"An (Im)patient population": Waiting experiences of transgender patients at healthcare services in Buenos Aires

Abstract

Waiting time, considered as an indicator, has been used to measure the quality of health services. Up until now, waiting periods have been analysed mostly quantitatively in order to generate policies to reduce these time periods (Siciliani et al. 2014; Aday and Andersen 1974). Quantitative analysis is certainly valuable, but we are interested here in a qualitative examination of waiting experiences as a way to approach the relationships of power, its dynamics and subjects implicated. We consider waiting as a social relationship that involves, at least, two subjects: one who is waiting, and the other, who is waited or produces that wait (Pecheny 2017). Thus, this chapter aims to examine how multiple structures of power intersect in waiting experiences and how they have a distinct significance for transgender patients. In Argentina, the transgender community has endured a long history of violence, discrimination and exclusion, including lack of access to comprehensive healthcare which has been one of their most prominent demands (Berkins and Fernández 2005; Berkins 2007; Red LACTRANS 2014; ATTTA and Fundación Huesped 2014). However, some changes have occurred in recent years. Following the civil marriage reform of 2010, 1 a progressive Gender Identity Law was voted in 2012. 2 This law guarantees universal and free-of-charge access to hormonal and surgical procedures as well as legal recognition of self-perceived gender identity for transgender individuals. These changes in legislation and policies opened up a new scenario for the relationship between transgender individuals and healthcare services, historically marked by exclusion and symbolic persecution towards the trans community. Thereby, this chapter analyses the experience of waiting in healthcare services taking into account this new context. We will argue that the biomedical and ‘cis’3 shaped gaze present in healthcare services—as part of a context of historical, social and institutional exclusion—contributes to the production of a different temporality in the transgender waiting experience.