Before we begin, a content warning: This presentation is about the online experiences
of trans people with eating disorders.
We discuss eating disorders, related content and practices, and gender dysphoria.
View with caution.
CSCW has long been interested in how online spaces impact users with eating disorders
From examining the types of eating disorder content that people engage with
to cataloging and combating the harms that overzealous moderation systems can impose
around this kind of content Most work on eating disorders in the CSCW
space depicts people with eating disorders who participate
online as a homogenous population and focuses primarily on the experiences of
cisgender women However, eating disorders can impact anyone,
regardless of gender and regardless of if a person is cisgender
or transgender To better account for the ways gender shapes
engagement with online eating disorder content and spaces
we interviewed 14 transgender and nonbinary users
with eating disorders Participants included trans men,
trans women, nonbinary people,
transfeminine nonbinary people, and transmasculine nonbinary people
With a wide range of experiences with eating disorders
and disordered eating practices Participants were invited to choose their
own psuedonyms At a high level, we saw trans users engaging
with eating disorder content such as thinspiration, - or content that is specifically intended
to inspire eating disorders- in a way that sometimes shapes how trans people
understand and set transition goals.
For our participants, this type of content wasn’t really about promoting an eating
disorder specifically but rather about setting reference points
for one’s own gender presentation and sometimes gendered body transformation
For example, Florence, a trans woman, told us that thinspiration shows her how she
has “room to improve” her body: “A lot of [my eating disorder] is fueled
by gender dysphoria and being unhappy with my body
and my appearance and — I guess I’ve tied the idea of being skinny
to what being a beautiful woman is.”
Other participants, like Skeletor, who is nonbinary, went further:
Skeletor talked about “binge[ing] on trans / [female to male] / man thinspo”
as a reference point, but also started to see this content and the spaces
it’s in as a guide to technique:
." . . I realized that I could just join [eating disorder community] and be extremely restrictive.[.
. . ] I started eating less and less.
And then the weight actually came off because I restricted the amount of eating
to ridiculously small portions.
And then I started doing things like going on to [eating disorder community].
Looking at thinspo and then I was like,
“I could look like that if I tried hard enough.”
Despite the guiding role we find eating disorder content can play,
Our participants were clear – online eating disorder spaces regularly center cis women
And therefore hold cis feminine experiences with eating disorders as a default
And cis feminine bodies as an ideal model This leaves anyone who does not fit that ideal
model of experiences in a marginal position
However, we found there were important differences in how that marginal existence plays out
Based on gender And specifically the distance between one’s
own gender and the assumed default of cis woman
For transfeminine people, these spaces are mixed:
As Florence told us, They can make transfems feel like “one of
the girls” But that only goes so far – the femininity
is something transfems relate to, But there is still an absence of content that
specifically speaks to the trans in transfeminine As another participant, Rose, told us,
This often stems from a strict focus on one, hyperspecific type of cis feminine body:
“I think that I get really frustrated when like 90% of the content I see is one body
type, when like I’m actively trying to be in recovery
And I think that really affects, you know, someone who’s trans, who has a
— not out of reach body shape for a woman.
And, so, that constant bombardment definitely reinforces a lot of gender dysphoria
which, in turn, reinforces a lot of the disordered eating.”
While transfems aren’t completely distant from the assumed cis femme identity,
Rose’s story shows us how even distance on one dimension – transness
can prompt gender dysphoria and disordered eating
For nonbinary and transmasculine people, there’s even more distance from the default
with distance between both cis and trans identity and distance between fem and masc identities
That additional distance creates room for serious threats to their own sense of identity,
as Eli, a transmasculine nonbinary participant, recounted:
"You see different posts that people make, and they say,
“Do you ladies relate,” or just things like that.
And it can just feel very like, ‘Oh, okay.
If I have an eating disorder, I must be a woman.
here’s another thing you have in common with women, you know?”
In fact, this goes beyond threats to one’s sense of identity
and can even impact if one thinks their eating disorder is legimitate or not,
as Draken, a trans man, explained: “I would always think that I shouldn’t
have an eating disorder because I’m a man.
You know, men don’t have eating disorders and stuff like that
If I have bulimia, then I obviously can’t be a man.
Or like a real man wouldn’t have this type of eating disorder.
So, maybe my eating disorder isn’t real or that I’m just like
— I don’t know.”
Regardless of one’s distance from the cis feminine norm,
Trans users still need to navigate these online eating disorder spaces
Despite the fact that this requires additional adaptation labor
One common strategy is manually curating one’s own online networks
So at least one feed provides the intersection of trans and eating
disorder content most of our participants are looking for
However, there are issues with this strategy: The tool used – usually search – sometimes
has its own limitations, as River, a nonbinary participant, explained:
“When I’d search for accounts to follow in the anorexia recovery tag
or like the eating disorder recovery tag.
It’s usually all cis gendered women, But, then, the nonbinary tag —
you have to search through a bunch of just posts about being nonbinary,
that’s not necessarily eating disorder related.”
Another common strategy is identity faceting Where one intentionally focuses on interpreting
and relating with content through the lens of a specific facet of one’s
identity, As Taylor, a nonbinary participant, explained:
“I have to cultivate a certain relationship with things that I see.
Where it’s like this is talking about female bodies, but also women,
so...
I see the female body part and have to purposefully kind of
carve myself out of the woman part of that.”
Taylor essentially mentally carves out and disregards the part of the content
that would potentially induce dysphoric feelings making the cis woman focused content
more useful and bearable Our findings point to three immediate design
implications to better support gender minorities in online
eating disorder spaces, and in other online spaces where gender makes
a big difference First, we advocate specifically designing
for life transitions in online eating disorder spaces
Ccnsidering our finding that eating disorder content can act as reference points
for one’s own gender presentation and transition, We suggest adding content into such user’s
feeds that provides trans-specific resources around
body dysmorphia, disordered eating, and gender dysphoria
in addition to the general resources some platforms currently provide
Moreover, we suggest that trans-specific recovery content be added to such users feeds
including content that specifically accounts for life transitions around gender
as for trans people, this content isn’t just about disordered eating
Second, we advocate designing for online curation that takes identity into account
and directly reflects and supports the identity faceting strategies our participants employ
Consider a system that uses simple tools such as upvote and downvote functionalities
to rank a user’s individual view of an online eating disorder space
allowing trans users to, over time communicate to the system that they prioritize
posts and comments which engage transness
and do not want to see posts that are too heavy on certain aspects of identity
that might cause harm through dysphoria or other means
Finally, we advocate designing for search One of the biggest problems our participants
discussed was the challenge of finding groups, communities,
and networks that are relevant for their specific identity
Consuming both trans content and eating disorder content isn’t enough
when what users need is content that integrates Gender and their eating disorder
We suggest that platforms invest in leveraging “and” functionality in more searches
especially hashtag searches to reflect the reality that many marginalized
users hold multiple relevant identities and truly serving such users means serving
their integrated identities, not only disparate facets
Using gender as an analytic lens, we have illustrated how the entanglement of
eating disorders and gender unfolds in online spaces,
shaping the ways people experience and interact with online eating disorder spaces.
There’s more detail in the paper, including dynamics in trans-specific eating
disorder spaces and reflections on eating disorder spaces
as social transition machinery.