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PROGRAM OF SEMINAR - Gender and Sexuality in Health. Dra. Zowie Davy
27/05
28/05
Sala Multiuso (3º Piso do Sala 906 (Terreo do Bloco B)
Bloco H)

27/05
Sala 922 (3º Piso do Bloco B)
(27/05/2015) Session Critiquing biological and psychiatric frameworks (45 minute lecture/45
minute seminar)
In this session we will explore some of the circular arguments that underpin medical perspectives on trans
phenomena. We will examine the construction of Gender Dysphoria the DSM 5 (2013); and see how the
DSM 5 taskforce were meant to look at (1) literature reviews of current diagnostic entities; (2) literature
reviews of proposed new diagnostic categories; (3) incorporation of feedback from advisors and the
scientific community at large, as well as other interested stakeholders; (4) examination of relevant secondary
data sets; (5) proposals for field trials to test revised diagnostic criteria; and (6) revision to the text that
accompanies each diagnosis and by doing so critique the contemporary basis of the diagnosis. By drawing
on some methodological critiques we will start to grasp the precariousness of the research in this area, the
assumptions that this research is based upon and tackle how we may move beyond the quandary of applying
essentialist meanings to trans phenomena.
Reading
Cohen-Kettenis, P. (2010). Psychosocial and psychosexual aspects of disorders of sex development. Best
Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 24(2), 325-334.
Hird, M. J. (2003). A Typical Gender Identity Conference? Some Disturbing Reports from the Therapeutic
Front Lines. Feminism & Psychology, 13(2), 181-199.
Ansara, Y. G., & Hegarty, P. (2014). Methodologies of misgendering: Recommendations for reducing
cisgenderism in psychological research. Feminism & Psychology, 24(2), 259-270.
Further Reading
Ansara, Y. G., & Hegarty, P. (2012). Cisgenderism in psychology: Pathologizing and misgendering children
from 1999 to 2008. Psychology and Sexuality, 3(2), 137-160.
Davy, Z. (2011). Recognizing Transsexuals: Personal, Political and Medicolegal Embodiment. Aldershot:
Ashgate.
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York:
Basic Books.
Roughgarden, J. (2004). Evolution's rainbow: Diversity, gender, and sexuality in nature and people.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
van den Wijngaard, M. (1997). Reinventing the Sexes: The Biomedical Construction of Femininity and
Masculinity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Quarto Dia ( 28/05/2015 ) Session Encountering historical boundaries of genders and
sexualities (45 minute lecture/45 minute seminar)
The session introduces and explores historical construction of sexual and gender categories. Using the work
of Foucault, Laqueur, Freud and Tijsseling the session examines the development of medical ideas about
sexuality constructed by sexologists and which form the basis of how medical, health and social care
students encounter boundaries surrounding medicalized embodiment. In particular we examine firstly, the
‘invert’ – an identity that firmly links gender and sexuality in ways that have been difficult to challenge.
Secondly, the ‘hermaphrodite’, and finally transgender. This session opens up the idea, then, that sexuality
and the connections with gender has a ‘history’ and that the study of that history is inevitable for
understanding later medical contestations. We will then move to contemporary biological notions
surrounding transgender bodies, inclusive of brain structures, endocrine environments to start to unravel the
contested terrain of etiological arguments for trans phenomena.
Reading
Hare, L., Bernard, P., Sánchez, F. J., Baird, P. N., Vilain, E., Kennedy, T., & Harley, V. R. (2009).
Androgen Receptor Repeat Length Polymorphism Associated with Male-to-Female Transsexualism.
Biological Psychiatry, 65(1), 93-96.
Veale, J. F., Clarke, D. E., & Lomax, T. C. (2010). Biological and psychosocial correlates of adult gendervariant identities: A review. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(4), 357-366.
Further Reading
Dreger, A. D. (1998). Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Ellis, H. (1994 [1897]). Sexual inversion. Manchester: Ayer.
Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.
Laqueur, T. (1990). Making sex: body and gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Terman, L. M., & Miles, C. C. (1936). Sex and Personality: Studies in masculinity and femininity. New
York: McGraw-Hill.

Quinto Dia ( 29/05/2015 ) Session Democratizing diagnosis, transpeople and their (medical)
human rights
In this session we will explore how to facilitate the medical interventions required by transpeople to live a
gendered life that suits them better. Drawing on human rights discourses, the anti-pathologization movement
and deconstructive and phenomenological approaches we will explore the potential facilitators and barriers
to health interventions for transpeople through these frameworks. Clinical and professional associations
have offered, in the case of the DSM and are offering in the case of the ICD, recommendations for the
revision process to include wider knowledges and voices. Widening the contributions by medical
stakeholders, members of the trans* public and political advocacy groups and ‘hearing’ their
commendations about the changes required for the diagnoses to better reflect trans* people’s medical,
economic and social lives, seems to be a novel democratizing approach to creating diagnoses. We will
investigate whether the shift in the diagnostic revision process impacts on the human rights discourse being
utilized.
Reading
Hammarberg, T. (2009). Issue Paper: Human Rights and Gender Identity: Office of the Commissioner for
Human Rights Council of Europe.
Onufer Corrê, S., & Muntarbhorn, V. (2007). The Yogyakarta Principles: Principles on the application of
international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Platero, R. (2011). The narratives of transgender rights mobilization in Spain. Sexualities, 14(5), 597-614.
Further Reading
Davy, Z. (2011). Recognizing Transsexuals: Personal, Political and Medicolegal Embodiment. Aldershot:
Ashgate.
Shukla, V., Asp, A., Dwyer, M., Georgescu, C., & Duggan, J. (2014). Barriers to Healthcare in the
Transgender Community: A Case Report. LGBT Health, Online First. doi: 10.1089/lgbt.2013.0054
Spade, D. (2013). Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender. Berkeley Women's Law Journal, 18(1), 15-37.
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/bglj/vol18/iss1/2
Whittle, S. (1999). Transgender Rights: The European Court of Human Rights and New Identity Politics for
the New Age. In A. Hegarty & S. Leonard (Eds.), Human Rights: An Agenda for the 21st Century. London:
Cavendish.
World Professional Association of Transgender Health. (2012). Standards of Care for the Health of
Transsexual,
Transgender,
and
Gender
Nonconforming
People.
Retrieved
http://www.wpath.org/documents/SOC%20V7%2003-17-12.pdf