Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender

Noting trends in evidence-based medicine (EBM), shuster (sociology, Michigan State Univ.) situates the emergence, from the mid-20th century to the present, of a field of medicine dedicated to caring for transgender people. The author uses archival sources from the Kinsey Institute, interviews, and ethnographic techniques to construct their wide-ranging narrative. Questions they consider include: Who decides which patients receive care? Who had the ultimate authority to determine protocols in the nascent field of trans medicine: physicians or therapists? These important questions have been debated for decades, and shuster (who writes their name all in lowercase) expertly documents how the medical field has often failed trans patients. This book discusses the way EBM has increased the scientific legitimacy of trans medicine, though not without the risk of making it a specialty and further othering the field. This book successfully makes the case that trans medicine should be part of the medical training of all physicians. Though shuster is trained as a sociologist, their work has a broad audience among academics, especially in the history of science and medicine.