Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I feel like I'm really going to open up a right can of worms here (oh well).

I'm kinda new to the whole topic of trans but one thing I have noticed is that some trans people will describe their experience is something like 'I always felt as a woman but trapped in a man's body' or 'I was a man stuck in a woman's body' But recently I have read Kate Bornstein's Gender outlaw.  In it she argues against the whole idea of trapped in the wrong body and says trans people need to come up with new ways of sharing their (trans) feelings. ( she does this on page 66)

I was just wondering what people on here thought. Do you think it's an accurate way to summarize what you personally feel or not ?

With respect, that person needs to come up with some new ideas.

I don't personally know anythign about being trapped in the wrong body. Mine is fine, nothing that can't be corrected.

I haven't "always" felt I was in the wrong body...at least, not consciously.

Once I became aware of my Being being female, the body had to follow.

I also don't allow others to define me, or to restrict my ability to describe myself in my own words.

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.
For myself I have always felt that I was trapped by other people's expectations of me due to the body I ended up with and I desire to change it to match my view of how I see myself.

Everyone is different and may have their own way of describing how they feel about themselves but almost everyone uses the "trapped" line to get what they want.

There is a lot of real estate in between X and Y.

Personally, the "trapped" metaphor doesn't ring true for me. But it's very effective for making a case to cis people for things like SRS and HRT.  Nobody wants to be trapped so it generates a lot of sympathy.

I've accepted that we're all probably just nutters, but that's okay.

David Reimer is an interesting case.

I think that the idea of feeling "trapped" in the wrong body is a hyperbole, describing the physical characteristics of how one feels, "A woman", who should have breasts and a vagina matches up with the reality of your physical characteristics, penis, hairy body, no breasts as a male.

I hate looking at myself in the mirror and seeing my flat wide hairy chest and back, closed cropped thinning hair, and 5 o clock shadow on my face, I would love to have had breasts, hips and long hair. It makes me very sad when I am confronted by a man's image in the mirror. I guess I prefer to use the "gender dysphoria" because that's what I feel, intense sadness and indifference to the world around me when presented with the fact that my body is that of a man's. It's not that I feel trapped, just sad. I love my body because it is mine and I am it, but....

Feeling trapped in a body for me would be something more literal like being conscious and paralyzed like that "Johnny Got His Gun" film.

Here's the way I see it:

The phrase "X trapped in a Y's body" exists for the simple reason that it communicates a very, very basic idea of what being transgender might (emphasis on 'might') feel like. This allows it to be understood vaguely by the cisgender majority, who have the advantage of having their gender identity accepted from the moment they were born.
And for some trans* people, it's a sound bite which, whilst simplified, does ring true on at least some level, and so they use it to give a basic description of transsexualism to others. This is absolutely fine – people should be allowed to define their identities and their bodies on their own terms.

However, the phrase is problematic in a number of ways:
1) It carries the implication that men and women 'belong' in specific forms of body, and does nothing to combat the society-wide assumption that penis=male and vagina=female. This can have unfortunate consequences, such as people who adamantly refuse to use the correct pronouns until the transsexual person in question has 'had the surgery'. Furthermore, it erases the experiences of trans* people who cannot have or do not want surgery and/or hormones.
2) Dysphoria differs considerably from individual to individual, if indeed it is even experienced at all. The idea being 'trapped in the wrong body' implies that dysphoria is solely from a physical perspective, when often social dysphoria is just as overpowering if not more so (i.e. the dysphoria that comes about through being misgendered). And often, it's not so much 'trapped' as it is that the trans* person in question wishes to alter aspects of their body to match their inner sense of self. Fundamentally, it's still their own body.
3) It completely and utterly erases non-binary gender identities. This one needs no explanation.
4) Long story short, it's only inclusive of trans* people who feel a particular way, to the detriment of those who don't.

The problem is that it's extremely difficult to explain the nuances of being transgender, and the diversity thereof, in such a way that your average cisgender person will understand.  But at the end of the day, while it's a phrase I would never use to describe myself, I definitely don't have the right to say that others shouldn't use it. If the shoe fits, wear it. The problem is that we don't all have the same feet, and right now, the shoes only come in one size...

I don't us the term trapped, or wrong when I describe my trans status to others. The way I explain it is I have a woman's brain, but was born with a male body. People seem to understand that pretty well. The reason I don't say trapped or wrong is I don't want people to get the idea that something is wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me. I am fine just the way I am. I am just choosing to change my external appearance to match my internal self.

I hate it... it sounds silly to me. Perhaps this just my Masculinity speaking (get out by the way xP), but I find it illogical, my whole idea of who I am is based on the fact that I was born male however I have a female mind. (More like androgynous.) Also it's kind of getting old, might be my literary side speaking but it's a cliche and I don't like Cliches.

I can't think of anything other than that. I just told my mom that somewhere down the line of my conception and my birth something screwed up and I have the choice of

A) keep living a fake life, I am tired of the years that I had to live in a facade, which I doubt that I could live in for much longer. I have experienced bad enough depression a few times already. Can't take the sadness anymore, I choose to live, so I picked myself up and decided to fight off this idiotic and ignorant taboo against transgendered individuals.

So I choose B)

Be the person I truly am, and I couldn't care less about what people think of it. I went through enough in my life to just drop on my knees with tears on my cheeks because a few people are not capable of even attempting to understand the massive amount of pain. So I be the woman I truly am, and everyday I pull her further out of the prison society calls normalcy.

Sorry for the literary devices, I am just listening to Against The Tide - Celldweller, and it really brought out my literary prowess... isness... ish.

My body is but an extension of my mind, and my mind is a female mind. My body is Ok, it just need a tweaking here and there.

I rather feel society has forced me to accept and carry on with a gender role which is not my own.

Society has created a problem themselves and for me by not accepting the fact that I was misgendered at birth.

So, rather than feel "trapped in the wrong body," I feel I have been "forced into the wrong gender role"

Very mixed feelings. I think it is perhaps useful as a shorthand (and very inexact) concept of what is at some level going on in some transgenders. It does communicate, I think, to cispeople, and it communicates why some people want hormones, surgery, etc.
The bad thing is that it is very simplified, it does not explain at all how many (or even most) trans people actually feel, it is tied into the physical body and not all trans people have physical dysphoria anyway, etc. etc.

--Jay

Quote from: Cassandra Hyacinth on December 13, 2012, 04:57:34 PM
3) It completely and utterly erases non-binary gender identities. This one needs no explanation.

I could say I'm an androgyne trapped in a man's body.  I wouldn't, for a lot of reasons that have already been said, but I could.

Quote from: ~RoadToTrista~ on December 13, 2012, 04:32:44 PM
I've accepted that we're all probably just nutters, but that's okay.

Well, my philosophy on being nutters is simply, "Who the heck isn't?"

As for my description of my trans experience, I simply use humor, like I always do. Simply put, I describe my experience as "being the ugliest girl EVER."  :laugh:

It's a simplified metaphor that was watered down for cis people and then made next to useless by the same cis people who needed something simple refusing to acknowledge that it's been simplified. Not that I'd blame anyone who still felt like it was the best way available to explain things.

Quote from: Carbon on December 13, 2012, 10:05:29 PM
It's a simplified metaphor that was watered down for cis people and then made next to useless by the same cis people who needed something simple refusing to acknowledge that it's been simplified. Not that I'd blame anyone who still felt like it was the best way available to explain things.

I have heard this used by "liberals" to defend trans people online, so I think if someone would want an excuse to be against trans people they'd find one easily enough.
I don't know that I feel this has been used against us by people who wouldn't find something else.


--Jay

I don't feel trapped at all.  I marvel at the plasticity of the human body.   I find it marvelous that by simply taking estrogen for a couple of years I can effectively change my sex.

Name changing, women's clothes, voice training, electrolysis, FFS, SRS....   All of them are just the frosting on the cake.

If you change your hormones to female levels and keep them there for 4 or 5 years you will have changed your sex to female.  Despite my 63 year old bald head, I feel and look like a woman... OK, maybe a woman undergoing chemo, but nevertheless a woman.

I don't care if anyone else recognizes me as truly female or not.  I don't need the clothes and I don't need to attract men.

What I need is to live in a feminine body and that's what I do.... now and every day for the rest of my life.

Gender dysphoria is  thing of the past for me.

Randi

I don't like it.  The best I can say is that I feel like "me" and I don't know what it would be like to feel anything else (not that that stops my imagination from trying...)

Quote from: Casey on December 13, 2012, 05:23:44 PM
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.

Me too. For me, it would be accurate to say that my body does not reflect who I am which leads to me feeling uncomfortable and invisible which leads to me feeling trapped.

Quote from: josee on December 13, 2012, 03:15:48 PM
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  :eusa_wall:

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.

Quote from: silly by the seashore on December 14, 2012, 08:31:48 AM
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.

QuoteI 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.

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.

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.

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"

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.

^^^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.

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.

Quote from: Ms. OBrien on December 19, 2012, 07:08:21 AM
I used it at one time, but 'trapped' seems to lead one that they can not escape.   

Unless you break out. (http://transgirldiaries.com/?p=2047)

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.

Quote from: agfrommd on December 19, 2012, 08:57:20 AM
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.

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.

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

Quote from: agfrommd on December 19, 2012, 08:57:20 AM
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.