
Stef ShusterMichigan State University | MSU · Lyman Briggs College
Stef Shuster
Doctor of Philosophy
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30
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Publications
Publications (30)
This letter responds to a letter by Moti Gorin in the same issue, September‐October 2024, of the Hastings Center Report .
Amidst the misinformation climate about trans people and their health care that dominates policy and social discourse, autonomy‐based rationales for gender‐affirming care for trans and nonbinary youth are being called into question. In this commentary, which responds to “What Is the Aim of Pediatric ‘Gender‐Affirming’ Care?,” by Moti Gorin, we cont...
Using a novel dataset of 590M messages by 21M users, we present the first large-scale examination of the behavior of likely Bernie supporters on Twitter during the 2020 U.S. Democratic primaries and presidential election. We use these data to dispel empirically the notion of a unified, stereotypical Bernie supporter (e.g., the “Bernie Bro”). Instea...
Though it is vital to attend to oppression and inequality, telling stories about trans joy helps scholars, trans people, and the public understand the full complexity of trans people’s lived experiences. Noticing, nurturing, and celebrating joy is a vital form of resistance for marginalized communities.
Drawing on archival materials from the Kinsey Institute, including letters of correspondence between medical professionals and transgender people during the 1950s–1970s, this article demonstrates how scientific and medical communities selectively employed old and new eugenics in their work with trans patients seeking hormonal and/or surgical interv...
This article examines the distribution of self-reported mental health conditions and clinical
contact among incarcerated transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals compared to
cisgender women and men. Data are derived from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI).
Results indicate that TGD respondents report more mental health symptoms, condit...
This article examines the distribution of self-reported mental health conditions and clinical contact among incarcerated transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals compared to cisgender women and men. Data are derived from the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates. Results indicate that TGD respondents report more mental health symptoms, conditions,...
We examine the consequences of rapid organizational change on high and low-status healthcare workers (HCWs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 25 interviews, we found that rapid change can create a sense of social disorder by exacerbating the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic, crystallizing the lack of training to deal with crisis, and u...
Joy is a crucial element of people’s everyday lives that has been understudied by sociologists. This is particularly true for scholarship about transgender people. To address what we term a joy deficit in sociology, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with trans people in which they were asked what they find joyful about being trans. Their responses...
Despite growing research on false information, a theoretical framework to organize findings is lacking. We use affect control theory to fill this need and introduce the affect-based credibility rating for interpreting the effectiveness of rhetorical strategies in discrediting the source of falsehoods. The rating quantifies the difference in connota...
Research on the social dimensions of health and health care among sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) has grown rapidly in the last two decades. However, a comprehensive review of the extant interdisciplinary scholarship on SGM health has yet to be written. In response, we offer a synthesis of recent scholarship. We discuss major empirical findings...
Previous scholarship shows that cisgender women are more likely to have confidants than cisgender men and that the latter are more likely to have confidants outside the family and keep spheres (e.g., friends versus family) separate. Growing evidence shows these confidant patterns shift in older age. A common though untested explanation for these pa...
Background: In common with other service-oriented occupations, teaching is a profession that requires employees to engage in emotional labour. In order to perform their day-to-day roles effectively, teachers are expected to manage and utilise their emotions in nuanced ways, with a high degree of control. As research suggests a complex relationship...
Using in-depth interviews with forty transgender people, I explore “discursive aggression,” a term for the communicative acts used in social interaction to hold people accountable to social- and cultural-based expectations, and subsequently to reinforce inequality in everyday life. I show how these interactional affronts restore social order, are b...
We present a methodological innovation for analyzing archival data that involves the framing strategies from the failed 1980 Iowa Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). First, we conducted an archival analysis that suggested that pro-ERA groups used “frame resonance,” a strategy prominent in the social movement literature where activists align issues with i...
To alleviate uncertainty in the specialized field of transgender medicine, mental and physical healthcare providers have introduced the rhetoric of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in clinical guidelines to help inform medical decision making. However there are no diagnostic tests to assess the effectiveness of transgender medical interventions and no...