What are your thoughts of this sentence: trapped in the wrong body?
- I think of it as an over-simplification, but not wrong. I think it can be a useful phrase to try to explain what dysphoria feels like for me, but I don't tend to use it myself cause I think it's not quite good enough, but also not a bad way of putting it.
Do you feel that way?
- Somewhat. I feel more like I'm trapped in the wrong gendered/sexed body. Cause it's just been the gendered aspects of it that have been wrong, not for example my eyes, hair colour, skin, etc. I'm more likely to say I was born as the wrong sex, and that has made me feel trapped in my own body.
Did you feel that way? When did you stop feeling that way, if ever?
- I'm not sure if I feel like that anymore now that I'm practically post-transition and much more comfortable with my body. That feeling of my body being wrong started fading sometime after top surgery, which was also around the same time as my effects from testosterone really started to take off and make me much more passable. It wasn't instant though, but a very slow change from feeling entirely "wrong" about my body to feeling more like "this is starting to feel right."
Do you think that phrase accurately depicts the trans experience?
- Eh, I'd say somewhat. As I said before, to me it's an over-simplification. It kinda looks to me like it's akin to saying one's entire body is just all wrong, when in actuality it's really just the gendered aspects that are wrong or incorrect. Saying "trapped in the wrong gendered/sexed body" -would be more accurate for me at least. I can't speak for anyone else about that though. The trans experience is of course very individual, even though there might be some general consensus on the matter.
Do you think it over-simplifies our experiences? Or do you think that's a good thing to make cis people understand?
- Well, sometimes over-simplifying a complex matter is the best way to at least start a conversation with people who don't know much/anything about that topic. Like if you're gonna explain to someone who's never been to a school or know what a school even is, what the education system is like, it doesn't make much sense to jump straight into the finer details of grades, scholar ships and student-teacher dynamics. So then it might be better to say something like "it's a place you go to learn stuff" even though that is an over-simplification.
I think the same way about exlaining being trans and/or having dysphoria to people who don't know what that's like, aka cis people. Which is why I often say phrases like "I was born a girl but then became a man" cause even though that isn't entirely accurate, it's simple enough to understand and gets the point across, and then I can get into the finer details of how it feels and what transitioning is like. I think the phrase "trapped in the wrong body" can be used in the same way. I've learned that expressing myself more simply is much better when wanting for cis people to get an understandable picture of what it's like for me to be trans. And to avoid metaphors, cause that just confuses people even more. But that's just my experience.
I definitely use a more crude and "old-fashioned" way of expressing myself when I talk to cis people about me being trans. That's, perhaps strangely, the way I prefer to talk about it. It feels more relaxed and straight to the point than using more complex expressions/words that really only are known about within the trans community. So I feel like I have to speak in ways I'm not comfortable with around other trans people a lot of the time. My view on sex/gender is a bit more rigid than the more modern view, with a binary thinking and very focused on the physical aspects. So I really don't mind using phrases like "trapped in the wrong body" or say I had a "sex change" or whatever.
