What are you thoughts on the expression 'X trapped in a Y's body'

[Medusa]

One of the reasons people always use the "trapped in the wrong body" line is that it is the accepted line by the gate keepers. It is the stock line people use with the medical community to get the gender correcting treatments we desire especially HRT.
If you say these words it triggers a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Exactly, when I try to descriebe it by my words I get bad diagnosis and take long time to change it  even when I was sure what I want 

[silly by the seashore]

Outside of a therapist's office, I don't really try to explain or justify why I'm trans to people. If asked, I simply tell them the truth, I felt like I should have been a girl for as long as I can remember and that's it. I feel that trying to give them too much information on the possible whys and wheretos and whatnots just complicates things. I've never really liked the whole "trapped in the wrong body" bit or the "I was always a female, just had a birth defect" thing either. I don't think most people need to understand something to accept it.

[Carbon]

Outside of a therapist's office, I don't really try to explain or justify why I'm trans to people. If asked, I simply tell them the truth, I felt like I should have been a girl for as long as I can remember and that's it. I feel that trying to give them too much information on the possible whys and wheretos and whatnots just complicates things. 

Yeah, I remember a few years ago trying to explain some stuff regarding disability and I kept getting asked questions about why things are the way they are, so I was like "Well here's how I view it, here are possible explanations," etc and basically all it got me was a bunch of hostility and an outright accusation of lying (because if I was telling the truth I supposedly would know the reasons 100% and they would supposedly be simple/straight forward).

I think the discussions about why things happen can be worthwhile but ultimately they are happening and people who and the people who are going to be willing to trust you and work with you don't need to understand everything before they do those things.

[bojangles]

I do feel like I am trapped in a woman's body. I'm working to correct it and be more comfortable with myself, but I will always feel like I drew the short straw.

Same here.

[Rita]

Its a good description that those on the outside can understand.  I was born with my mind, and I ws born with my body.  It just wasn't what it should of been hence transition and working towards looking, feeling and being read the way I should of been from day 1

-pinches my skin- but its the only body ive got, even if its not perfect.

[Sly]

I don't really feel that way, but I guess it's a good way to explain being transgender to someone who doesn't really understand it.  When I first told my old therapist I wanted to transition, she asked if I felt like I was "born in the wrong body."  She used those words, not me.  Before I started T I felt more like I was trapped in prepubescence, with some boobs tacked on.

[opheliaxen]

I think if the bulk of cis people weren't so closed minded about us we wouldn't have to dumb down our explanations of it.  Heck the fact we have to explain it all is weird.  No one asks them to explain their gender history.

Should be enough to just say "I dunno born this way I guess"

[FTMDiaries]

I think it has its uses but it doesn't make sense to a lot of cisgendered people because they just can't visualise what it means. So I use a slightly different analogy that is a bit easier for them to understand: weight. Because it's easier for a cisgendered person to understand feeling like a 'thin person trapped in a fat person's body'.

This is what I tell them: imagine you've been naturally thin all your life. You're a thin person, everybody sees you as a thin person, you wear thin people's clothing, and nobody thinks any less of your lifestyle choices or presumes them to be unhealthy. Society reinforces your perception of yourself as a thin person and because society prefers thin people, it sees you as being normal. So in your mind, as well as your body, you see yourself as being a normal, thin person.

But imagine you then fall ill or are prescribed medication that makes you unexpectedly balloon in weight. You still feel like a thin person inside because your mind still sees you that way; that's your identity and it always has been. But when you look in the mirror, you're shocked by what you see - all of a sudden your body doesn't match the thin person you know yourself to be. Suddenly, everyone else sees you as being a fat person. They presume you're lazy, they judge the food you purchase, they question your lifestyle choices.

But that's just not you, and you hate looking and being treated like something you're not. It makes you feel very uncomfortable. You can't change your mind to be happy with being an overweight person (because that's not who you are and you dislike being overweight) so your only choice is to fix what's gone wrong with your body. So you change your meds, you go on a diet, you join a gym, maybe you have some liposuction... and slowly but surely you bring your body back into line with how you see yourself so that you can be at peace living in a body and mind that match.

Can you picture that feeling? Of feeling like you're one thing, but having society treating you like something else because your body gives them an inaccurate picture?

Well, that's how I feel. Only I've always known I'm male, but the mirror and society sees something else; something that I've never felt inside. The only way of fixing that is to correct my body, because I can't change my mind. I'm working on fixing this, any way I can, so that I can be at peace living in a body and mind that match.

[sleepwalker]

^^^Very insightful way of explaining, I'll have to try that one out!

As many of you have said, it's clear that the "trapped" description is simplified so you can answer the question as quickly as possible when someone asks you "what does it mean to be transgender?" If I were speaking to somebody who had very little knowledge about the trans* community and gender identity in general, it seems like an explanation that people can sort of grasp. If you start explaining it in terms of dysphoria and not identifying with your body/the gender you were assigned at birth, for someone who has never even imagined not being the gender they currently are, it can sound a little crazy.

The problem I have with this expression is that it almost implies that my mind is a foreign entity trapped in someone else's female body. I feel like that misconception might be part of what fuels a lot of transphobia, as though my male mind is like a sickness intruding in on and taking over a woman, and suppressing the theoretical "her" that supposedly should exist based on possessing this body.

I don't feel that way, though. It's not that I'm a male trapped in someone else's body.  I am simply unhappy with the way that MY body is built, like MY body made a mistake when it started developing sex organs. Not to simplify it down to the 'birth defect' explanation either, but it's that something didn't go as expected when my body and my brain decided on how they were going to develop.

[Ms. OBrien CVT]

I used it at one time, but 'trapped' seems to lead one that they can not escape.  I am a woman who was MAAB.  I am in the process of changing that.

[Carbon]

I used it at one time, but 'trapped' seems to lead one that they can not escape.   

Unless you break out.

[suzifrommd]

The "trapped" metaphor isn't just wrong for cis folks - it's a problem for people trying to figure out whether they're trans.

For decades I assumed I wasn't trans because I didn't feel like a woman in a man's body. I didn't feel like I was a woman at all, just that I wished I could become one. Now that I've met so many trans women who say the same thing and I know for a complete certainty I'm trans, I feel like the "trapped" metaphor really did me a disservice.

[sleepwalker]

For decades I assumed I wasn't trans because I didn't feel like a woman in a man's body. I didn't feel like I was a woman at all, just that I wished I could become one.

I can relate here. I used to think I was something different from the transguys I'd see on YouTube because if they used the simple trapped explanation, I couldn't relate.

I didn't really feel like a man, but I definitely didn't feel like a woman. I knew that I definitely WANTED to feel like a man, though. It was only when I realized that transitioning and hormones and such can make me feel more like the man I want to be that I realized I might actually be transgender.

[EinBlackwood]

For me personally,this term is correct.I was born female,and I've felt like I should have been a male since like 2007.I hate looking in the mirror and seeing my female form.I can relate to your statement,sleepwalker.I haven't felt like a woman for years,and I've taken to dressing more masculine,even wearing men's body spray.

[Elle]

I feel exactly like that. I feel trapped in this body and want to claw my way out, it's a horrible feeling.

[Alex_K]

The "trapped" metaphor isn't just wrong for cis folks - it's a problem for people trying to figure out whether they're trans.

I felt the same way. If you're grey instead of black or white, it's more difficult to figure yourself out. I suppose that the wrong body thing applies to some, but not all the trans people.

You're not less trans if you don't fit the "wrong body" description.