ABSTRACT
Our understanding of gender identity and how it is expressed and communicated is essential to the effectiveness of healthcare interactions. The health-care context demands a greater consideration of the impact of gendered communication because the interactions can affect a patient's health and healing. Although there has been a gradual embracing of the fluidity of gender with gay, lesbian, and trans identities, there is still a need for more knowledge, greater sensitivity, and more acceptance of the complex and gendered lived experiences. This chapter focuses on the challenging gendered interactions women, men, and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community encounter during the illness experience. In the review for each group, the authors also highlight a type of experience that more significantly impacts that group than the others: for women, the chapter highlights an overemphasis on maternal health and the delegitimization of pain; for men, the stigma of mental illness; and for the LGBTQ community, ignorance surrounding health needs, and the lack of LGBTQ-friendly spaces. Then, the chapter highlights strategies that patients and practitioners can take to cope with, manage, or resist dominant structures that sustain prejudicial and harmful gendered communication. The chapter ends with suggestions for areas of future research in this field.
