Konstruera din egen identitet eller konstrueras in i en: En textanalys av hur myndigheter talar om transpersoner

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyse how government agencies in Sweden talk about transgender people. Since the way trans people are represented heavily affects the wellbeing of this group of people, it is of great value to study how government agencies handle this. The wishes and needs for medical transition processes among people in this group are common, which due to the need of a diagnosis to access health care will put them in contact with government agencies. The focus of this study will therefore be on government agencies that are involved in and share information about health care and possible transition processes. Two agencies will be examined using documents and informative texts from their websites, which will be compared to a best-practice model, as well as the bio-power theory of Michel Foucault and the heterosexual matrix theory from Judith Butler. The results of the analysis show that while the government agencies fulfill some of the requirements the best-practice recommendations set up, they fail to do so on others. In some aspects the informative texts and documents move away from the assumptions that the heterosexual matrix entails, while in other areas the matrix is still firmly in place. The bio-power theory also shows while the analyzed material explicitly says that anyone have the right define their own gender, the practices of evaluation and diagnosis say the opposite.