I’m grateful to have documented the experiences shared by trans folks navigating healthcare for UNDP India and University of Chicago’s Med advocacy booklet on making Indian healthcare systems trans-affirmative.

The section weaves together four recurring themes: How the cis-het gaze of visibilization limits access to daily healthcare; the life-threatening risks of accessing lifesaving healthcare; navigating institutionalized transphobia as a trans med-student; de-centering the medicalization of transness through affirmative healthcare.

While the section documents perspectives from transgender people, it reflects concepts of control that are internalized and affect cisgender people too – that the implicit practice objectifying a person has an immediate translation to the standard of care that is provided and gatekept.

Rather than attempting to find a band-aid for the multitudes of this dehumanisation, maybe it’s more effective to question how we got here: What role does visibility play in providing care? How much of this imposed visibility, is a reflection of gender-associated roles that have been internalised through the lens of shame in a healthcare provider’s understanding of their own gender? How can we end the consistency of delayed treatment that is rooted in gender essentialist concepts of policing bodies? How have we become the torchbearers of a culture that gives healthcare providers the authority to claim and steal agency based on their patient’s appearance? What does it take to stop viewing the body as a site of controversy, and to centre the concept of non-hierarchical caring – from one human to another?

Read more under the ‘Discussions in the conference section: https://www.undp.org/india/publications/trans-affirmative-medical-education-india

Full documentation from the conference can be found under iHEAR’s handle on Pixstory: https://www.pixstory.com/user/ihear-transcare/34535