On January 28, 2025, WRD faculty, students, and staff gathered in Arts & Letters Hall to hear Dr. V. Jo Hsu, Associate Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Writing and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, present “The Story Begins with a Sundering: On Narratives of Medical Uncertainty.” This illuminating talk explored transgender and disability medical narratives and was followed by a thought-provoking Q&A.
Dr. Hsu began by explaining that narratives shape how we understand ourselves and our experiences while bound up in a shared world. “We are tethered to narrative threads,” they noted, emphasizing that this would not be a problem “if the metaphor were not a thing I had to survive.” They unpacked how transgender people are often pathologized, and how the model minority myth affects Asian/American communities. Viewing stories as both object and method, Dr. Hsu explored how the ways we talk about our experiences can be both a problem and a solution.
“We are tethered to narrative threads,” they noted, emphasizing that this would not be a problem “if the metaphor were not a thing I had to survive.”
Dr. V Jo Hsu
One striking example they provided was the concept of “worthwhile pain”—the idea that transgender people are only deemed persuasive when they’re suffering or dead. This concept is evident in how suicide statistics are often used as the primary argument for why transgender individuals deserve healthcare. While suicide rates do demonstrate that transgender people need gender affirming healthcare, framing the argument in this way sidesteps a more fundamental truth: transgender people deserve healthcare simply because they are people.
Dr. Hsu pointed out that the issue isn’t just the narrative itself, but how narratives shape public perception and policy. One example they shared was of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), a chronic illness that causes extreme fatigue. Because affluent white women were the demographic with the most means to seek treatment and get a diagnosis for this ill-understood illness, ME was dismissed as “yuppie flu” by doctors. These doctors bought into sexist narratives about the women who were able to seek treatment, believing the illness to be a fabricated hysteria. This hysteria narrative led to a lack of funding and understanding of the condition, demonstrating how harmful stories can become embedded in medical discourse.
To further illustrate how narratives function rhetorically, Dr. Hsu applied Toulmin’s Model of Argumentation, explaining that the warrant—the unstated assumption underlying an argument—is often where bias sneaks in. Because warrants rely on “common sense,” they frequently reinforce dominant ideologies. This “common sense” bias is why psychiatric diagnoses are rhetorically disabling. Whether it’s transgender individuals being pathologized through gender dysphoria diagnoses, ME patients dismissed as hysterical, or any marginalized group forced to medicalize their experiences to gain access to care, psychiatry can be weaponized, turning the patient’s own narrative against the patient. Weaponized psychiatry can have disastrous effects. Dr. Hsu referenced drapetomania, a now-discredited pseudoscientific diagnosis that once framed enslaved people’s attempts to escape as a mental illness. This example underscores how pathologization can be used to rationalize oppression.
Dr. Hsu also highlighted how stories do not only fill gaps in knowledge but also create an interpretive space where people make sense of the unknown. This sense-making space extends beyond medicalization and into rhetoric as a whole. Dr. Hsu explained how the far-right’s use of “cancel culture” and “woke hysteria” serve as rhetorical tools. By framing social justice movements as contagious and irrational forces, these narratives strip credibility from those advocating for change.
Yet, for all the harm stories can do, they can also be a means of resistance. Dr. Hsu emphasized that rhetoric has the power to disrupt pathologization by placing narratives side by side, making connections visible, and therefore challenging the “common sense” notions of illness. For instance, tracing how transgender people are pathologized to access healthcare reveals how societal structures, such as insurance policies, are not fixed but shaped by the narratives that sustain them. Rather than seeking only structural change, Dr. Hsu suggests that reshaping cultural narratives can be an equally powerful form of intervention.
By critically examining the stories we tell—the ones we accept as truth—we can begin to dismantle the systems that marginalize and exclude.
Learn more about Dr. V Jo Hsu by visiting their website and stay up to date with future WRD events by checking out Events on the WRD Blog.