Evan Taylor will have a dissertation defence at 12:30 PM on Tuesday, August 6, 2019 in Room 200 of the Graduate Student Centre (6371 Crescent Road).
All are welcome to attend.
Supervisory Committee:
Dr. Mary Bryson (LLED),
Dr. Blye Frank (EDST),
Dr. Sally Thorne (Nursing)
Examiners:
External Examiner: Dr. Ann Travers (Simon Fraser University)
University Examiners: Dr. Lisa Loutzenheiser (EDCP) and Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc (Nursing)
Defence Chair: Dr. Emma Cunliffe (Law)
Title: Cancer’s Margins: Sexual and Gender Marginality and the Biopolitics of Knowledge
Abstract:
Research in Canada and the United States indicates consistent health disparities among sexual and/or gender minority populations, including cancer health disparities. The Cancer’s Margins project (www.lgbtcancer.ca) is likely the first nationally-funded project to investigate the complex intersections of sexual and gender marginality and experiences of cancer-related health, treatment, support networks, and decision-making. The Cancer’s Margins database includes 121 interviews with sexual and/or gender minority breast and/or gynecologic cancer patients and members of their support networks across Canada, as well as pilot interviews in the San Francisco Bay area. As part of Cancer’s Margins, the research in this dissertation examines sexual and/or gender minority breast and/or gynecologic cancer patients’ experiences, access to knowledge, knowledge mobilization, and the organization of cancer care systems.
Where approaches to “LGBT health” or “SGM health” have subsumed transgender and other gender diverse people into a general LGBT umbrella or less helpfully, as an aspect of minority sexuality, this dissertation—by contrast—examines sexual marginality and gender marginality intersectionally. The analysis in this dissertation takes into account the biopolitical context of the production of identity, knowledge regimes, and sexuality and gender.
This dissertation provides a qualitative analysis that documents and analyzes how different bodies of knowledge shape complex intersectional relationships between marginalization, gender and sexuality, and experiences of cancer-related health and decision- making. The research findings reported here provide evidence that the assemblages of cancer care and treatment systems are informed by and reinforce normative modes—heteronormative, cisnormative, homonormative, and repronormative—of sexuality, gender, and embodiment.
Findings also suggest the importance of population-specific cancer knowledge for sexual and/or gender minority breast and/or gynecologic cancer patients and the key role of communitarian and experiential knowledge in treatment decision-making by marginalized patients. Additionally, these findings suggest that understanding the illness narratives of sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients requires an analysis that takes into account distinct generational cohorts of knowledge related to sexuality and gender, and the production of identity and marginalization.
To ameliorate population health equity disparities, cancer care environments need to account for diverse intersectional models of identity and embodiment. By analyzing the systems of biomedical knowledge and biographical knowledge that inform cancer patients, providers, and regimes, this dissertation contributes new evidence that can undergird culturally-specific and culturally-effective cancer care and practice with sexual and/or gender minority cancer patients.