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Trans bodies in a normative world
Existing as yourself in a world which sees you as other, as abnormal, is conceptually a complicated place to be. Historically trans bodies have been othered precisely because society seeks to order people into neat categories, deeming transness as beyond what is socially expected. This has seen trans identities frames as mentally ill, as something to be repressed and squeezed into a normative conception of self. As such, being trans has a complicated relationship with society, especially when the narratives we are all fed shape trans people as a problem needing to be solved.
W E Dubois asked the question about what it is like to be a problem society sees as requiring a solution, his oeuvre revolving around squaring being black in a white normative society. Audre Lorde critiqued that you cannot use the master’s tools to deconstruct the master’s house, meaning that to dissect and critique normative understandings of self you need to step beyond normative framings of self. As such, the very conception of needing to “solve” trans people relies on the framing that normative is static and unchanging, when normative is a matter of who gets to set the rules in the first place.
Trans people absorb these conception of self, reframing them from their own self-understanding to the point that the fears they innately have about the world are expressed as attempts to police…
