Care Power: Images of Medical Authority in Gender-Nonconforming Graphic Memoirs

Often, graphic memoirs about gender-nonconforming experiences depict encounters with healthcare, not as isolated events but as recurring moments affecting how identity is lived. Drawing from disability, gender, and comics studies, this presentation examines how healthcare operates as a form of cultural and institutional authority in graphic memoirs depicting gender-nonconforming experiences. It focuses on the ambivalent role of medical care as both enabling and constraining trans identity formation. By foregrounding healthcare as an everyday instrument of authority embedded within trans narratives, this presentation contributes to broader discussions of power, institutions, and queer experience.