methodology

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New book chapter: By Us and For Us: Bringing Ethics into Transgender Health Research

I’ve co-authored a short chapter for a new book that’s due out in February. The book, titled A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States: From Margins to Mainstream, traces the development of trans medicine across three centuries, with writing from more than 40 contributors.

The book is currently on offer from the publisher, SUNY Press. If you order by 6th December you can buy the book for 50% off with the code HOLIDAY24. That means the paperback edition will come to $22.47 for those in the USA, or £24.12 with postage for buyers in the UK.

I should clarify also that, as usual with academic books, I won’t personally be seeing a penny from its sale. So if you’d like to read this publication, please do get it at a bargain price if you can!

Book cover for A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States: From Margins to Mainstream, by Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dallas Denny, Jamison Green, and Kyan Lynch. The cover features an anatomical drawing of a heart in the trans flag colours of white, pink, and blue, against a white background.


Our chapter is titled “By Us and For Us: Bringing Ethics into Transgender Health Research“, and I wrote it collaboratively with Noah Adams, Jaimie Veale, Asa Radix, Amrita Sarkar, and Danielle Castro.

In this chapter we explore the context and subsequent impact of an earlier work, our co-authored journal article (with additional author Kai Cheng Thom) Guidance and Ethical Considerations for Undertaking Transgender Health Research and Institutional Review Boards Adjudicating this Research. That article is now one of the most highly-cited works I’ve contributed to. Since its publication in 2017, it’s been used to inform the design and implementation of hundreds of studies, becoming more influential than I ever could have imagined.

I’m really grateful especially to Noah Adams for leading on the process of both our 2017 article and new book chapter. I first met Noah, along with Jaimie and Asa , at the 2016 WPATH Symposium in Amsterdam, which saw the presentation of numerous extremely unethical studies on trans and intersex people. I learned a great deal very fast at that symposium, and through the subsequent writing process with Amrita, Danielle, and Kai.

Most importantly, I learned that it is possible to change research and practice for the better through interventions that centre community perspectives, mutual learning, and our collective responsibilities to one another. This is an important thing to bear in mind in our current age of disinformation and the abuse of scientific discourse: while abusive practices have a long history in trans medicine and medical research, another world is possible.

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Podcast: Reviewing the Cass Review

I am featured in the most recent episode of Red Medicine, a podcast about the politics of health, medicine, and the body.

The interview features a deep dive into the Cass Review, including the contexts of trans healthcare and the anti-trans moral panic, as well as the underlying assumptions and methodological shortcomings of Review’s final report on healthcare for trans and gender-questioning young people. We explore how the Review is constructed as credible in spite of its flaws, plus how and why that is dangerous both for young trans people and for good science.

You can listen to the report through the Simplecast link above, or alternatively through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

More information on the topic is available in my post What’s wrong with the Cass Review?

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A Methodology for the Marginalised

This is a deeply strange time to have a new peer-reviewed article out. I’ve been on strike for weeks, and otherwise on annual leave, planning a move south (for my new job) which may well be indefinitely postponed. It’s hard to comprehend the enormity of the COVID-19 crisis, nor the fact that the most helpful thing I can do right now is stay put.

The article was originally drafted in 2018, and based on experiences I had during fieldwork and while disseminating my research between 2013 and 2017. With the pandemic upon us, this previous decade feels like deep, distant history. Here in the UK, the true, awful toll of the illness is yet to become apparent; yet cities are beginning to turn silent as we self-isolate, political axioms are turned on their head, and all conversation turns eventually to the virus.

In this context, it’s easy to wonder if any of the work we did a month or more prior could possibly still be relevant. And yet.

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Cover image of the journal Sociology.My new piece is titled A Methodology for the Marginalised: Surviving Oppression and Traumatic Fieldwork in the Neoliberal Academy, and it is published in Sociology, the journal of the British Sociological Association. I use my experiences as a trans academic as a case study to talk about the huge inequalities endemic within universities, and how these disproportionately impact those who already experience forms of social marginalisation. My aim is not simply to chronicle the harms of marketisation, transphobia, sexism, and racism, but to also propose a way forward. We need to start thinking and acting more collectively; in addition to workplace organisation and union activity, this is relevant to how we design and implement our studies.

My proposed “methodology” involves bringing questions of solidarity and mutual support to the procedure of research design. Universities have long been bastions of privilege, with mechanisms of exclusion are unthinkingly built into every aspect of academic life. The only way we can possibly open up higher education is through creating systems of support which acknowledge and account for pre-existing inequalities, and these must be embedded within the process of knowledge creation itself.

My article uses the example of suicide within trans communities to illustrate this principle. Suicide ideation and suicide attempts are especially common among trans people. As such, it is highly likely that any given trans academic will either be suicidal, or will have friends who are. Consequently, if trans people are to stand a reasonable chance of surviving within the university, this is something that should be accounted for in research design and funding proposals as well as in wider institutional support structures.

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It’s impossible right now to know when and if the world will return to “normal”. I have seen some contend that this cannot be possible given the devastating number of predicted deaths, the shock to our economic and political systems. Others observe that the prevailing social order has survived before, and argue that any emergency measures to support workers who have lost their livelihood and/or increase police powers will inevitably be reversed in the long term.

However, what we do know is that universities have historically been remarkably resiliant – as have the inequalities in our society. Whatever happens next, we must continue to fight for a better world, and that includes within academia.

We can already see this beginning to play out in the UK as universities scramble to shift their activities online. Managers are relying on staff to carry on teaching, conducting research, and undertaking assessment and monitoring activities such as the REF. Meanwhile, most of us struggle to balance working from home with looking after partners, housemates, and/or families, wrestling with IT systems that have been heavily undermined by cuts as shiny new buildings stand empty on our campuses. We cannot possibly expect to carry on as normal.

It is in this context that I invite you to read my new article, as and when you find the time and mental energy. It is one of the most difficult and vulnerable things I have ever written. I am really proud of it. It helped me think through some small ways in which I might change my work patterns and practice of solidarity, as part of a far larger push for change. I hope that in turn, it might help you also.

A Methodology for the Marginalised:
Surviving Oppression and Traumatic Fieldwork in the Neoliberal Academy

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Update 17 July 2020: the article has now been published in Volume 54, Issue 4 of Sociology, and is also now available free to read on the journal’s website. I have updated the links to reflect this.

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Clinical research with trans patients: a critique

WPATH_BuenoAr_Logo_reverseIn November I participated in a panel on research ethics at the 2018 WPATH Symposium in Buenos Aires, “Ethical Considerations in Transgender Health Research Practice”.

I presented a talk based on work I have undertaken with Dr Michael Toze (who sadly could not join us at the conference). Entitled Trans Health Research at a Gender Identity Clinic, the talk critiqued clinical research methods employed at a UK gender clinic, using the example of published research on video gaming.

I argued that clinical researchers should be mindful of the power dynamic that exists between them and their patient/participants. I also presented evidence that methodological and ethical issues have resulted in harm to participants, and undermined the validity of empirical claims.

This talk was kindly recorded by Ellen Murray, and you can listen to it below.

 

I have also uploaded produced a transcript of the talk:

Trans Health Research at a Gender Identity Clinic

And you can download the slides here.

Please do feel free to download and share this talk with anyone you think might find it interesting or useful, as long as myself and Dr Toze are credited.

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The talk followed a remote presentation by Ali Harris, and preceded a talk by Noah Adams, who discussed the paper we wrote in collaboration with Jaimie Veale, Asa Radix, Danielle Castro, Amrita Sarkar and Kai Cheng Thom: Guidance and Ethical Considerations for Undertaking Transgender Health Research and Institutional Review Boards Adjudicating this Research.