The Phenomenology of the Body From A Trans Perspective
The phenomenology of being regarding the body is something that I have always found extremely intriguing. Ever since understanding the basics of perception in my past philosophy classes and how our consciousness interacts with the world, I have wondered how this also extends to perceiving and being in bodies constricted by gender and its social rules. In this post, I want to explore the idea of self-perception as it is filtered through a socially gendered lens and how that type of thinking affects the ways of being within the body.
Many philosophers developed important ideas about the relationship between the phenomenology of the body and how elements of our environment shape it, such as social norms, gender roles, and physical limitations created by both. The experience of the body is not unlike discovering the perception of objects around us. Through this perception, we can recognize that the bodily experience is uniquely shared between people in a multitude of ways, through relations, expectations, and physical manifestations of the self. This deep bodily perception is something that I want to explore, especially concerning the transgender community, and how trans people experience their forms of being through very specific relationships with their bodies.
The trans experience is often laden with heavy emotions felt within the body about what it is like to experience life while being perceived as a certain gender. The idea that trans people are “living in the wrong body” has been said for many years, but the connotations behind this experience of living in a body that does not seem to be correct or even to be yours are something that I want to analyze. I argue that the transgender community is overwhelmingly hyperconnected to its experience of living and being within the body. I believe the experience of being in the “wrong body” is something that has been extended onto the trans person from outside forces, and that trans people are often more deeply connected to their sense of self through a necessary hyperawareness built as a protective tool that has become required to live in our current society of constant outside judgement from others.
Much like in the words of Iris Marion Young, the environment and social norms we have all experienced have built a different allocation for what certain gendered bodies are allowed to feel or do with themselves. Their ways of being have become altered and must be adjusted to the gender norms that force the person to conform, change, or reject themselves as a response to the expectations put on their body.
The true forces that oppress and create discomfort in the trans body are the outside influences or socially constructed gender rules and the norms created in society about how you are expected to act based on the way that others perceive your gender. This set of obstacles has created a unique connection that trans people have to their experience of being in their bodies, which makes them less attached to a static form of being through the flux of transitioning socially. The transition that many transgender people are pressured to make is not just because of a desire to change the physical aspects of the body, but it is also to make it easier to “pass” within the constraints of the system of ultimately harmful defining gender roles that we are forced to operate within today.
Phenomenology has taught me so much about what it means to “be in the world”, and it has given me the room to insert different perspectives into the definition of what exactly that type of being may end up as when considering the perceptions that other people project onto us about our physical forms. This complicated way of being in the world ultimately also requires that others also begin to reshape their understanding of their bodies with gender and the social norms that define it.
Further Reading:
Young, Iris Marion. Throwing Like a Girl: On Female Body Experience
Merleau-Ponty on embodiment and perception
Simone de Beauvoir on gender as situation
Jean-Paul Sartre on existence and freedom
Fielding, Helen A. on bodily materialization and norms
