ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the “wrong-body narrative” (WBN) has been ensconced as the hallmark of a singular trans experience, and examines why this happened—what the narrative secures—and at what cost. As popular interest in trans and all that it connotes has increased, much of the focus has been on the psychic factors that motivate people to transition, and the “transitioned” bodies that medical intervention can produce. The wrong-body narrative appears to have utility as it comfortably dovetails the psychic and somatic components of a trans identification, and for this reason the feeling of being trapped in the wrong body has often served as a compulsory condition for acquiring transition through surgical-hormonal intervention. As a diagnostic imperative, the WBN warrants further investigation for the ways it has functioned to contain trans, and limit trans subjects’ potential for self-expression. Taking cues from transgender studies, critical disability theory, and psychoanalysis, this study critiques the wrong-body narrative as a criteria for transition-related medical care, and identifies how it has served to concretize non-transgender formations.
