Social support networks within transgender Facebook groups: facing a “therapeutic shield” in France.
Résumé
This presentation aims to analyze the information-sharing behaviors and types of social support among users of French non-mixed trans Facebook groups. We used a mixed methodology. First, our national survey (N = 405) reveals that the different uses of these groups (information retrieval, emotional support, etc.) vary according to the age and education levels of the trans users, or according to their progress on the transition pathways. It also highlights the importance of the Facebook groups in their support networks and, more precisely, in the way they can access to information-sharing relative to the medical part of the transition pathways (THS, surgeries, etc.). For example, trans people report that 27,4 % of the relationships of their social support networks were met via a social media and 56 % of those who have accomplished a top surgery used trans Facebook groups as the main source of information on this step. Secondly, we perform a lexical analysis of the messages (N = 70,488) posted in a sample of 24 trans’ Facebook groups, since 2013, in order to identify the main topics of discussion. This analysis leads us to emphasize the diversity of social support provided by trans people in these groups: information on transition pathways, medical advices, emotional support, etc. These findings lead us to minimize the benefits of institutional support (care protocols, health professionals, etc.) provided by the doctors and the French medical institutions. They suggest, on the other hand, that trans people organize themselves to avoid the difficulties related to the way these medical institutions manage the transition pathways. Trans people use Facebook to bypass this “French therapeutic shield” by sharing information or support in order to create a safe space. This allowing themselves to make gender-related choices more autonomously, by the sharing of medical expertise on the transition pathways and by using an ethic of care in order to favor intimate confessions and the evocation of the mental health issues.