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bodies, connection to
Jul. 21st, 2008 08:29 pmSometimes I wonder what it's like for people who aren't trans or have gendery issues with their bodies. Do they have some sense of physical self that more or less matches their tangible bodies? I remember thinking the cleverest thing about Butler's "Gender Trouble" was the argument she made that everyone has an imagined body overlaid over their actual, and I still think it was situationally brilliant philosophical judo, but... I'm not sure I buy it, or at least buy it in the way I think I was being asked to.
For instance, I have this quest to seek out what I experience as an internal, almost tangible 'click' of bone sliding into place, or something of a similar texture, that to me means things line up, I can feel and act from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes, weight is lifted from my shoulders and my spine is pulled up from the crown of my skull. Things are possible then, things both physical and not just physical, possibilities expand and doubt recedes. I've experienced it in small ways before, usually moment or task specific, but when I did, it was revelatory. I'm not sure I can describe the sense of not being out of synch, physically, better than I have, and I'm not even talking definitionally (that's a whole different issue).
This ties in, for me, with a sense of what it feels like my body wants to be like (not at all the same thing as what I think it should be like, or what meaning it should carry; those things come later, I think). It's not an idea that feels external, and I do root pretty savagely for traces of co-optation. I don't think this arises from guilt and/or conflict, and would actually suggest that the guilt and conflict arise from running into assigned meaning and external valuation. I've no idea from whence it comes, but having laid some of my most damaging etiological fears to rest, I'm coming to be of the opinion that it doesn't matter, and I don't think the burden is on me to explain it to those who would attempt to exercise the privilege of insisting that I do.
But I don't know what it's like feel at home in one's mass as a state of being, and most of the intentional changes I make are attempts to get closer to that goal. I want to be at home in me; I guess that's what makes me my flavor of trans.
For instance, I have this quest to seek out what I experience as an internal, almost tangible 'click' of bone sliding into place, or something of a similar texture, that to me means things line up, I can feel and act from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes, weight is lifted from my shoulders and my spine is pulled up from the crown of my skull. Things are possible then, things both physical and not just physical, possibilities expand and doubt recedes. I've experienced it in small ways before, usually moment or task specific, but when I did, it was revelatory. I'm not sure I can describe the sense of not being out of synch, physically, better than I have, and I'm not even talking definitionally (that's a whole different issue).
This ties in, for me, with a sense of what it feels like my body wants to be like (not at all the same thing as what I think it should be like, or what meaning it should carry; those things come later, I think). It's not an idea that feels external, and I do root pretty savagely for traces of co-optation. I don't think this arises from guilt and/or conflict, and would actually suggest that the guilt and conflict arise from running into assigned meaning and external valuation. I've no idea from whence it comes, but having laid some of my most damaging etiological fears to rest, I'm coming to be of the opinion that it doesn't matter, and I don't think the burden is on me to explain it to those who would attempt to exercise the privilege of insisting that I do.
But I don't know what it's like feel at home in one's mass as a state of being, and most of the intentional changes I make are attempts to get closer to that goal. I want to be at home in me; I guess that's what makes me my flavor of trans.
