Wardell Susan, Withey-Rila Cassie
University of Otago, New Zealand.
Soc Sci Med. 2024 Mar;345:116682. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.116682. Epub 2024 Feb 14.
In contexts where many people face barriers to accessing gender-affirming care through public systems, some turn to online crowdfunding to fundraise for private care pathways. Crowdfunding platforms invite people to share personal information, stories, and photos publicly, in order to elicit donations. In this article we draw on empirical data from a multimethodological three-year study of medical crowdfunding in Aotearoa New Zealand, with a focus on people crowdfunding for medical transition services. We apply a lens of 'visibility' to analysis of focus groups, interviews, case studies, and campaign pages, presenting findings on who was present and absent (with a focus on binary gender, and whiteness), and who was the assumed or expected audience (with a focus on cis publics). We describe how campaigns were defined by efforts to make trans bodies legible, and campaign requests competitive, through reference to narrow and medicalised frames of dysphoria, suffering, and transformation via medical intervention. We contribute to more comparative work in the literature on crowdfunding by highlighting how these globalised digital technologies are situated in the particular (demographic, cultural, and structural) contexts of Aotearoa New Zealand. We call attention to crowdfunding as a relational practice, in which the public marketisation of the self can have both individual consequences related to privacy and outing, and social consequences, in the reinforcing of trans-normativities. Overall we argue that although crowdfunding represents an adaptive strategy for trans people trying meet their own needs, it ultimately contributes to a type of trans-visibility which is both risky and limiting.
在许多人通过公共系统获得性别肯定性医疗服务面临障碍的情况下，一些人转向在线众筹，为私人医疗途径筹集资金。众筹平台邀请人们公开分享个人信息、故事和照片，以吸引捐赠。在本文中，我们借鉴了对新西兰医疗众筹进行的为期三年的多方法研究的实证数据，重点关注为医疗过渡服务进行众筹的人群。我们运用“可见性”视角来分析焦点小组、访谈、案例研究和活动页面，呈现关于谁在场和谁缺席（重点关注二元性别和白人身份）以及谁是假定或预期受众（重点关注顺性别公众）的研究结果。我们描述了活动是如何通过参考关于烦躁不安、痛苦以及通过医疗干预实现转变的狭隘且医学化的框架，努力使跨性别身体变得清晰可读，并使活动请求具有竞争力来定义的。我们通过强调这些全球化数字技术在新西兰的特定（人口统计学、文化和结构）背景中的定位，为众筹文献中更多的比较研究做出贡献。我们提请注意众筹是一种关系性实践，在这种实践中，自我的公开市场化可能既有与隐私和暴露相关的个体后果，也有在强化跨性别规范方面的社会后果。总体而言，我们认为尽管众筹代表了跨性别者满足自身需求的一种适应性策略，但它最终促成了一种既存在风险又具有局限性的跨性别可见性。
