I Could See Little Bits of How I Progressed

Coordinating Rhythms in a Midwest Gender-affirming Health Clinic

Bibliographic Data

ID2289053
AuthorsA‐m Racila (0000-0002-5751-5422, Department of Internal Medicine University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume35
Issue3
Pages402-417
Publication date2021-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12661
PMID34291507
OpenAlexW3183823559
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited44

This article examines how staff and patients worked to reconcile the rhythms of the body with those of gender-normative health care bureaucracy in a U.S. Midwest gender-affirming health clinic. Drawing from observations of clinical appointments and routine bureaucratic practice, as well as debriefing interviews with transgender and gender-expansive patients, this article applies Laura Bear's theory of "time-maps" and a new materialist approach to bodily agency that recognizes the variability of the body's responses to gender-affirming health care. This evidence demonstrates how health care staff and patients' labor practices structured patients' abilities to embody their plans for medical transition. Anticipating the varied trajectories bodies take during medical transition can interrupt the reproduction of harmful cultural assumptions about sex difference in U.S. health care bureaucracy

Rhythm · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Medicine · Psychology · Gerontology · Internal Medicine