Transgender health: on a world scale

ABSTRACT

Understanding transgender health on a world scale requires an adequate conceptualisation of gender as an embodied social structure, and an awareness of imbalances in the global economy of knowledge. Four major clusters of health issues are identified for trans groups in the majority, postcolonial world: staying alive in the face of violence and disease, keeping a trans life afloat in practice, facing pressures including rising populism, and making transitions work. Familiar models of professional health care are not adequate to these issues across much of the world; social action and organising are required.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• health
• violence
• poverty
• housing
• gender transition

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all participants in the group discussions mentioned in the text. This paper builds on my chapter in Ahonaa Roy, ed., Gender, Sexuality, Decolonization (Routledge, forthcoming), where a more detailed discussion of some points can be found.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).