Understanding the Role of Gender Congruence and Affirming Care in Trans Men’s Body Image and Quality of Life
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Trans men face unique challenges related to gender congruence, body satisfaction, and quality of life (QoL). While research highlights the importance of these factors for transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals, little is known about how they intersect to influence specific QoL domains (e.g., physiological, psychological, social, and environmental) for trans men. Understanding these relationships is critical to developing interventions that support their well-being. Method: This cross-sectional study recruited 166 trans men aged 18–30 from Global North countries with universal healthcare systems. Participants completed measures of gender congruence, body satisfaction, and QoL. A serial mediation model tested the associations between these constructs, controlling for age and satisfaction with gender transition. Exploratory analyses examined the role of gender-affirming care (e.g., hormones, chest surgery) in these relationships. Results: Gender congruence was positively associated with body satisfaction and QoL across physiological, psychological, and environmental domains but not social QoL. Body satisfaction was associated with physiological and psychological QoL but not social or environmental QoL. Gender congruence indirectly influenced QoL through body satisfaction in specific domains. Gender-affirming care improved gender congruence and indirectly enhanced body satisfaction. Conclusions: Findings underscore the importance of gender congruence in shaping body satisfaction and QoL for trans men, highlighting its mediating role in the benefits of gender-affirming care. Interventions should prioritise fostering gender congruence and addressing body image concerns to enhance trans men’s well-being across multiple life domains.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".