Abstract
This chapter advances a broad critique of the biomedical model while paying attention to the ways in which it specifically affects LGBTQ people. This chapter draws on 37 interviews with LGBTQ people who experienced mental distress, discussing their identification with various terms, identities, and diagnostic categories. However, it is not only a discussion of the different ways in which participants self-identified. The participants’ rationales for rejecting or embracing various terminologies often pointed to fundamental problems with the biomedical model itself and indicated the value of applying insights from Mad Studies that take social context into account. This chapter argues that a mad-queer-trans lens broadly challenges the biomedical model, indicating why it is crucial to expand the fight for depathologization of gender and sexual dissidence beyond a narrow focus on specific diagnoses concerning gender and sexual dissidence.
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Pilling, M.D. (2022). Expanding the Struggle Against Queer and Trans Pathologization: Challenging Biomedicalism. In: Queer and Trans Madness. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90413-5_3
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