William J Robertson
Handbook of Medical Humanities, ed. Alan Bleakley
Publication year: 2019

Heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality have been and continue to be articulated through the knowledge and expertise provided by science and medicine; at the same time, knowledge production in science and medicine is shaped by broader cultural ideas about gender and sexuality. While much remains to be learned about the role of gender and sexuality in clinical practice, biomedical knowledge production, and disease experience, recent scholarship in the social sciences demonstrates how medical education and practice come to (re)produce heteronormativity, which potentially negatively impacts the experiences of sexual/gender minorities in clinical settings. As LGBT health disparities are becoming constituted as a field of academic inquiry, there is a critical need for social scientific and humanistic insights into the complex interactions among science, medicine, and heteronormativity. This chapter examines this emerging body of literature and offers suggestions for overcoming the enactment of heteronormativity through medicine.