Go fund inequality: the politics of crowdfunding transgender medical care

Despite improvements in access to transition-related medical care, many transgender people still face numerous barriers to paying for gender-affirming procedures. Crowdfunding websites have gained immense popularity as a strategy for trans people to raise money for transition-related healthcare expe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical public health 2020-05, Vol.30 (3), p.330-339
Main Author: Barcelos, Chris A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
Campaigns
Chest
Content analysis
Crowdfunding
Etiquette
Fund raising
Funding
Gender
gender transition
Health care
Health disparities
Health services
Marginality
Medicine
Men
Money
Politics
Popularity
Social inequality
Statistical analysis
Surgery
transgender healthcare
Transgender persons
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Summary:Despite improvements in access to transition-related medical care, many transgender people still face numerous barriers to paying for gender-affirming procedures. Crowdfunding websites have gained immense popularity as a strategy for trans people to raise money for transition-related healthcare expenses. Using descriptive statistics and thematic content analysis, this paper illustrates how fundraising campaigns for medical gender transition both reveal and reinforce health and social inequalities. Although trans people crowdfund for a variety of transition-related needs, the majority of online campaigns are used to fund chest surgeries among young, white, binary-identified trans men in the United States. Most campaigns fall dramatically short of their fundraising goals. In addition, campaigns use medicalized, normatively gendered transition narratives that privatize inequality in marginalized communities. The article concludes with a consideration of how to incorporate a 'revolutionary etiquette' in crowdfunding for transition healthcare.
ISSN:0958-1596
1469-3682
DOI:10.1080/09581596.2019.1575947