Due, Clemence

Riggs, Damien Wayne

lambda nordica

Flinders Academic Commons

Mapping the Health Experiences  of Australians Who Were Female Assigned at Birth But Who  Now Identify with a Different Gender Identity

Riggs, D.

Due, C.

Adelaide Research &amp; Scholarship

Mapping the health experiences of Australians who were female assigned at birth but who now identify with a different gender identity

PREVIOUS RESEARCH CONCERNING the health care experiences of people who do not identify with the gender identity assigned to them at birth suggests that this population typically report low levels of satisfaction with the health care they receive, and frequently report experiences of discrimination and/or misunderstanding when accessing health services (see, e.g.  Before considering the previous research in this area in greater detail, it is important to address the issue of terminology. In this paper we utilise the language of &quot;people who were female assigned at birth (FAAB) and who now identify with a different gender identity&quot;. We acknowledge that this is lengthy, and we acknowledge that for some readers it may be a relatively new way of referring to this population of people. Our decision to utilise this term arose from extensive engagement with community members prior to the development of the research reported here. At first, the terms &quot;trans men&quot; and &quot;non-gender normative people&quot; were utilised to refer to the community of people we sought to engage with. Over time and through discussions with community members it became apparent that the first of these terms did not capture the full spectrum of experiences that fall within the category of people FAAB but who now identify with a different gender identity. 1 This was for a number of reasons. First, some people who were FAAB now identify simply as men. The term &quot;trans&quot; thus is not applicable to this population of people. Similarly, some people who were FAAB now identify with more flexible notions of gender, such as genderqueer, and thus the category &quot;trans&quot; does not adequately encompass the shifting nature of gender identities for some people FAAB. The term &quot;female assigned at birth&quot; was introduced to us by community members as a more encompassing way of referring to non-normative gender identities amongst those FAAB, and importantly, one that recognises the coercive function of gender assignation (i.e., to be &quot;assigned&quot; denotes that the categories under question are socially constructed, rather than automatically derived from any given body). We of course acknowledge that the term &quot;FAAB&quot; may still remain problematic for some people (primarily as it includes the word &quot;female&quot; in the description). As we hope will be apparent in this paper, however, we use the term to refer not to specific gender identities per se (for this we utilise the gender identities described by our participants), but to signal DAMIEN W. RIGGS &amp; CLEMENCE DUE the problems that arise from gender categories, and the ways in which this marginalises particular groups of people. For similar reasons we retain our use of the term &quot;non-gender normative&quot; to refer more generally to people who are, by the fact of identifying with a different gender identity to that assigned to them at birth, positioned outside of gender norms (which presume that a person&apos;s gender identity will coincide with the assignation of sex). Having noted our own decisions about terminology, we are of course respectful of the range of ways in which people who were FAAB describe their lives, and the ways in which those who engage in research with this population describe their participants. As such, in the literature review presented below we utilise the language of each of the studies we report. With these points about language in mind, we now move on to provide a review of the existing literature related to people who were FAAB in terms of their health care experiences (including both Australian and international research), before reporting findings from our own survey undertaken with a sample of Australian FAAB. Following Harcourt (2008), we believe that the survey reported here, whilst modest in size, is important for the map it provides of Australian people who were FAAB. Harcourt argues that research concerning the health care experiences and needs of trans communities is still in its infancy, with an ongoing need for small-scale studies that can help identify the needs of specific populations (given that broader generalizations are often problematic in light of the complexities relating to identification outlined above). As such, the study reported below makes an important contribution to mapping out something of the current situation for people FAAB in Australia in terms of health care experiences

Damien W Riggs

Clemence Due

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Mapping the Health Experiences of Australians Who Were Female Assigned at Birth But Who Now Identify with a Different Gender Identity

https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/89383/2/hdl_89383.pdf

Mapping the Health Experiences of Australians Who Were Female Assigned at Birth But Who Now Identify with a Different Gender Identity

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Flinders Academic Commons

Adelaide Research & Scholarship

CiteSeerX

Mapping the Health Experiences of Australians Who Were Female Assigned at Birth But Who Now Identify with a Different Gender Identity

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Flinders Academic Commons

Adelaide Research &amp; Scholarship

CiteSeerX

Adelaide Research & Scholarship