Self(ie)-Recognition: Authenticity, Passing, and Trans Embodied Imaginaries

ABSTRACT

Coming out as trans involves the melancholic, ambivalent loss of intentionally forsaken objects and illusions. Creating replacement fantasies for one’s gender expression requires navigating tensions between trying to visualize one’s authentic internal truth in the mirror (self-recognition) and seeking the affirmation and safety associated with external recognition, often referred to as passing. Ascribing to hegemonic binary gender norms can increase one’s legibility, but may impair self-recognition and one’s ability to form intimate connections with others, due to erasure of the authentic self. This can be particularly salient for nonbinary individuals, for whom passing necessitates choosing a least harmful form of misrecognition. I explored these themes in ethnographic interviews with 28 transgender, nonbinary, and/or gender-expansive individuals about their faces. Participants (binary and nonbinary) overwhelmingly fantasized about having facial features more stereotypically incongruent with their assigned-gender-at-birth (e.g., assigned-female-at-birth seeking angular jaw and cheekbones). They found the presence of such elements in their faces affirming or imagined a lack thereof to promote misrecognition. Paradoxically, these same persons were dissatisfied when such hypermasculinity or hyperfemininity was projected onto their faces by digital filters, due to loss of self-recognition.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Adele Tutter, M.D., Ph.D., and Michael J. Devlin, M.D., for your invaluable advising on this project. Thank you to Amanda Arcomano for your editorial comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Many non-cisgender identity labels exist (e.g., transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, agender, and genderfluid). Here, I use “trans” for this collective community rather than risk excluding anyone.

² Ambivalence, though often misused as “lukewarm,” directly translates from Latin as “both strong.” Ambivalence about a socially constructed, uncomfortably embodied gender binary is profoundly fitting.

³ Participants were a voluntary, convenience sample recruited from posts on six transgender community Facebook pages, geographically restricted to the United States (n = 24) or Canada (n = 4). Per protocol approved by the Columbia University Institutional Review Board, interviews conducted by video chat were recorded and transcribed with permission; participants were compensated with a $20 gift card. I revealed my gender identity and occupation, but no other demographics.

⁴ Participants used the Snapchat cell phone application company-generated image filters “My Twin” and “My Other Twin,” which were not officially described, but publicly labeled feminizing and masculinizing (Andersen, 2019; Harbison, 2019; Henderson, 2019), and distort faces to display hegemonic gendered norms.

⁵ Participants were asked to use the term(s) that felt most authentic and not prompted further. Thus, some may resonate with additional terms, but this descriptive breakdown is based on their chosen label(s).

⁶ This discrepancy in AFAB/AMAB numbers is different from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (James et al., 2016), which had comparable binary trans persons (AFAB 7,962, AMAB 9,192), but more nonbinary AFAB individuals (7,835) vs. AMAB (1,972), but comparable to that seen in The Pride Study (see Nagata et. al 2020), in which 80% of trans participants were AFAB and 20% AMAB (of 18,581 participants, as of May 28, 2020). This may reflect both voluntary participation bias and real nonbinary demographic differences.

⁷ Clocking is a term in the trans lexicon for perceiving another person’s gender assigned at birth; e.g., one could be “clocked” as a trans woman (or man) if she did not “pass” well enough to be perceived simply as a woman.

⁸ Double entendre intended, for the use of facial products and the fictionalized narrative.

⁹ Ironically, fear-mongering discourse around trans individuals in bathrooms surrounds AMAB bodies in women’s restrooms rather than masculine-clad AFAB ones, and trans bodies are at a much higher risk of experiencing violence than cisgender ones, particularly AFAB trans individuals in men’s bathrooms.

¹⁰ This hypermuscular masculinity is racialized, limiting affirmation for those who face intersecting prejudices.

¹¹ BMI is a relatively accurate noninvasive way to approximate body fatness (Garrow and Webster, 1984; Keys, Fidanza, Karvonen, Kimura, and Taylor, 1972). However, “normal” was defined using Europeans (Eknoyan, 2008) and is not generalizable; e.g., Asians generally have lower BMIs with higher body fat content and develop comorbidities associated with high BMI at a lower cutoff (WHO Expert Consultation, 2004). Acknowledging its limitations, I use BMI to preserve participant anonymity and contextualize his weight loss.

¹² There is a robust literature on this (e.g., Ålgars, Alanko, Santtila, and Sandnabba, 2012; Avila, Golden, and Aye, 2019; Diemer, Grant, Munn-Chernoff, Patterson, and Duncan, 2015; Gordon, Austin, Krieger, Hughto, and Reisner, 2016; Hepp and Milos, 2002; B. A. Jones, Haycraft, Murjan, and Arcelus, 2016; McClain and Peebles, 2016; Nagata et al., 2020; Testa, Rider, Haug, and Balsam, 2017; Witcomb et al., 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons under the Scholarly Project Fund.

Notes on contributors

Teddy G. Goetz

Teddy G. Goetz, M.D., M.S., (they/them or he/him) is a psychiatry resident at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to earning their M.D. at Columbia, they studied biochemistry and gender studies at Yale, conducting research on a wide spectrum of biologically- and socially-determined aspects of gender-based health disparities, including earning their M.S. developing the first animal model of gender-affirming hormone therapy. Their current focuses include mixed-methods research on LGBTQ mental health, as well as narrative medicine and physician advocacy. More about their scholarly and artistic work can be found at https://protect2.fireeye.com/v1/url?k=31323334-501d0a38-31357b2d-454441504e31-e0604cdab9ccea53&q=1&e=8d6ce3c7-750b-4cb8-8a21-50e17525b263&u=http%3A%2F%2Fteddygoetz.com%2F