‘Don’t think that we die from AIDS’: Invisibilised uncertainty and global transgender health

Abstract

The invisibilisation of social groups in health research and survey data is a source of medical uncertainty, long seen as a hallmark of the medical field. However, scholarship has not thoroughly assessed how medical uncertainty is structured by state-level processes and global health agendas, especially for people beyond the Global North. This article introduces invisibilised uncertainty as a type of medical uncertainty structured by global organisational and state-level priorities, which can invisibilise social groups and health problems from research and data collection, exacerbating medical uncertainty and health disparities for people worldwide. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in Thailand and in-depth interviews with 62 participants, the article illuminates how state-level processes and global clinical research agendas have structured knowledge gaps and uncertainties for Thai transgender women. As omissions in health research and data collection become embodied on a world scale, the article expands our understandings of how gendered health disparities are structured nationally and globally. It advances a sociology of medical ignorance by analysing the uneven landscape of holistic

The sociology of global health: Inequality, disease‐related stigma, and the rise of nongovernmental organizations

“…In addition to damaging effects of legislation barring transgender youth from receipt of gender-affirming healthcare in the U.S. (Frank, 2023;Ghorayshi, 2023), some individuals report delaying physical and mental healthcare in order to avoid misgendering and other stressful gender-related encounters with the medical system (Kcomt et al, 2020). Neglect of transgender care within the medical system is not unique to the U.S., with trans women in Thailand remaining neglected from discussions about fertility and sexual health, and being subject to misgendering (Farber, 2023a(Farber, , 2023b. Cross-nationally, the COVID-19 pandemic was also especially deleterious to mental health of transgender individuals who experienced loss of gender-affirming medical resources (Jarrett et al, 2021).…”