Transmedicalism

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Transmedicalism is the idea that being transgender is primarily a medical issue related to the incongruence between an individual's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity, characterized by gender dysphoria.[1][2][3] There are divides and debates within the transmedicalist community on the exact definition of who is or is not transgender.[4] Many transmedicalists believe individuals who identify as transgender without experiencing gender dysphoria or desiring to undergo a medical transition through methods such as hormone replacement therapy or sex reassignment surgery are not genuinely transgender.[5][2] They may also exclude those who identify themselves as non-binary from the trans label.[6]

Transmedicalists are sometimes referred to as transmeds[7] and truscum,[2][8] a term coined by a user on microblogging website Tumblr, meaning "true transsexual scum", which has since been reappropriated.[9][10] Those who believe that gender dysphoria is not required to be transgender are sometimes called tucute, meaning "too cute to be cisgender".[10] Transmedicalists sometimes refer to those who identify as transgender without medicalized criteria as transtrenders.[11]

Some critics view transmedicalism akin to the medical model of disability in that it medicalizes an attribute that contains both medical and social components.[12]

  1. ^ Vincent, Ben (2018). Transgender Health: A Practitioner's Guide to Binary and Non-Binary Trans Patient Care. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. pp. 126–127. ISBN 978-1785922015.
  2. ^ a b c Fontaine, Andie (August 2, 2019). "The New Frontier: Trans Rights In Iceland". The Reykjavík Grapevine. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
  3. ^ Zhang, Christopher M. (August 7, 2019). "Biopolitical and Necropolitical Constructions of the Incarcerated Trans Body". Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. 37 (2): 259. doi:10.7916/cjgl.v37i2.2787. Retrieved March 29, 2021.
  4. ^ Jacobsen, Kai; Devor, Aaron; Hodge, Edwin (August 16, 2021). "Who Counts as Trans? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Trans Tumblr Posts". Journal of Communication Inquiry. 46 (1): 60–81. doi:10.1177/01968599211040835. hdl:1828/14709.
  5. ^ Earl, Jessie (October 21, 2019). "What Does the ContraPoints Controversy Say About the Way We Criticize?". Pride.com. Retrieved January 7, 2020.
  6. ^ Ben, Vincent (July 2, 2020). Non-Binary Genders: Navigating Communities, Identities, and Healthcare. Policy Press. ISBN 978-1-4473-5194-8 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Chuanromanee, Tya; Metoyer, Ronald (May 6, 2021). Transgender People's Technology Needs to Support Health and Transition. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Yokohama, Japan: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–13. doi:10.1145/3411764.3445276. ISBN 978-1-4503-8096-6.
  8. ^ Williams, Rachel Anne (2019). Transgressive: A Trans Woman On Gender, Feminism, and Politics. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. p. 129. ISBN 978-1785926471. [...] trans medicalists themselves have self-consciously reappropriated the term 'truscum' to describe their position.
  9. ^ Wijnants, Alexander (Spring 2013). "Identity of Neurology Social Media and the Politicization versus Medicalization of Trans People" (PDF). Synaesthesia. Archived from the original (PDF) on Sep 10, 2015.
  10. ^ a b Ballard, Jason Robert (March 26, 2019). "Identifying as Truscum is a Disservice to Yourself". FTM Magazine. Archived from the original on August 11, 2020. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
  11. ^ Konnelly, Lex (June 4, 2021). "Both, and: Transmedicalism and resistance in non-binary narratives of gender-affirming care" (PDF). Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics. 43 (1). doi:10.33137/twpl.v43i1.35968. S2CID 237909648. Retrieved July 19, 2021. Often referred to in short, by themselves and others, as simply transmedicalists (and sometimes as truscum or transfundamentalists), those who subscribe to this view ratify medical authority in regulating transgender experience, insisting that deviating from the established medical model undermines public acceptance of trans communities and trivializes 'authentic' transexperiences. They criticize those deemed "transtrenders," individuals who 'inauthentically' claim to be transgender in the absence of medicalized criteria, particularly gender dysphoria.
  12. ^ Baril, Alexandre (November 2015). "Transness as Debility: Rethinking Intersections between Trans and Disabled Embodiments". Feminist Review. 111 (1): 59–74. doi:10.1057/fr.2015.21. ISSN 0141-7789. S2CID 146887003. Retrieved May 6, 2022.