Consider the following statement:
“I was born in the wrong body.”
When someone explains the transgender experience to a cisgender[1] person, most often this is the default schema. It is the language that has been used for a long, long time, and honestly, it is this model of explanation that gets used in medical and psychological spaces a great deal of the time. When a trans person goes to the therapist or the doctor with the realization that they are transgender, most often this is the language that gets taken seriously and is the catalyst for hormone treatment and more.
So, I will ask myself the question: Was I born in the wrong body?
...Maybe?
I want to maybe write this down here, explore this concept in a blog post, because this is the kind of thing that troubles me, keeps me awake at night, makes me do research into trans experiences, disabled experiences, and so much more. It is a question that generates quite a bit of discourse on social media spaces where trans people are active Twitter, Tumblr, certain corners of Facebook). Because what we are trying to explain when we say this phrase is the feeling of dysphoria, and not exactly a biological or psychological reality in which a brain transplant happened or a metaphysical switching of souls, as much as that might tickle the phantasmic part of our imaginations.
Dysphoria is a great many things, and “easy to define” is not one of them. It is a psychological issue, yes, but it is one of the more subtle and complex psychological and phenomenological sensations to try to encapsulate with the clumsy, fumbling pieces of the English language. One could look at the DSM-V for help, but doing so often medicalizes an issue, and can result in further stigmatization and alienation. Yet, and I say this very cautiously, it does have some helpful language regarding the experience of being transgender, and gives clues into the state of mind of a trans person. The symptoms, according to the American Psychiatric Association, are:
· A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
· A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
· A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
· A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
· A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
· A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)[2]
If you are going to be diagnosed as having gender dysphoria, you need to have at least 2, if not all, of those symptoms, and it needs to cause significant psychological distress, such as depression, anxiety, dissociation, and so forth. We lucky few with this strain of mental distress often encapsulate this constellation of symptoms to cis folks as “feeling like are a woman trapped in a man’s body,” or “a man trapped in a woman’s body,” because it is the easiest for a good many cis people to grasp.
But here’s the secret truth that many trans people share amongst ourselves, but rarely convey to people outside our circles: That isn’t actually what most of us feel like at all.
It isn’t. It might describe some of us accurately, to be sure! But certainly not all of us. It is clumsy language, a kind of sledgehammer approach to gender that is almost overkill in many ways. No, gender, gender expression, gender identity, much of it is so much more complex and resistant to clear and simple definitions. There is a reason that this is a meme that is often passed around the trans community:
And this is not us trying to be demeaning or anything! Please, do not be upset. Do not cancel me. Don’t tell the papers I’m canceled, please.
A trans person’s relationship to dysphoria is as complex and as varied as a person’s fingerprint. There are no people who have the same kind of feelings about their dysphoria, and we express it in different ways. Often you will find so many trans people are creative by nature and express themselves as a means to convey the feelings of dysphoria to others. Some do so through visual media, music, and game development. And then there’s me, who intellectualizes the whole thing and does philosophical writing about the whole endeavor, and frankly, I think that is probably the worst way to do it, because words are often so inept at capturing the actual experience of dysphoria.
There is a longstanding tradition of trans artists creating webcomics to try to convey it, even long before we realize we are trans. My current favorite of these is this one, belonging to Haus of Decline, who recently came out as a trans woman, and whose comics I have long enjoyed. This one captures just one aspect of the feeling of dysphoria, specifically the depersonalization and resulting dissociation that comes with the trauma of having dysphoria, a mercurial, dynamic thing that even when you grab a piece of it, dematerializes as soon as it is conveyed.
Source: https://x.com/hausofdecline/status/1777058408719400985
When I first saw this comic, I immediately resonated with it, even if I wouldn’t have even used the same words, images, or metaphors she did. But the combination of the three is truly a powerful tool for us in our self-conceptualization and self-conveyance to others that I simply had to share it with you, because it is so well done and so particularly common of trans people that even when we don’t feel exactly this way, it still resonates the same chord, the same frequency, we all vibrate at, if you get my drift.
But notice this is not about being in the wrong body. Indeed, she concedes that there is little outwardly, visibly wrong with her body. Yet even still, the disconnect with personhood, identity, and indeed, bodily experience and connection to other people, is eminently present.
I put it in my own words as this: I was not the person in the mirror. That person moved like me, and when I opened my mouth, noises came that I know are mine, but they didn’t feel like mine. The face I saw I knew was mine—logically, it had to be—but it did not belong to me. And so I depersonalized. I disconnected from my body for a long, long time. I saw my situation, shrugged, and thought, “I guess this is just the way it has to be.” It took much research, and many trans people’s testimonies, to help me understand that I was not alone in this feeling. That, even better, it did not have to be this way. That I could change it. That I could make my body, my self, mine. That I could reconnect my selfhood and my embodied experience. And so, I’m doing that. It takes time, effort, and a great deal of patience, but I am finally getting to where the person in the mirror is someone I enjoy looking at, one I feel connected to. And isn’t that what everyone wants, at some base level? To feel worthy of being seen as who you truly are? To see yourself as you wish to be?
And so, as much as anyone else, I constructed an ideal person in my mind and started to become her. I experimented with fashion and presentation. I got halfway-decent at make-up (I’ll have you know, I am told my eyeliner game is “on point”) and found a style of presentation and affect that I liked. I even came up with a name, one that suited me and felt natural enough to me that it was like breathing air for the first time.
I’m still discovering this person. It’s a joyful, terrifying journey.
But I want to go back to the original question:
Was I born in the wrong body?
Because there is another element of this that I have not yet broached and that is the other terribly confusing and subtle position of being not only transgender but also disabled. I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, a condition that results in a significant amount of chronic pain, exhaustion, and physical discomfort. Long before I found the transgender element to my being, I perceived and experienced the disabled part, because as difficult to ignore as my gender identity was, the disability was actually impossible to miss. I had severe pain every day. I went to physical therapy, and it was still there. I went to a rheumatologist, and they confirmed that yes, the pain is there, and it is consistent with other people’s diagnoses of fibromyalgia.
So was this yet another sign that I was born in the wrong body?
My fibromyalgia was triggered by a car accident, but it was latent and dormant within my body long before that. Most likely, it was genetic, and I was just the unlucky one in whose body it was triggered. That I experience profound discomfort and physical pain alongside a body that simply does not operate at the same level that most other people’s bodies do is incidental to how I got the diagnosis. In addition to that, I have a thyroid condition, and that also affects how my body operates. I have a laundry list of symptoms that point to all kinds of maladies, and all of it can be summed up as being disabled. When I sleep, I don’t actually feel well rested, despite not having sleep apnea (I’ve checked!). When I exercise one day, I often am completely worn out for the following two days or more.
I’ve thought phenomenologically about my disability for a long time, and have done quite a bit of research on how we both construct the concept of disability and explore the experience of being disabled. Jean-Paul Sartre famously explored the pain and experience of having migraines in the heyday of phenomenological philosophy, and his work lay a lot of the groundwork for explaining what having a disability is like to nondisabled people. But what I do find interesting—fascinating to say the least—is the fact that when we construct what it is to be disabled, you do not find people saying that they were born in the wrong body, even when they might have been born with a genetic impairment or disability. No, their body is truly theirs, despite the difference in ability and experience from conventionally able-bodied people.
So why is it that trans people wound up stuck with the “born in the wrong body” narrative? Is it a holdover from the “born this way” philosophy that was often pioneered and cited in the gay/lesbian community, just translated to trans people? Because that is a claim that is often in dispute and is wanting for evidence and proof. More likely, sexuality and gender are something that might be innately experienced but are also comprised of our individual experiences, traumas, and euphoric episodes. This is not to say that gender or sexuality is a CHOICE, mind you. No, rather, it is something that one simply has, that one embodies, that is done to us. Gender is a performative thing, and the more one does it, embodies it, and enacts it, the more it is often reciprocated and done to us. When one performs a gender, one expects to be similarly gendered in response—if someone refers to themselves as he, they often expect others to refer to them as he as well.
This, I think, is where disability studies can help. There is a struggle and tension within what are called models of disability, and the primary struggle between what is known as the medical model, and the social model. The medical model is one in which the impairment one has is the disability, and the goal of the model is to diagnose and treat the impairment to “solve” the problem. On the other hand, the social model says that society does the disabling of the person, and the barriers and impediments to one’s impairments are the problem, which can be solved through accommodation. It’s a fundamental shift of focus from subject-object to subject-subject.
So, with the social model, it is others who disable us, not us that bears the mark of “disabled.” Disabled, then, moves from an adjective to a verb, an action, and it is this shift of understanding that helps in a way to understand gender better. One can perform gender, and in response, be gendered. Transition can help alleviate the stress of being gendered incorrectly at birth, assigned a gender that does not align with how our minds perceive ourselves, and how the world perceives us.
This is NOT to say that being transgender is a disability—far from it. I need to say that clearly and plainly because I do not want to be misunderstood. Rather, I simply find a common similarity in how we construct disability and transgender identity and the functions of how the subjectivity and societal aspects of gender and disability are congruent in fascinating ways. Being both transgender and disabled, I find the resonances that harmonize within these fields of study quite fascinating, because it results in a profound difference in self-understanding and communicating that understanding.
So, to answer the question at the start, no. I was not born in the wrong body. My body is mine, and I am able to change the problems I have with it through treatment and effort. I also accept that I was made this way so that I might experience this growth, this change, this transition. I am disabled, and I am transgender, and both of these are value-neutral things. Beyond that, I choose to see them as blessings, because through them, my empathy with others has grown a thousandfold. I care for others more, and I hope others can learn to care for others more through me. These aspects are not my entire being, but they are important parts of my being, and the intersection of them within me has spurred me on to better self-understanding and self-conceptualization.
I was born in exactly the right body.
[1] Cisgender—one whose gender identity matches the one they were assigned at birth. Often just shortened to “cis.”
[2] “What Is Gender Dysphoria?,” https://www.psychiatry.org:443/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria.