Trans/fat: an autoethnographic exploration of becoming at the intersection of trans and fat

ABSTRACT

The fat body and the transgender body are expected to always be in a state of becoming. For fat bodies, becoming less fat, for transgender bodies, becoming more “congruent.” To be fat and/or transgender means coming into constant confrontation with social and cultural expectations about the fat and (trans)gendered body. It means navigating a medical system that considers one a problem to be solved with a careful and pre-determined set of solutions. It means diminished autonomy and little agency. Fat bodies and transgender bodies are often met with solutions based on gatekeeping versus informed consent. Fat bodies and trans bodies are often unwelcome and even made invisible in public spaces. When there are no chairs to fit fat bodies, and no bathrooms to include trans bodies, those bodies are erased, and the gender binary and body ideal reified. When transgender studies excludes discussion and acknowledgment of fat bodies and when fat studies excludes transgender bodies from their analysis or employs gender as a binary characteristic, fat trans bodies are disappeared, raising the question, how might thinking intersectionally reinvigorate both fields? This auto ethnographic exploration of navigating social and medical structures as a fat, trans/non-binary individual seeks to underscore the many commonalities inherent in anti-fat and (trans)gender oppression, and to highlight the ways these oppressions intersect to create unique barriers for fat, trans folks.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• medical transition
• nonbinary
• autoethnography
• anti-fat bias

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For one breakdown of the fat spectrum, see https://fluffykittenparty.com/2021/06/01/fategories-understanding-smallfat-fragility-the-fat-spectrum/.

2. As I resist a cisgender vs. transgender binary I risk reaffirming the binary vs. nonbinary transgender binary when I use the language of existing models of transgender. I too am constrained by transnormativity, both as an author and as a trans/nonbinary human attempting to navigate social and material realities. In this essay I claim a transgender identity while maintaining the centrality of my nonbinary identity. Hence, I use trans/nonbinary to describe myself throughout this piece.

3. I would be remiss not to point out here that taken-for-granted feminist arguments of constructionism have been complicated as emphasis shifts to questions of the biological body and embodiment. Thank you to the reviewers for drawing my attention to the work of Elizabeth Grosz (1994) as an example.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bek J. Orr

Dr. Bek Orr is an Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Sociology at the State University of New York at Brockport. Their research areas include LGBTQ+ communities and archives, feminist and queer research methodologies, and feminist and queer digital communities.