Ensuring an inclusive, trans-led future for the field of trans health

Historically, research in the field of trans health has been fraught because it has predominantly adopted what Tuck (Citation2009) refers to as a ‘damage centered approach’, which is often pathologizing. Damage centered research has typically focused on trans people as a marginalized group, emphasizing poor physical or mental health outcomes, and has overlooked the strengths of trans people. This damage centered framing is predominantly written from the gaze of cisgender researchers, leading to non-neutrality in terms of how trans people are described to experience the world and our bodies. Pathologizing research has blamed trans people for any challenges faced, either by depicting being trans itself as a pathology, by failing to recognize the harms caused by cisgenderist healthcare systems, or by reinforcing harmful rhetorics that devoids trans people of our full humanity. Moreover, trans health research has often failed to adequately account for contextual factors like ableism, classism, and racism in addition to cisgenderism. Although taking a comprehensive intersectional focus by addressing the interlocking nature of all systemic and social forces which simultaneously privilege and oppress along lines of social difference is not required in every individual piece of trans health research, authors are encouraged to consider the diversity of experiences within and among trans communities when planning research for submission to the International Journal of Transgender Health.