Discursive analysis into the trans and non-binary experiences of eating disorders

Harding, Simone

Abstract

Background: Whilst there is a significant body of critical feminist research on how gender mobilises eating dis/orders it has tended to focus on the experiences of anorexia in (assumed) cisheterosexual, white, and middle-class young women (Jones & Malson 2011; Holmes, 2016; LaMarre, Levine, Holmes, & Malson, 2022). There is a lack of attention to the experiences of people of colour, cis men and trans and/or non-binary people (LaMarre, Rice, & Jankowski, 2017) and despite evidence that trans identified people have significantly higher rates of eating dis/orders than cis identified people of any sexual orientation (Diemer, Grant, Munn-Chernoff, Patterson, & Duncan, 2015).
Aims: This study explores how trans and/or non-binary people experience and make sense of eating dis/orders.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four trans identified people and four non-binary identified people living in the UK and US. Participants were asked about their experiences of gender and eating dis/orders. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim and then analysed qualitatively using a Foucauldian inspired, feminist discourse analysis (Arribas-Ayllon & Walkerdine, 2013; Smith, 2015).
Results: Participants frequently construed their experiences of the female gender negatively and located bodily. Living socially as a man was construed broadly as marginally less painful than as a woman, and not entirely dependent upon a materially male body. Eating dis/orders were construed as contingent upon multiple discourses and produced by a constellation of negative associations with the female and largely positive constructions of masculine bodies. Eating dis/orders were constructed as gender disrupting, and capable of rescripting the body in multiple ways. Trans and non-binary identities were construed multiply - as rescripting the body to disrupt gender through hormones and medical transition, as becoming, and as liminality.
Discussions: This paper explores how gender and eating dis/orders are inextricably linked through interconnected socio-historically specific discourses that constitute and regulate individuals as gendered. The implications of the analysis for therapeutic interventions, further research and policy are discussed.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 9, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: May 28, 2024
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11166175
• Award Date: May 28, 2024