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Living the trans good life

Rachel Saunders
5 min readSep 25, 2023

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Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto : https://www.pexels.com/photo/collection-of-wood-figures-showing-concept-of-resistance-5140458/

When we talk about trans lives there is an assumption made about what a trans good life looks like. Conceptions of the good life, the dolce vide, abound in philosophy, ranging from Greek stoicism through to post modern conceptions of self. For trans folk the good life is often conceived through the lens of simply living an affirmed life as your innate gender within society free from strife and oppression. In this conception it is society that is the problem, the oppressor, that needs to be changed as much as any physical transformation done to body and appearance. So why does it feel like this conception of the good life is a bare minimum, and what can be done to make things better?

Questions like this always fall short due to the intersectional nature of trans identities. No two trans people live the same life or walk the same life paths, so to state that the dolce vide must take a particular form invariably dismisses perspectives we are unaware of. If simply overcoming oppression is all that being trans has to offer then of course being trans will always be framed as a struggle, something lesser to cis realities. This is the root of queer theory, and traces its origins back to Ulrich’s first Munich proclamations in 1869. To be queer is to fight against systemic oppression in search of the good life, with Stonewall being the apotheosis of that spirit. Conversely, since the first riot much of…

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Rachel Saunders
Rachel Saunders

Written by Rachel Saunders

Writer, researcher, and generally curious

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