Center for Bioethics / Projects / Bioethics and Sexuality

The project on bioethics, sexuality, and gender identity

ABOUT THE PROJECT

There are many pressing ethical issues that lie at the intersection of gender identity, sexuality and bioethics. Persons who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning or intersex (LGBTQI) face myriad bioethics-related challenges in their encounters within the medical system, including: access to healthcare; patients’ rights; recognition of LGBTQI patient surrogates; the dilemmas of gay youth studies; pediatric treatment and decision-making; hetero-biased sex education; access to mental health resources; stereotyping; the stigmatizing of gay representations and classifications; third-party payer access and coverage for treatments and services; health insurance access for domestic partners; blood donation standards for same-sex sexually-active individuals, and exclusion from in clinical trials. While ethical issues sometimes differ across individual LGBTQI groups, their health care providers, and their care-givers, there remains the common theme of the considerable impact of sexuality and gender identity issues in healthcare access and treatment.

While there has been substantial scholarship in the neighboring fields of sexuality studies and gender studies in recent years, such work has addressed only a handful of these important bioethical concerns. In the field of bioethics, some targeted areas in this list have been given significant attention, while others have been largely neglected. More importantly, in both the medical humanities and bioethics fields, there have been few attempts to collate, unify, or create a distinct field of study that speaks to the union of bioethics, sexuality and gender identity. In fact, recent anthologies and encyclopedias in the bioethics field have omitted topics within this area, simply through failure to recognize the significance and value of this distinct field-not only for LGBTQI subjects, but also for bioethicists at large. In short, the intersection of bioethics with sexuality and gender identity remains largely uncharted terrain.

The Project on Bioethics, Sexuality, and Gender Identity, therefore, seeks to redress this by: demarcating a sub-field within bioethics that focuses exclusively on this interrelated set of issues; creating more visibility for and access to the important work that has already been done in both medical humanities and bioethics; highlighting the issues in this area that need scholarly attention; and taking the steps necessary to move the dialogue forward in bioethics and medical humanities.

INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM

In order to advance this emerging field, the Project draws on the expertise of scholars whose work has focused on these questions. To that end, we have created an international Consortium that includes medical humanities and bioethics scholars from North America and beyond (including leading scholars in Australia, UK, Israel, and beyond). The function of this Consortium is multi-faceted: to ensure that scholars already in that space are fully recognized for their pioneering and on-going work; to help articulate the important research questions that need to be addressed; to form the core faculty participants for the conference we host; and to contribute to the anthology that will begin to map out this new scholarly field.

Acknowledging the important work that has been done by non-professional scholars in bioethics and medical humanities, the international Consortium actively seeks the input of students (graduate and undergraduate) in its project. The participation of students not only recognizes the value of their scholarly contributions to this field (past and present), but also encourages future work in the field as these students’ careers in medical humanities and bioethics unfold.

Finally, given that academic and political work in the fields of sexuality and gender identity studies are often inseparable, the Consortium is committed to including the voices, input and contributions of community members whose queer activism engages these issues at the grassroots level.

FORTHCOMING ON-LINE

In the coming months, look for our new website for The Project on Bioethics, Sexuality, and Gender Identity, which will feature a central resource and repository for work in the fields of bioethics, sexuality, and gender identity including a searchable database for this literature. It will also house substantive content in the form of essays, blogs, video or audio recordings of colloquia, and more.

FUTURE PROJECTS AND OUTREACH

In addition to creating an international Consortium and an independent website that serves as the central resource of the field,, the Project on Bioethics, Sexuality, and Gender Identity will enhance this new field in the generation of a published anthology of canonical and original works of scholarship on the topics of sexuality and gender identity as they relate to bioethics. The Project also seeks to create training and curriculum models for clinicians to advance the understanding of LGBTQI issues in healthcare. Moreover, the project’s wider and long-ranging aims are to provide a foundation for those interested in both effecting clinical modules for the practice of medical treatment of LGBTQI patients and affecting policy-making standards on LGBTQI health matters.

CONTACT

For more information on The Project on Bioethics, Sexuality, and Gender Identity, or to inquire about joining the Consortium, contact Autumn Fiester at fiester@mail.med.upenn.edu

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