Queering Queer Health Care: an expansion of embodied subjectivities in gender-affirming medical care

By Alexandra (Sasha) Williams '22

Thesis Advisor: Professor Katrina Karkazis

Abstract: Drawing on feminist, queer, and anthropological theory and ethnographic experience, I critique contemporary standards of medical care for queer people seeking gender-affirming treatment. I explore how biomedical understandings of queerness limit providers' ability to care for queer patients, covering current efforts to include trans patients in biomedical research. Then, I move towards an ethnographic review of one Amherst College student's journey with HRT and elaborate on the embodied interaction between queer futures and hormone technologies. I expand on this by exploring the online communities providing collective knowledge of HRT and other gender-affirming procedures, evaluating both the necessity and potentiality of a DIY or "gender hacking" approach to transition. I conclude by tying this work with other movements towards environmental and disability justice, exploring the potential futures of open source queer medical procedures and knowledge as an alternative to the biomedicalization of queerness.