Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine
A history of trans medicine that uses Scandinavian sources to tell a global story.
 
Standardizing Sex traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world.
 
Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies.
1146921886
Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine
A history of trans medicine that uses Scandinavian sources to tell a global story.
 
Standardizing Sex traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world.
 
Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies.
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Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine

Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine

by Ketil Slagstad
Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine

Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine

by Ketil Slagstad

eBook

$34.99 
Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on September 9, 2025

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Overview

A history of trans medicine that uses Scandinavian sources to tell a global story.
 
Standardizing Sex traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government bureaucracy. The book combines the author’s analysis of medical records and other archival sources with oral history interviews with former patients, activists, doctors, psychologists, and civil servants. Physician-historian Ketil Slagstad uses the Scandinavian story of sex reassignment to anchor not only the role of the state but also bureaucracy and social rights. Scandinavian countries, he shows, played a foundational role in the emergence of trans medicine internationally. As a result, Standardizing Sex tells a transnational history of medicine that sheds light on a set of relations and problems that continue to impact discussions of trans medicine and trans rights around the world.
 
Slagstad’s sources offer a rare opportunity to explore the emergence of trans medicine in action in the clinic, laboratory, waiting room, and operating room, as well as in the bureaucrat’s office, on the psychologist’s couch, and in the publications and meetings of activist groups. Together, these sources allow for the analysis of the increasingly complex negotiations of nosological criteria, medical knowledge, and medical practices in a formative period for transgender medicine. More generally, the book offers a story about the reshaping of the normal and the pathological in modern societies.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226843230
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 09/09/2025
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Ketil Slagstad is a research fellow at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at Charité: Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Welfare State Story
Chapter 1: Eugenic Beginnings
Chapter 2: Sex Change and Sex Offense
Chapter 3: Collecting Cases, Outlining Symptoms, Making Diagnoses
Chapter 4: Hormone Architecture and Guinea Pigs
Chapter 5: The Hospital Home and Surgical Pragmatism
Chapter 6: Sex and the Binary State
Chapter 7: Society as Cause and Cure
Chapter 8: Draw Your Sex and I Will Tell You Who You Are
Chapter 9: Community Care and Scientific Activism
Chapter 10: Epidemiological Dreams and the Operationalization of Regret
Chapter 11: Bureaucratizing Medicine
Conclusion: Social Medicine and the Norms of Health

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
Interviews
Bibliography
Index
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