play, invoking a trans ethos of indeterminacy that rejects coherent narratives of progression and legibility in favor of the refusal and possibility of the glitch.

The Impossible Trans Body: Non/Images of Gender in Regimes of Whiteness

The Impossible Trans Body: Non/Images of Gender in Regimes of Whiteness

Melancholy, respectability, and credibility in Sean Baker’s Tangerine

ABSTRACT A complex cinematic history of trans characters precedes contemporary representations of trans people — one of normalizing trans identity through class, gender, and race. In the context of contemporary American cinema, Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015) demonstrates alternative strategies for representing trans characters and marks a turning point in trans cinema. Tangerine presents a grittier version of transgender experience than was seen in mainstream trans films released during the mid-2010s. The film challenges victimization narratives and the pathologization of the trans body, appealing directly to trans audiences. Moreover, the film’s trans-affirmative casting advocates trans agency, while its depictions of state and individual violence systematically critique conventional trans tropes in earlier trans films. However, the film’s paratexts re-affirm some of the industrial patterns that continue to marginalise trans industry workers. Prominent reviews and interviews with the cast and crew spotlight the redirection of this trans film’s cultural and financial capital away from trans workers and toward industry elites. Ultimately, Tangerine signals a complex turning point in trans media, whereby media industries increasingly value trans performers and consultants for their capacity to legitimize trans media, but trans industry workers continue to remain vulnerable within these industries’ complex power dynamics.

PLAN B, a Gathering of Strangers (or) This Is Not Working by Goldendean

PLAN B, a Gathering of Strangers (or) This Is Not Working by Goldendean

Sartorial Objects, Transgender Bodies and Destabilized Meaning: A Study of Kaushik Ganguly’s Nagarkirtan

Kaushik Ganguly’s 2017 film Nagarkirtan narrates the story of Puti, a transgender belonging to a hijra group in Kolkata, who desires for a gender reconfirmation surgery. Puti’s sartorial choices help her construct or emulate the appearance of a body she longs for but cannot avail due to her poor financial condition. On one hand, her sartorial choices help her to express her felt gender; on the other hand, it betrays her by either limiting her identity or giving out misinformation about the body that lies beneath. The paper uses Butler’s idea of impermanence of meaning behind signs and Halberstam’s idea of ‘trans’ being a destabilizing element of societal norms to present a qualitative analysis of the trans protagonist’s social performances through sartorial preferences as depicted in Nagarkirtan. Since the film under discussion shows its transgender protagonist at various stages of life, the paper also discusses her clothing choices throughout the years to explore the complex relationship among the clothes, the trans body and societal expectations. Spectrum, Volume 16, June 2021: 195-206

Trans migrations: Seeking refuge in “safe haven” Toronto

Trans and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people who make refugee claims in Canada negotiate a complex nexus of identity, belonging, and citizenship. Drawing on insights from TGNC refugees, immigration lawyers, and frontline workers, in this paper we examine the ways the state controls the trans body through the refugee claims process and in the process of integration into life in Canada, while also highlighting trans refugee methods of survival and resistance. What emerges is an understanding of the ways that refugees navigate the tension between gender, sexuality, and homecoming as both intimately felt and geopolitically managed. We convey TGNC refugee narratives to demonstrate how they both confirm and expand upon the existing literature on Canadian LGBTQ+ refugees. TGNC refugees' experiences at the Immigration and Refugee Board confirm insights from existing LGBTQ+ refugee studies. However, TGNC refugees' day‐to‐day lives differ significantly from LGB refugee lives as recounted in the literature. In TGNC refugees' attempts to access gender‐affirming documentation, healthcare, housing, and income, they confront distinct systems of transgender exceptionalism, border imperialism, and racial and heteropatriarchal capitalism that limit their access to basic necessities and impact how they build home both conceptually and materially.

Stay Mad: A Love Letter to QTBIPOC Psychiatric Survivors

Stay Mad: A Love Letter to QTBIPOC Psychiatric Survivors

Brown Trans Figuration: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies

Brown Trans Figuration: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Chicanx/Latinx Studies

Reconfiguring cinema: Linn da Quebrada and the queer creative act in Tranny Fag

Thinking of a queer cinema means reflecting on how film, using its aesthetic-narrative strategies, can contribute to the antinormativity, disruption and destabilization of rigid standards of gender and sexuality. Based on the notion that a series of contemporary movies fulfils this goal by focusing on a queer creative act, this article intends to identify this act in Brazilian contemporary cinema, specifically in the aesthetic-political-corporal performance of the singer and multi-artist Linn da Quebrada in the documentary Tranny Fag (Claudia Priscilla and Kiko Goifman 2018). Combining an exercise of film analysis with the methodology proposed by the Filmmakers’ Theory, the investigation aims to examine how the gesture of self-fabulation performed by Linn in the movie – in her speeches, her body and, especially, in the gaze she directs at the camera – in/subverts not only the historical subject–object relationship in documentary production, but also the very tradition of objectification of the trans and black bodies by cinema. Through her words and her performance, she creates a co-authorship dialogue with the filmmaking duo, which establishes the trans body, as well as the inner-city neighbourhoods historically marginalized by audio-visual production, as subjects of the narrative. As a result, the movie walks away from the outdated notion of documentary as a genre in which reality simply happens and is captured by the genius gaze of the director, underlining the mise en scène and the filmmaking aspects inherent to the film – and how Linn is an integral part of their creation.

Ecological Aesthetics of Intimate Otherness in Swedish Trans Cinema

This article is an exploration of trans and non-binary representation in independent Swedish film productions. Two award-winning films, Pojktanten (She Male Snails, 2012) and Nånting måste gå sönder (Something Must Break, 2014), created by director Ester Martin Bergsmark (in collaboration with author Eli Levén), will be in focus and discussed through their ecological aesthetics that build on what I call intimate otherness. The two films represent not only a significant debut moment for Swedish trans cinema, but also offer a radical engagement with nature and the unnatural. While Bergsmark’s films incite a vivid aestheticisation of environmental pollution, ranging from items of garbage in the forest to untidyrooms, unwashed clothes, and dirty bathing water, the films’ ecological aesthetics, as I argue, imagine an enchanted space in which the trans body emerges as livable. Historically reduced to an “unnatural” and “contaminated” embodiment, trans bodies in the films form an intimate otherness with non-human objects and landscapes at the urban peripheries, at the margins of normativity and productivity. The films’ ecological aesthetics shift gender non-conformity from “unnatural” into a possibility. These aesthetics, I suggest, unfold into a gender-dissident´ landscape of rebellious and poetic, intimate otherness.

Vivências de pessoas transgêneras no atendimento à saúde: metassíntese qualitativa

Objetivou-se conhecer as vivências das pessoas transgêneras no atendimento à saúde. Trata-se de uma revisão sistemática seguida de uma metassíntese qualitativa. Buscou-se entre maio e junho de 2019, nas bases de dados Pubmed, LILACS e SciELO. Utilizou-se os seguintes descritores e Mesh Terms em português e inglês: Pessoa Transgênero; Transexual; Transexualismo; Acesso à Saúde; Atenção à Saúde; Experiências de vida; Eventos de Mudança de Vida., e suas respectivas variações em inglês. Incluiu-se seis artigos científicos em português, inglês ou espanhol; publicados entre 2009 a 2018, para a metassíntese qualitativa. Evidenciou-se a atenção à saúde da pessoa trans e o corpo/ psiquismo da pessoa trans. Identificou-se que há a falta de serviços de saúde de referência, um alto tempo de espera para iniciar a hormonioterapia e/ou a cirurgia de redesignação sexual e a procura de outros países para agilizar os processos de modificação corporal. Quanto aos profissionais de saúde verificou-se dificuldade no manejo do adolescente trans, preconceito e empatia, desrespeito ao nome social e, patologização da transgeneridade. Em relação aos aspectos psicossociais, evidenciou-se a saúde psíquica e o isolamento/ manutenção da condição em segredo por medo de discriminação. Sugere-se investimento na formação dos profissionais de saúde no atendimento às transespecificidades.

‘I do not want to pass’: embodiment, metaphor, and world-making in Patrick Staff’s Weed Killer

Medicalized and often surveilled shifts of the cancerous and/or trans body intersect in generative ways: metaphorical and material, symbolic and systemic. This piece discusses Patrick Staff’s (2017) video Weed Killer through an analysis of its source text, Catherine Lord’s essay ‘The Summer of Her Baldness’ (2003) along with prior queer and feminist explorations of cancer, disease, and pain, to build a transfeminist analysis of how the experience of cancer treatment reveals the constructedness of femininity as well as the ablism underlying binary gender systems. Staff’s work creates alignments and ruptures between sets of a potentially intersecting politics, which bear the weight of naturalized gender, pharmacological mediation, ‘passing’, and debility.

Bodies, violence, silencing: The transgenderity discourse

By reflecting upon the discourse production conditions, the imagination of/on trans individuals and the temporal landmark of the 2018 elections in Brazil, I aim to analyze the relationship between silencing and resistance of/to the trans body in the virtual space. To this end, I selected two pieces of news posted on digital media, one about the play O Evangelho Segundo Jesus, Rainha do Céu[free translation: The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven], which was interdicted in the Winter Festival of Garanhuns, State of Pernambuco, and the other about a ‘travesti’ murder in Sao Paulo. I analyzed these pieces to understand the dispute of meanings involving the trans corporeality based on the theoretical framework provided by the Materialist Discourse Analysis. Complementarily, I analyzed the comments on the news, as this is a space where the individuals, under the illusion that everything can be said, produce discourses in tune with the trans cause or hate discourses that delegitimize, make silent and displace meanings about such bodies.

Um corpo autêntico

A partir de uma cena prototípica (LAGAZZI, 2015) do monólogo de Agrado, em Tudo sobre minha mãe, do diretor Pedro Almodóvar, de 1999, objetivamos refletir sobre corpo, transexualidade e resistência em torno dos enunciados da personagem almodovariana que, organizando-se em torno do significante “autêntica”, dizem respeito ao corpo trans. Neste trabalho, embasados pela Análise do Discurso materialista, entendemos o corpo como um lugar de observação do sujeito, objeto de investigação e categoria teórica (LEANDRO-FERREIRA, 2015), atravessado de linguagem. Nas análises compreendemos como tais corpos podem estilhaçar o rito de interpelação ideológica do gênero, fissurando a malha social, desestabilizando evidências.

Exploring health and social care professionals' initial perceptions of caring for trans patients.

To investigate the initial perceptions that health and social care professionals have when caring for trans patients. This was a qualitative study that involved semi-structured interviews with five participants in one geographical area as a snapshot study. The research transcripts were analysed, and themes were identified and examined. The main themes identified from the interviews with participants were: discrimination; lack of understanding of the trans body and gender identity; confusion around terminology; cultural perceptions and attitudes towards trans people; professionalism; the need for trans awareness training; and social recognition for trans staff members. The findings of this study suggest there is a need to develop trans awareness training for staff working in areas of practice that are likely to provide care for trans people, such as acute care, emergency departments and mental health services. This could improve health outcomes for trans people and increase the likelihood of them accessing health and social care services in the future.

The body politic: The changing face of psychotherapy and transgender

To support gender diversity in clinical practice, psychotherapists need to provide culturally competent, developmentally appropriate and trans-affirmative care with trans and gender nonconforming people. This article explores the trans body, the trans identity, and the issues that arise in psychotherapy. It examines psychological wellbeing within the trans population and offers a rationale for body psychotherapy approaches to these issues, before exploring the politicisation of the trans body in our culture and the ethical issues that surround trans youth. The increased political focus on the topic has bought about legislation affecting trans rights. Psychotherapists need to be at the forefront of engagement with these changes and their implications for this population. To achieve this, this paper concludes that therapists today must build political and personal self-awareness, taking care to examine their biases and avoid perpetuating unethical, harmful or limited perceptions of gender in the psychotherapy encounter.