Ett ögonblick av queer i vården

A queer moment in care. Although the perspective of caring sciences propose to cover the suffering of patients as well as humanistic aspects of caring relationships its theoretical frame lacks assumptions connected gender and sexuality. From a starting point of a concrete caring situation within the context of psychiatric care this autobiographic study makes shortcomings within the theoretical frame of caring sciences obvious. The shortcomings are related to issues of instability of gender, gender performances and heteronormativity as for granted taken assumptions. The situation concerns an encounter between me as a nurse and a patient who experienced himself as both a man and a woman. By means of queer theories, aspects of what happened in the situation are interpreted. Queer theoretical concepts such as the binary heterosexual matrix, gender instability, performativity, and subversive performativity are penetrated in relation to the caring situation. It is suggested that in order to develop and complement the theoretical frame of caring sciences the perspective of queer should be used.