Is it transphobic to dismiss  the services of a transgender doctor because she is trans?

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Petra De Sutter is a gynecologist and politician, currently serving as the federal Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium. Would it be OK for a cis woman to ask for another female gynecologist, if Petra was the one assigned to her? (Photo from Open Dialogue)

Social conditioning

There are many levels of bigotry – being this racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other kind of aversion felt towards minority groups. The phobia can be conscious, deliberate and hateful, or it can be implicit and an indirect effect of cultural prejudices.

One of the ways society keep marginalized groups excluded is by conditioning its citizens to fear or loathe them. This is not only a mental process; it is an emotional form of conditioning.

Kids will, from a very young age, see that their parents and peers express distaste when meeting – or talking about – members of these groups.

The same adults will often use the same kind of expressions as when they talk about something diseased, rotten or corrupt. Kids pick up on these feelings. They develop the same emotional responses.

Bigoted narratives reinforce the phobias

This process is of course accentuated by the way the bigots present the children with narratives aimed at legitimizing this aversion.

We have all heard these stories: “The Jews are part of a world-wide cabal aimed at ravaging white women, sacrificing or kids and turning us all into Communists,” or “Black people are primitive, lazy, violent and promiscuous animal-like beings who threaten white women and kids,” or “Gay people are grooming good kids to become queer pedophiles.”

Fascist propaganda is actually very much about presenting outsiders as  a sexual threat to predominantly white women and kids. This tactic legitimizes policies aimed at oppressing those marginalized, and this oppression in turn creates more distrust and disgust.

This is the tactic the Republican party is using against LGBTQA people and immigrants in the US right now, and is a strategy exploited by the so-called “gender critical” TERFs of Britain.

Freeing yourself from phobias

Note that it can be hard to overcome such feelings of loathing and fear, since they are based on long term reinforcement. This means that someone who intellectually have understood the nature of transphobia or racism, and who consciously supports trans rights or the civil rights movement, may still harbor bigoted feelings.

Indeed, getting rid of such feelings may take time. It often requires regular contact with members of the marginalized group, so that your subconscious come to see them as regular people and not as some kind of scary “Other”.

So a woman who – because she has been raised in a racist or transphobic environment – feel unease about being cared for by a Black or transgender woman, may on one level be an anti-racist or trans-supportive person, but may – nonetheless – express racist or transphobic feelings. Because of this she continues to reinforce the negative biases of this world.

Is she a bad person? I wouldn’t say so. But it would definitely help if someone helped her out of that state of mind.

Experienced as invalidating aggression

Dismissing a Black gynecologist because she is Black or a transgender doctor because she is trans, will definitely be experienced as a bigoted reaction. The caretaker will experience this as aggression aimed at invalidating her status as an equal human being.

Now, the question posed is a bit confusing, as it is referring to the female doctor being “a pre-transition trans woman”. A trans female caretaker who works as a woman will have already come out. She has transitioned, at least socially. She presents as a woman. She is a woman.

I know of no one who allows closeted trans women (i.e. those who publicly still present as men) to work as female doctors.

It might be the expression is not referring to this trans woman having socially transitioned. Instead the question might be alluding to whether she has been through hormone replacement therapy and surgery, so that she easily passes for a cis woman.

But that brings us back to the social conditioning: The unease someone feels from facing a woman who is visibly trans (or meeting a female doctor who is clearly a woman of color) is caused by a transphobic or racist culture that teaches us that transgender or Black women are dangerous, contaminated or inferior. That is clearly a transphobic or racist reaction, even if the patient’s conscious intentions are good.

We cannot win the battle against bigotry if we continue to insist on keeping the marginalized groups segregated from “normal” society due to the misguided fears of prejudiced people. That segregation is in itself one of the instruments used to keep the oppressive system in place. This applies to bathrooms, participation in sports, as well as gynecology.