"An (Im)Patient Population": Waiting Experiences of Transgender Patients at Healthcare Services in Buenos Aires

TISEYRA, MARÍA VICTORIA ; MORCILLO, SANTIAGO; ORTEGA, JULIAN ; PECHENY, MARIO; GALVEZ, MARINE

Immobility and Medicine Exploring Stillness, Waiting and the In-Between

Palgrave Macmillan

Año: 2021; p. 61 - 83

The experience and periods of waiting has mainly been described negatively and analyzed quantitatively. Despite the recognition and value of these kind of studies, however, within this chapter we focused on a qualitative approach to explore and analyze waiting experiences that transgender patients undergo in order to access to Argentinean public health services. This exploratory investigation is based on in-depth interviews with transgender patients, doctors who serve this community, and observations in two large public hospitals in Buenos Aires.In order to reach a deeper understanding of significant elements and dimensions of that experience, we analyzed the transgender interviewees' narrative descriptions of the "scenes" of waiting. Scenes, as Vera Paiva (2012) points out, allow us to understand the analysis of power dynamics between subjects and institutions. Therefore, this chapter aims to show how the mainstream biomedical gaze in hospitals and gender inequalities inform the waiting experience of transgender people in public healthcare facilities creating different temporalities.