Purpose: Research in Canada and the United States indicates that minority gender and sexuality status are consistently associated with health disparities and poor health outcomes, including cancer health. This article investigates experiences of cancer health and care, and access to knowledge for trans* and gender nonconforming people diagnosed with and treated for breast and/or gynecologic cancer. Our study contributes new understandings about gender minority populations that will advance knowledge concerning the provision of culturally appropriate care. This is the first study we are aware of that focuses on trans* and gender nonconforming peoples' experiences of cancer care and treatment, support networks, and access to and mobilization of knowledge.Methods: This article analyzes trans* and gender nonconforming patient interviews from the Cancer's Margins project (): Canada's first nationally-funded project that investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality, cancer knowledge, treatment experiences, and modes of the organization of support networks.Results: Our analysis documents how different bodies of knowledge relative to cancer treatment and gendered embodiment are understood, accessed, and mobilized by trans* and gender nonconforming patients. Findings reported here suggest that one's knowledge of a felt sense of gender is closely interwoven with knowledge concerning cancer treatment practices; a dynamic which organizes knowledge mobilities in cancer treatment.Conclusions: The findings support the assertion that cisgender models concerning changes to the body that occur as a result of biomedical treatment for breast and/or gynecologic cancer are wholly inadequate in order to account for trans* and gender nonconforming peoples' experiences of cancer treatments, and access to and mobilization of related knowledge.

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Suzanne de Castell simon fraser university This article examines tensions between post-structuralist theories of subjectivity and essentialist constructions of identity in the context of a lesbian studies course co-taught by the authors. We describe the goals, organizing principles, content, and outcomes of this engagement in the production of "queer pedagogy"-a radical form of educative praxis implemented deliberately to interfere with, to intervene in, the production of "normalcy" in schooled subjects. We argue for an explicit "ethics of consumption" in relation to curricular inclusions of marginalized subjects and subjugated knowledges. We conclude with a critical analysis of the way that, despite our explicit interventions, all of our discourses, all of our actions in this course were permeated with the continuous and inescapable backdrop of white heterosexual dominance, such that: (a) any subordinated identity always remained marginal and (b) "lesbian identity" in this institutions context was always fixed and stable, even in a course that explicitly critiqued, challenged, and deconstructed a monolithic "lesbian identity." Cet article porte sur la tension qui existe entre les théories de la subjectivité et les constructions essentialistes de l'identité dans le contexte d'un cours sur le lesbianisme donné par les auteures. Ces dernières décrivent les buts, les principes organisateurs, le contenu et les résultats de leur démarche en vue de créer ce qu'elles désignent sous le nom de "queer pedagogy"-une forme radicale de la praxis éducative implantée délibérément pour contrecarrer le concept de "normalité" dans les matières enseignées. Les auteures prônent une "éthique de la consommation" explicite pour ce qui a trait à l'inclusion des matières marginalisées et des connaissances subordonnées. Elles concluent avec une analyse critique de la façon dont tous leurs discours et toutes leurs actions au sein du cours, en dépit de leurs interventions explicites, avaient pour toile de fond inévitable la prééminence de l'hétérosexualité des Blancs si bien que : a) toute identité subordonnée est toujours demeurée marginale, et b) l'"identité lesbienne" dans ce contexte était toujours fixe et stable, et ce, même dans un cours qui critiquait et mettait explicitement en question une "identité lesbienne" monolithique.

Canadian and American population-based research concerning sexual and/or gender minority populations provides evidence of persistent breast and gynecologic cancer-related health disparities and knowledge divides. The Cancer's Margins research investigates the complex intersections of sexual and/or gender marginality and incommensurabilities and improvisation in engagements with biographical and biomedical cancer knowledge. The study examines how sexuality and gender are intersectionally constitutive of complex biopolitical mappings of cancer health knowledge that shape knowledge access and its mobilization in health and treatment decision-making. Interviews were conducted with a diverse group (n=81) of sexual and/or gender minority breast or gynecologic cancer patients. The LGBQ//T2 cancer patient narratives we have analyzed document in fine grain detail how it is that sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients punctuate the otherwise lockstep assemblage of their cancer treatment decision-making with a persistent engagement in creative attempts to resist, thwart and otherwise manage the possibility of discrimination and likewise, the probability of institutional erasure in care settings. Our findings illustrate the demands that cancer places on LGBQ//T2 patients to choreograph access to, and mobilization of knowledge and care, across significantly distinct and sometimes incommensurable systems of knowledge.