another abstract attempt

The field of medicine acts not only to heal bodies and cure disease, it acts as a repository of power, defining bodies and constituting subjects through discourse. Medicine is a field of knowledge, and as such, can work to conceal its own role in the creation of the gendered subject. In postmodern theory, experience is always “mediated by organized discourses that amount to systems of representation” (Morris 8); in this paper I will examine how the experiences of transgender patients have been shaped by medical discourses. The modern biomedical model inadequately addresses issues of gender and gendered embodiments and offers reductive and mechanistic understandings of illness. I will contextualize the dialogue on postmodern ethics within a discussion of medical care for queer and transgender bodies in order to reconstruct the conceptual territory in which bioethics is presently situated. In order to provide a postmodern critique on gendered biomedical discourses, I will examine the historical conflation of sex and gender as well as heteronormative/gender-policing practices in biomedicine. The purpose of a responsible bioethics is to examine the practices and discourses that enforce gender normativity and consequently erase gender diversity. This critical self-awareness in biomedicine is necessary to unleash the libratory potential within transsituated discursive reiterations. This paper seeks to reveal the cultural contingency of biomedical narratives in order to reformulate a biomedical model which upholds the ethical principals it espouses.

research ethics

so... it's great that this week's assignment is to think about informed consent and research ethics, because it has only recently come to my attention that I would have to submit a proposal to our school's IRB before I could even begin to ask transgender folks (and perhaps use information provided on blogs, journals, etc) about friendly health-care providers and what criteria should be used to sort through trans-sensitive/friendly providers. Our school's IRB website states "Before human subjects are recruited or data is collected from human subjects, the IRB must review and approve all human subject research, regardless of funding, conducted by Appalachian State University faculty, staff or students." Until approved, I couldn't even begin the preliminary research to design the selection criteria for the providers. Then, because participation of healthcare providers might entail at least some legal risk, I would have to make sure all of the consent forms and securities were in place so that I could put participant's information on the resource website. I called our IRB, and my study seems to fall in uncertain territory...so now I am waiting to find out whether or not I need to have my application approved at all. If I have to be approved, the process can take 2-3 weeks. I've submitted the request for review, and am waiting to hear back from the IRB. fun!