When you are too fat to be trans

What happens if you combine fat-shaming with transphobia? Well, In Norway trans women may be dismissed by the only health clinic providing relevant surgery if they do not live up to their ideal BMI (a body mass index below 30). Indeed, an overweight trans person will be thrown out even if they do not ask for surgery.

In an article in the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen ( Google translation) Carina Elisabeth Carlsen and Karoline Skarstein write that being overweight has been turned into a moral problem. You are are accused of not having control over our own body and size:

Body weight becomes a barometer of how much respect society wants to give us.

The gender incongruence clinic at the Oslo University Hospital (Rikshospitalet) argues that the results from the support they give will not be very “aesthetically pleasing” if one is fat. Again we see how the prejudices of gate keepers in the health system can stop trans people from the care they need and deserve.

As Carlsen and Skarstein point out in the article transgender people are a high-risk group for developing eating disorders, which in many cases means gaining weight. You should not punish trans people for something that is caused by their gender dysphoria. Moreover, the BMI is not a good system for measuring health, anyway, so why stick to such a regime?

My guess it that these doctors are stuck in the old mindset where all trans people are to “pass” perfectly in a binary world — i.e. they are to present in such a way that they become invisible as trans people. They are to fit the current beauty ideals — as defined by the fashion, media, the entrainment industry, sports and the health system — and they are to fit them perfectly.

It is hard enough to “pass” as a good cis woman, so one might imagine what this is like for a transgender woman.

Over at Instagram Carlsen writes that this is the most important article she has written:

Being fat is difficult enough in itself — you experience discrimination, micro-aggression, agitation, and so on. But the more intersections you cross (very briefly explained what norms you break, or where you are on the ladder of rank in society, structurally), the worse it gets.

This means that it is difficult to be a woman and fat, but you experience even more challenges (at least structurally) if you also have a disability, are melanin-rich or — as we have written about — are transgender.

Karoline Skarstein is a Norwegian transgender activist and sociology student, while Carina Elisabeth Carlsen is a fat activist with a master’s degree in empowerment and health promotion work, as well as further education in fat studies. Photos of Carlsen (left) and Skarstein (right) from Dagsavisen.

See also: “What Transphobic Norwegian Doctors can Teach Us about the Diversity of Transgender People”

Originally published at https://trans-express.lgbt.