Facial gender confirmation surgery—review of the literature and recommendations for Version 8 of the WPATH Standards of Care

Facial gender confirmation surgery (FGCS), also popularly known and referred to in the scientific literature as facial feminization surgery (FFS), was previously treated as a collection of aesthetic procedures complementing other aspects of gender-confirming surgery. Recent literature on quality-of-life outcomes following FGCS has supported the substantial impact these procedures have on overall well-being and reduction of psychosocial sequelae in patients. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care, Version 7 (WPATH SOC 7), did not deem FGCS a medical necessity. Based on these new studies, increasing evidence points to the need to include FGCS among medically necessary gender-confirming surgeries, though more-prospective studies are needed. Updates to the WPATH SOC 8 are proposed based on available quality of life studies.     

The feminization of psychology: data from South Africa

In many countries, women outnumber men in psychology, both as students and as professionals. Much of this information is drawn from Europe and the USA, and the information available about the situation in developing countries is a lot less detailed. The steady increase in the presence of women in psychology in South Africa is examined, via access to two large national databases and telephone interviews. These sources are the most reliable available, and are comprehensive enough to give a very good snapshot of women in psychology in this country over the last 12 years. The data indicate that psychology as a profession in South Africa is dominated by women. Although the applied practical aspects of the discipline attract women disproportionally, women are also over-represented in research psychology and academia (except at the professorial level). The racial composition of the profession remains skewed, with white psychologists in the majority. Although the data in this regard are incomplete, approximately 5% of registered psychologists are black. An examination of student enrolments suggests that this situation will continue in future, as women (and white students) enrol in much greater numbers for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. In 2002, 74% of psychology majors were women, and 78% of all Master's degrees in psychology were awarded to women. Thus it would appear that the feminization of psychology in this country is further advanced than in Europe and the USA. It is not a question of men abandoning the profession, but rather that women entered the profession at a much higher rate in recent years.     

‘Who Were the Experts?’ The Science of Love vs. Women's Knowledge of Love During the Spanish Dictatorship

During the most oppressive decades of National-Catholicism imposed by the Franco regime, scientific and medical expertise and knowledge were used to promote a particular form of heterosexual love that supported patriarchal normativity and notions of femininity. This ‘science of love’ represents two dispositifs of feminization that circulated through a range of scientific and medical knowledges (e.g. eugenics, ethology, physiology, neurosciences and psychiatry). It not only supported the internal coherence of science and medicine, but also supported particular forms of knowledge within the cultural context of National-Catholicism. Although the science of love was inspired by particular notions of romantic love, it was also contested by the daily and practical experiences of women. Different women in Franco's Spain deployed marginalized and subaltern knowledges as they orchestrated an emotional knowledge that was more emancipatory and useful for everyday amorous preoccupations and well-being than the one in medical and psychiatric texts. Women's discussions of love represented a key site and source of knowledge, an authentic repository of imaginative ideas that are also useful for the present to challenge patriarchal norms.