ABSTRACT
The voices of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) people who have experienced dietetics, as students, interns, and dietitians, have rarely been heard. Particularly the experiences of trans people, who have lived through dietetic education, and are currently some of the most marginalized voices in cisheteronormative and LGBTQIA+ spaces. Exploring and understanding the lived experiences of trans people in dietetics is essential to identifying discourses, assumptions, and taken-for-granted cultural norms of the dietetics profession, as well as how these impact LGBTQIA+ people. This chapter aims to shine a light on the perspectives and lived experiences of queer/trans people who have gone through dietetic education and training using a collaborative autoethnographic conversation. This conversation highlights the personal experiences of the authors, three trans people who have been students in dietetic education, in addition to a critical discussion about those experiences, to expose dominant discourses of dietetics, as a self-sustaining, cisheteronormative, white supremacist, classist, and oppressive system that functions to promote and uphold rigid, binary knowledge in the minds and bodies of its practitioners and clients. During our conversation, we explored topics such as the binary conceptualization of health, food, and bodies represented in dietetics, the morality of food and bodies, the subjugation of alternative ways of thinking and being within dietetics, and ultimately how these constructed knowledges live in the bodies of questioning, trans, and queer people exposed to it. Finally, and in contrast to narratives about trans people as primarily vulnerable victims, we offer a new narrative of resistance and potential in trans people’s knowledge as guideposts to excavating subjugated knowledge in dietetics, reframing and offering alternative ways of engaging with food, bodies, and health beyond the binary.
