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." 

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.