Lives made viable: trans possibilities and regulation in the context of Mexican mental healthcare institutions

Abstract

This thesis project explores the regulation of trans people’s bodies and trans possibilities. Specifically, I follow some of the existing trans studies literature and explore the role that mental healthcare institutions in Mexico play in this regulation; how these institutions make viable only certain forms of (trans)gendered existence; how, consequently, might they enact and regulate gender norms. To explore this issue, I conducted seven semi-structured interviews with trans people who have experienced using mental healthcare services in Mexico. Further, I borrowed selected elements of auto-ethnography to complement my analysis with personal reflections on my developing experience seeking public mental healthcare support in Aguascalientes. These different elements helped me produce a more in-depth analysis of the subject: offering different layers and forms of data to explore the topic at hand. To carry out my analysis, I used a variety of tools (voice recordings, interview transcripts, Atlas.ti, written memos, and interview summaries) to see how trans people’s experiences using mental healthcare services in Mexico relate to or contrast parts of the broader trans studies literature. With this thesis, I develop our understanding of how mental healthcare institutions foreclose the possibility of what may be unexpected and creative ways of being. Moreover, how these institutions, through certain regulatory practices, work to enact and maintain gender norms. As I argue henceforth, I believe that understanding these regulatory practices is important because they are some of the means through which an entire political, economic, and cultural gender structure is maintained.