title: Ideologies of self, suffering, and gender nonconformity at work in a US gender identity clinic.
abstract: Health care institutions are often severely criticized for regulating the lives of individuals who deviate from socially sanctioned norms. In teaching people where they fit in the conventional scheme of things, institutions often reproduce socially dominant ideologies of normality, health, and self. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a university-based gender identity clinic in the United States, I demonstrate that while some institutions adopt dominant cultural frameworks, others critically assess these. To understand the intricacies of the clinic's psychotherapeutic practices, I analyze the clinicians' constructions of health and suffering. Instead of viewing transgenderism as a psychiatric condition, these clinicians approach it as a normal human condition that is marginalized by society's heteronormative values. The analysis, attentive to the interaction among social context, institutional work, and psychotherapeutic ideologies, shows that while some institutions reproduce hegemonic cultural frameworks, others, in their attempts to alleviate people's suffering, do challenge dominant social norms.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Media and Culture Studies , Utrecht University , the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marieke
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: van Eijk
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities; D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D063106:Transgender Persons / Q000523:psychology*; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology
keywords: United States; cultural norms; health care; institutions; psychotherapy; transgender care