ABSTRACT
The status passage of transgendered people is one which arrives at the conviction that they are a gender their body contradicts, a woman in a man’s body for example. In this chapter Douglas Schrock and Emily M. Boyd examine this status passage utilizing the concept of “reflexive transembodiment” that effectively highlights “the embodied nature of their transition and the central role of reflexivity.” Consistent with the other chapters in this segment, Schrock and Boyd’s analysis hinges on a looking-glass body in which people exercise reflexivity to resolve unique dilemmas in their transgendered status passage. Reflexive storytelling intersects with reflexive bodywork to produce a transgendered “true self.” Yet the passage, in this case “coming out,” is a process rife with concealment and revelation, leaking signifiers of gender, verbal and visual announcements – all of which “remind us of the importance of agency and culture in reflexive body techniques.”
