Trans Medicine

Trans Medicine is a brilliant study of how the context of scientific uncertainty shapes the ways medical professionals work with trans people. While appreciating the dilemmas facing doctors, shuster holds them accountable for upholding normative understandings of gender essentialism. This beautifully rendered story of medical improvisation and the search for professional credibility will be of great interest to readers of transgender studies, medical sociology, and the sociology of knowledge. ~Arlene Stein, author of Unbound: Transgender Men and the Remaking of Identity

Trans Medicine is original, empirically rich, and beautifully written. shuster masterfully integrates a wide range of data with a nuanced theoretical story of power, control, and medical regulation. This is truly an urgently needed study that is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of gender, sexuality, bodies and embodiment, and healthcare. ~Georgiann Davis, author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis

A powerful examination of the history and present of medical providers seeking to 'treat gender.' Demonstrating how uncertainty unsettles the relationship between expertise, evidence, and clinical decision-making, Trans Medicine illuminates the path to a more inclusive, gender-affirming health care system. ~Rene Almeling, author of GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health

shuster...expertly documents how the medical field as often failed trans patients...[Trans Medicine] successfully makes the case that trans medicine should be part of the medical training of all physicians…This well-researched book is eminently readable and, in fact, quite a page-turner. It is an essential story, one that is not yet complete, as shuster acknowledges. A must-read. ~Library Journal

Trans Medicine is remarkable for the way in which shuster captures health care providers speaking and acting with exceptional candor about what they think and feel about working with trans populations. ~Danya Lagos - University of California, Berkeley, American Journal of Sociology

Overall, shuster’s book is an engaging exploration of the histories of trans medicine with an emphasis on health care administration and politics…Trans Medicine holds immense value for medical school and continuing education programs and would promote fruitful dialog about inclusive, accountable, and just health care practices. ~Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Sociologist Stef M. Shuster’s Trans Medicine is a unique monograph that combines historical analysis with ethnography. ~Bulletin of the History of Medicine