The ‘line’ is that it is very complicated. There are people with strong body dysphorias who have always had them, there are people who care much more about social presentation than anatomy, and everybody in between or in combination. The social presentation can be separate from body image considerations, and for those people in particular ‘wrong body’ would be inaccurate. There are people whose experienced-from-within gender is different at different times or who do not strongly identify with masculine or feminine, or with bits of both. Knowing multiple people in various positions on these spectra, trying to collapse the experience of everyone with non-default gender situations to one party line is a recipe for confusion, unproductive arguments, and missing the point for some of them.
So was Jenner always a woman trapped in a man’s body? The answer according to his (her) transition miniseries is yes (complete with tales of sneaking into his mother’s closet to wear her clothes).
Sounds like that is the case for her, then. Can’t say I’ve been keeping up with that particular story. One of my friends has had a similarly-describable situation from a very early age as well.
Though again, using that phrase is lumping everything into one essentialist label that says everything rather than decomposing it into the potentially more useful descriptive subcategories ‘how one wants to be considered socially’, ‘the body one wishes one had’ / ‘the body one is willing to have given current medical technology and the costs and tradeoffs thereof’, ‘how one wishes to behave’, and ‘how one identifies internally’. Often these go together making that phrase more or less applicable, but sometimes they don’t, and to get at the truth can then require finer detail depending on what you want to know and who you are describing.
Two other friends of mine have had more complicated situations in their lives—one whom goes to some effort to decrease their external femininity in favor of a more androgynous presentation to match the way they feel internally and their dislike of a feminine appearance [while not going through the efforts of invasive medical transition because the effort and tradeoffs are not worth it to them, but would still choose a very different physical appearance if the tradeoffs were smaller and easier], and one whom is fine with a male body and being called ‘he’ but whom behaves in a very feminine manner because that is just the way he is and he feels being physically male doesn’t dictate his behavior, and feels wrong behaving in a masculine manner.
Sounds like that is the case for her, then. Can’t say I’ve been keeping up with that particular story.
Except, looking at his previous life, which included fathering several children, winning men’s Olympic medals, and being a media hound with corporate sponsorship, suggests that this is not in fact the case, and suggests other motivations for him to do this. Namely, the need to pull a stunt to get back in the spotlight.
The ‘line’ is that it is very complicated. There are people with strong body dysphorias who have always had them, there are people who care much more about social presentation than anatomy, and everybody in between or in combination. The social presentation can be separate from body image considerations, and for those people in particular ‘wrong body’ would be inaccurate. There are people whose experienced-from-within gender is different at different times or who do not strongly identify with masculine or feminine, or with bits of both. Knowing multiple people in various positions on these spectra, trying to collapse the experience of everyone with non-default gender situations to one party line is a recipe for confusion, unproductive arguments, and missing the point for some of them.
So was Jenner always a woman trapped in a man’s body? The answer according to his (her) transition miniseries is yes (complete with tales of sneaking into his mother’s closet to wear her clothes).
Sounds like that is the case for her, then. Can’t say I’ve been keeping up with that particular story. One of my friends has had a similarly-describable situation from a very early age as well.
Though again, using that phrase is lumping everything into one essentialist label that says everything rather than decomposing it into the potentially more useful descriptive subcategories ‘how one wants to be considered socially’, ‘the body one wishes one had’ / ‘the body one is willing to have given current medical technology and the costs and tradeoffs thereof’, ‘how one wishes to behave’, and ‘how one identifies internally’. Often these go together making that phrase more or less applicable, but sometimes they don’t, and to get at the truth can then require finer detail depending on what you want to know and who you are describing.
Two other friends of mine have had more complicated situations in their lives—one whom goes to some effort to decrease their external femininity in favor of a more androgynous presentation to match the way they feel internally and their dislike of a feminine appearance [while not going through the efforts of invasive medical transition because the effort and tradeoffs are not worth it to them, but would still choose a very different physical appearance if the tradeoffs were smaller and easier], and one whom is fine with a male body and being called ‘he’ but whom behaves in a very feminine manner because that is just the way he is and he feels being physically male doesn’t dictate his behavior, and feels wrong behaving in a masculine manner.
Except, looking at his previous life, which included fathering several children, winning men’s Olympic medals, and being a media hound with corporate sponsorship, suggests that this is not in fact the case, and suggests other motivations for him to do this. Namely, the need to pull a stunt to get back in the spotlight.