Studying trans: recommendations for ethical recruitment and collaboration with transgender participants in academic research

ABSTRACT

The transgender population has been subject to a troubled history of ethically and methodologically flawed research practices. Whilst interest and ethical standards have both risen, there remains little specific methodological consideration of research with transgender participants. This article draws on practical experiences of doing research with transgender communities, and insider group status, to construct six categories to consider when working on trans-focused research. These categories include the importance of transgender history, the assurance of transparency, the significance of nuanced language use, the benefits of feminist methodological contributions, the value of intersectionality and the necessity of respecting trans spaces. The article concludes by reflecting on the overlapping and non-exhaustive nature of these categories, and wider structural concerns that may trouble knowledge production more generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• non-binary
• methodology
• ethics
• intersectionality
• recruitment

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflicts of interest arising from this work.

Notes

1. Perhaps most notably, the increased recognition of non-binary gender identities under the trans umbrella.

2. Throughout this article I use ‘trans’ (and transgender, synonymously) as an umbrella term for any individuals who do not identify with the sex/gender they were assigned at birth. This is inclusive of people with non-binary or genderqueer genders, or those who are agender. While this choice raises its own difficulties, such as non-binary people who do not identify as transgender, my intention is to capture the disjunction between assignation and identity (partial, fluctuating, or complete) that is a centrally defining factor for the trans population – who are otherwise extremely heterogeneous.

3. The Digital Transgender Archive can be accessed at: https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/inst/0611cd89-5b24-4237-b11b-e63939a9bb76 [accessed 01/12/2017].

4. Most research then focused on people assigned male at birth. By contemporary standards of language use and identity classification, some might have been analogous with gay or bisexual cisgender men, while others heterosexual transgender women.

5. Gender Identity Clinic.

6. Sex Reassignment Surgery.

7. Some non-binary people may identify as partially male or female, or male and female at the same time, or as male and/or female some of the time. Others may have no gender, or a neutral gender. A hugely complex multiplicity of idiosyncratic senses of gender beyond the binary are possible.

8. Information available on the Action for Trans Health website: http://actionfortranshealth.org.uk/.

9. For the full statement, please see https://transequality.org/issues/racial-economic-justice .

10. With notable exceptions – such as the May 2017 special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly, ‘The Issue of Blackness’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was completed with no external funding.

Notes on contributors

Benjamin William Vincent

Benjamin William Vincent completed their PhD in Sociology and Social policy in 2016 at the University of Leeds, examining non-binary identity negotiations in relation to queer communities and medical practice. Their first book, Transgender Health: A Practitioner’s Guide to Binary and Non-Binary Trans Patient Care, is forthcoming for 2018, with Jessica Kingsley Publications. They are an associate lecturer in sociology at the University of York.