Stigma as framed onYouTube: Effects of personal experiences videos on students’ beliefs about medicalizing intersex

Abstract

People with physical intersex characteristics can be subject to medical interventions that risk human rights to bodily integrity and self‐determination. Proponents and opponents of medicalization use personal narrative videos on YouTube to frame intersex as a stigma best understood through a medical or social identity frame. Ninety‐nine psychology students watched one of two YouTube videos with either a medical or social identity frame, or participated in a comparison group who watched no video. Participants extracted the videos’ medical or social identity framing in their own words. The social identity video increased participants’ sense that medicine was more harmful and less beneficial, and the medical video decreased participants’ sense that medicine was harmful. Although the videos aimed at bringing about social understanding of intersex people, neither video impacted stigmatizing beliefs about intersex people as a group. Rather, effects of the videos on beliefs about harms of medicalization were moderated by two stigma measures; social distance and gender binary beliefs. Medical intervention on intersex has been justified, in part, on grounds that stigma is inevitable. While intersex stigma has rarely been empirically examined, the present study shows that people with less propensity to stigmatize see less benefit from medicalizing intersex traits and are more open to learning few framings from personal experience videos.

LGB+ and heterosexual-identified people produce similar analogies to intersex but have different opinions about its medicalisation

“…Tee and Hegarty (2006) developed a measure of belief in two and only two genders that are defined by sex characteristics. Two recent studies found gender binary beliefs to predict support for genital surgery on intersex characteristics (Hegarty et al, , 2019. We expected to replicate those findings here.…”

“…In one, belief in the authority of medicine predicted greater support for surgery on children who were labelled 'intersex' rather than 'female' (Smith & Hegarty, 2020). In another, openness to influence by first-person narratives of intersex people was predicted by opposition to the gender binary (Hegarty et al, 2019). If this interpretation is correct, then lay people's capacity to think about intersex in more than one frame of reference may have some clinical implications.…”

“…Trainee doctors who made hypothetical surgery decisions about a child born with intersex characteristics, mostly elected for surgery when the case was framed in medical terms, but not when it was framed in psychosocial terms (Streuli et al, 2013). UK students' who watched YouTube videos featuring first-person accounts of people with intersex characteristics preferred a video with the social identity frame than one with a medical frame, and their beliefs about the beneficence of medical interventions were affected by whichever video they watched (Hegarty, Bogan-Carey, & Smith, 2019). Smith and Hegarty (2020) measured participants opinions that genital cutting of infants described either as'female' or 'intersex' infringed human rights.…”

Moving intersex/DSD rights and care forward: Lay understandings of common dilemmas

“…Having more knowledge of the diverse understandings that patients might bring to consultations puts health professionals in a better position to empower patients and their families to fully participate in decision-making in uncertain situations about unfamiliar topics. The present study bridges the gap between experiments showing how framing affects sense making (e.g., Hegarty, Smith, & Bogan-Carey, 2019;Streuli et al, 2013) and studies highlighting the sense making needs that parents report retrospectively after medical decisions have been made (e.g., Sanders et al, 2008).…”

‘Does anyone else have this?’ The role of emotion in forum discussions about medical conditions affecting sex characteristics

“…Some intersex studies acknowledge the importance of emotion and online connections (e.g., Danon and Krämer 2017), but this is not their central focus. Finally, an experimental study offers useful insight into how viewers respond to online videos about social versus medical framings of intersex (Hegarty, Bogan-Carey and Smith 2019). This showed that student viewers preferred the video promoting the "social identity" intersex narrative over the medicalised narrative, and that the videos changed their beliefs about the harms and benefits of medicalisation.…”