The Socialization and Medicalization of Gender: A Biocultural View

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Recommended: Critically discuss the notion that gender is a social construct

Gender is one of the most socially ingrained social constructs. The rigid enforcement of gender is harshly controlled by the medicalization and what I will refer to as the construction of the illness of gender transgression. I postulate that there are two forms of gender transgression: a general rejection of gender norms and a rejection of these boundaries in manners that do not fit into the dominant script of gender (i.e. deciding to transition). When someone “transgresses” the boundaries of gender in this latter way, I postulate, they are inculcated both by society and by the medical community to conform to a normative trajectory of transition. This relationship between a socially constructed identity to a molecularized body – a body reduced to (its) their “gendered” body parts – is only able to be comprehended through a medical lens.
In order to fully understand all that is going on in terms of gender and sex within the context of the biomedical and cultural spheres, we must first define the terms to which we are going to refer, so that we might start on some common ground. Gender, for the purposes of this paper, will be defined as a system and culture of meaning that is assigned to, associated with, and taught to people according to the interpretation of their bodies. Sex, then, will be defined as the chromosomes, hormones, and physical markers used to classify one’s body. Transgender will refer to both the umbrella term that encompasses any number of gender nonconforming identities and the gender identity of transgender itself that one might choose to self-identify with, which is a lack of identification with, or non-presentation as, the sex (and assumed gender) one was assigned at birth. The umbrella term of transgender i...

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... gender, so that the current state of trans health care might be ameliorated in some way. It is critical that trans people not be medicalized and seen as sick in some way, but rather that the mentality of Western society around gender be revolutionized.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits Of "Sex". New York: Routledge, 1993.

---. Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Thinking Gender. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Califia, Pat. Sex Changes : The Politics of Transgenderism. 1st ed. San Francisco, Calif.: Cleis Press, 1997.

Cromwell, Jason. Transmen and Ftms : Identities, Bodies, Genders, and Sexualities. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Foucault, Michel, and Colin Gordon. Power/Knowledge : Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, 1980.

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