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.

Citation

Harding, S. Discursive analysis into the trans and non-binary experiences of eating disorders. (Thesis). University of the West of England. Retrieved from https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11166175

• 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