Transformations in Queer, Trans, and Intersex Health and Aging

Alexandra “Xan” C.H. Nowakowski is assistant professor in geriatrics and behavioral sciences & social medicine at the Florida State University College of Medicine.J.E. Sumerau is associate professor and the director of applied sociology at the University of Tampa.Nik M. Lampe is doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of South Carolina.

• IntroductionChapter 1: You’re Rubber, I’m Glue: Navigating Changing Meanings of Safe Sex with Cystic FibrosisChapter 2: Rejecting Simplicity in Favor of Embracing the Complexity of Multifaceted Health and AgingChapter 3: Making Sense of Healthy Embodiment After Realization of Intersex StatusConclusionsMethodological AppendixBibliography

Authors Nowakowski, Sumerau, and Lampe use autoethnography to illuminate the lived experience, health, and aging of queer, trans, and intersex individuals by detailing their challenges to seeking health care and navigating life and love. One chapter asks what sexuality means for one with cystic fibrosis (CF) and focuses on navigating safe sex and health care. Challenges include the stigma of chronic illness, the myth that aging involves losing sexuality, and the desexualization of disability. That chapter details how society may view someone with CF as "gross" and as hypervigilant to prevent genital and urinary infections during sex. A broader exploration of sexuality across life for previously desexualized groups is also needed. The second author highlights the impact of socioeconomic status and race on health care and the need for new models of health in the context of chronic illness, sexuality, or injury. She explores the life transformations of being assigned male at birth and using off-market female hormones, and painfully recalls being punished for referring to herself as female. The third author describes how learning of their intersex traits in young adulthood ushered the exploration of non-binary life. This is essential reading for health-care professionals and students of sexuality. Essential. All levels.