Speaking of the VR aspect, this reminds me of The Gender Swap Experience back in 2014. Back in those days, The Rift HMD didn't have hand controllers. However, the feedback loop of touching your...
Exemplary
Speaking of the VR aspect, this reminds me of The Gender Swap Experience back in 2014. Back in those days, The Rift HMD didn't have hand controllers. However, the feedback loop of touching your avatar body and feeling your own body being touched is pretty essential for the user to be immersed in the virtual body (as demonstrated by The Rubber Hand Illusion) so to get around this, The Gender Swap Experience simply used two people each wearing a HMD, and simply swapped their vision around.
Another VR experience which managed to make do without hand controllers was Don't Let Go where the player has to hold down both Control keys on the keyboard during the whole experience, ensuring that their hands stay in position with the avatar hands.
Then there's porn. A brave female pioneer watching VR POV porn from a male perspective, describes how "Staring at my newly acquired — and rather large — penis sent me into fits of freaked-out giggling. It’s very hard to convey just how weird—and real—that experience feels."
One curious thing about the gender swap experience of 2014 was that the rather obvious connection to trans people weren't even considered. Not by the article, nor by me. It was a different time, I guess.
I basically don't any more. I'm lucky that I've long since had to stop justifying my identity, and the people around me are now more interested in the nuts and bolts of transition; such as what...
Hey, here's a question: how do you express the inexpressible?
I basically don't any more. I'm lucky that I've long since had to stop justifying my identity, and the people around me are now more interested in the nuts and bolts of transition; such as what changes HRT will and won't make on my body (it's slightly mind boggling how ignorant cis people are of what puberty changes). In fact, even when I was doing the proper coming out business, I didn't face many questions about the inexpressible at all. On the few occasions that I did face questions over what dysphoria feels like or how I can be sure that I feel like a woman, I turned to Abigail Thorn's simile where she describes having a really awful job that you can't get out of. I have yet to meet anyone that didn't resonate with that, and how much a crappy job can impact your entire life. It's still not a perfect metaphor, of course, but I think it gets across enough of the all-encompassing nature of dysphoria.
Do you abandon attempts to explain: "You could never truly understand, because of the transparency phenomenon?"
I've never approached it this way, because I trust on a fundamental level that the people asking me these difficult questions are being genuine, and want to try to understand. So I never want to brush them off with a "you couldn't ever understand" because it just shuts down conversation about something about which I know a lot.
Or do you do what Cameron Kostopoulos and his team did, and try to make art out of it?
I'm actually in the process of doing this now. I'm writing a long piece of instrumental music (inspired by the weird combination of Mike Oldfield and Russian Circles) which has the working title (eu|dys)phoria, and is meant to be a musical exploration of the ebbs and flows I feel of both sides of the gender coin. It uses lots of different themes and layering of them to try and describe the feeling of settling into a good place, feeling good about myself, and then the creeping realisation that everything isn't as harmonious as I thought. It's by far the most ambitious thing I've written so far, and the prospect of recording it is quite daunting!
On the other hand, I'm curious about how effective the experience will really be.
As am I. While there is a substantial bodily component to my dysphoria, so much more of the feeling comes from my inner world. Social, societal, existential, and sexual dysphoria are all massive parts of the whole experience, and I don't know that a VR experience can truly emulate that in any meaningful way. This project is intriguing, but I can't tell if any trans people have actually worked on it other than contribute their voices. And it does seem very centred on the idea that being transgender is about being trapped in the wrong body. Which is true some of the time for some of the trans community, but is in my experience (and the experience of many of my trans friends) a lesser part of the whole. That said, I do really hope that this project opens some eyes, and helps cis people to understand at least a small portion of the trans experience.
Yeah this really resonates with me too as a description, especially as someone who didn't realize what they were feeling was dysphoria for way too long. It's honestly such an apt description of...
On the few occasions that I did face questions over what dysphoria feels like or how I can be sure that I feel like a woman, I turned to Abigail Thorn's simile where she describes having a really awful job that you can't get out of.
Yeah this really resonates with me too as a description, especially as someone who didn't realize what they were feeling was dysphoria for way too long. It's honestly such an apt description of the emotions I had about womanhood (I'm afab) before I even realized those feelings were dysphoria.
I'm not trans, so it definitely isn't something I understand. I imagine trying to describe it is like trying to describe a color I am not physically able to see or pain in a limb I will never...
"What do you mean, 'feel like a woman?'" "What does gender dysphoria feel like?" Etc, etc, and while I appreciate the attempt to understand, the question is really fucking hard to approach, because I've always felt this incongruity between my body and my gender, as much you never have. I don't know what's it's like to live without dysphoria, don't know how to convey the feeling of fundamental wrongness, to someone who's never felt it.
I'm not trans, so it definitely isn't something I understand. I imagine trying to describe it is like trying to describe a color I am not physically able to see or pain in a limb I will never have.
I do wonder and think about how the interplay between gender and sex must be a spectrum. It's not really a dichotomous question of are you cis or are you trans. I feel like the question should instead be how trans are you and how cis are you. Or perhaps it can be better expressed in how much you identify with any gender, with people being able to identify with any gender (and sex) as much or as little as they feel.
It has surprised me how much people would feel 'wrong' if their body suddenly changed to a differently presenting sex. I suppose that reflects a lot on me and how I feel about myself. I wouldn't be surprised if experiencing this VR simulation can also help a lot of folks think more deeply about how much — or, how little!! — they identify with their body.
My ex (who identified as a cis man while we dated) once said something to the effect of "I don't feel a strong connection to my gender. If I woke up one day and everyone started calling me...
It has surprised me how much people would feel 'wrong' if their body suddenly changed to a differently presenting sex. I suppose that reflects a lot on me and how I feel about myself.
My ex (who identified as a cis man while we dated) once said something to the effect of "I don't feel a strong connection to my gender. If I woke up one day and everyone started calling me 'madam', I wouldn't care and I'd just go along with it."
Suffice it to say she's out as a trans woman now 😉
I’m cis too, so take this with a grain of salt, but a framing for expressing the inexpressible that has personally helped me understand dysphoria is Sarah McBride’s description of it as...
I’m cis too, so take this with a grain of salt, but a framing for expressing the inexpressible that has personally helped me understand dysphoria is Sarah McBride’s description of it as “homesickness” in Tomorrow Will Be Different:
As the questions went on, it became clear that my parents were struggling with the same empathy gap that I later would realize was one of the main barriers to trans equality among progressive voters: They couldn’t wrap their minds around how it might feel to have a gender identity that differs from one’s assigned sex at birth.
With sexual orientation it’s a bit easier. Most people can extrapolate from their own experiences with love and lust, but they don’t have an analogous experience with being transgender.
“The best way I can describe it for myself,” I told them, “is a constant feeling of homesickness. An unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that only goes away when I can be seen and affirmed in the gender I’ve always felt myself to be. And unlike homesickness with location, which eventually diminishes as you get used to the new home, this homesickness only grows with time and separation.”
I don’t know what it’s like to be or feel trans in my own body, but my body definitely knows the being and feeling of homesickness. I cried when I read her description of it.
An interesting phenomenon is a large portion of cis men in the game "VR Chat" choose to use female presenting avatars. https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/02/vrchat-avatar-identity-survey.html It seems...
It seems a lot of it might boil down to being a fasion statement, looking pretty and stepping away from being masculine IRL. But it's interesting perhaps how many many voluntarily choose this temporary gender dysphoria. I thought of this immediately when reading the article because while this is being presented as an art exhibit, this is an intentional daily reality for many in the game.
This feels a bit like people who frequent online LGBTQ spaces who have never played games discovering gamer culture (maybe because gamer is a swear word in so many left aligned places) or else...
This feels a bit like people who frequent online LGBTQ spaces who have never played games discovering gamer culture (maybe because gamer is a swear word in so many left aligned places) or else just people who somehow expect VRChat to be different than MMOs. The average VRChat world is filled with mirrors, somewhat absurdly so if you compare it to real life places, so you're going to be seeing yourself pretty often. And so some people chose player characters or VR chat models by what they like aesthetically from others rather than how they choose to present irl.
In a way this is both a blessing and a curse for trans people. On the one hand, it lets them try out presenting as the opposite gender with somewhat plausible deniability if they're not sure they want to commit or are worried about stigma in their inner circle. But on the other hand, it means even if they've chosen the most feminine appearance, if they have a deep voice they'll be assumed to be male, regardless of if they actually do identify as female.
Speaking of the VR aspect, this reminds me of The Gender Swap Experience back in 2014. Back in those days, The Rift HMD didn't have hand controllers. However, the feedback loop of touching your avatar body and feeling your own body being touched is pretty essential for the user to be immersed in the virtual body (as demonstrated by The Rubber Hand Illusion) so to get around this, The Gender Swap Experience simply used two people each wearing a HMD, and simply swapped their vision around.
Another VR experience which managed to make do without hand controllers was Don't Let Go where the player has to hold down both Control keys on the keyboard during the whole experience, ensuring that their hands stay in position with the avatar hands.
Then there's porn. A brave female pioneer watching VR POV porn from a male perspective, describes how "Staring at my newly acquired — and rather large — penis sent me into fits of freaked-out giggling. It’s very hard to convey just how weird—and real—that experience feels."
One curious thing about the gender swap experience of 2014 was that the rather obvious connection to trans people weren't even considered. Not by the article, nor by me. It was a different time, I guess.
I basically don't any more. I'm lucky that I've long since had to stop justifying my identity, and the people around me are now more interested in the nuts and bolts of transition; such as what changes HRT will and won't make on my body (it's slightly mind boggling how ignorant cis people are of what puberty changes). In fact, even when I was doing the proper coming out business, I didn't face many questions about the inexpressible at all. On the few occasions that I did face questions over what dysphoria feels like or how I can be sure that I feel like a woman, I turned to Abigail Thorn's simile where she describes having a really awful job that you can't get out of. I have yet to meet anyone that didn't resonate with that, and how much a crappy job can impact your entire life. It's still not a perfect metaphor, of course, but I think it gets across enough of the all-encompassing nature of dysphoria.
I've never approached it this way, because I trust on a fundamental level that the people asking me these difficult questions are being genuine, and want to try to understand. So I never want to brush them off with a "you couldn't ever understand" because it just shuts down conversation about something about which I know a lot.
I'm actually in the process of doing this now. I'm writing a long piece of instrumental music (inspired by the weird combination of Mike Oldfield and Russian Circles) which has the working title (eu|dys)phoria, and is meant to be a musical exploration of the ebbs and flows I feel of both sides of the gender coin. It uses lots of different themes and layering of them to try and describe the feeling of settling into a good place, feeling good about myself, and then the creeping realisation that everything isn't as harmonious as I thought. It's by far the most ambitious thing I've written so far, and the prospect of recording it is quite daunting!
As am I. While there is a substantial bodily component to my dysphoria, so much more of the feeling comes from my inner world. Social, societal, existential, and sexual dysphoria are all massive parts of the whole experience, and I don't know that a VR experience can truly emulate that in any meaningful way. This project is intriguing, but I can't tell if any trans people have actually worked on it other than contribute their voices. And it does seem very centred on the idea that being transgender is about being trapped in the wrong body. Which is true some of the time for some of the trans community, but is in my experience (and the experience of many of my trans friends) a lesser part of the whole. That said, I do really hope that this project opens some eyes, and helps cis people to understand at least a small portion of the trans experience.
Yeah this really resonates with me too as a description, especially as someone who didn't realize what they were feeling was dysphoria for way too long. It's honestly such an apt description of the emotions I had about womanhood (I'm afab) before I even realized those feelings were dysphoria.
I'm not trans, so it definitely isn't something I understand. I imagine trying to describe it is like trying to describe a color I am not physically able to see or pain in a limb I will never have.
I do wonder and think about how the interplay between gender and sex must be a spectrum. It's not really a dichotomous question of are you cis or are you trans. I feel like the question should instead be how trans are you and how cis are you. Or perhaps it can be better expressed in how much you identify with any gender, with people being able to identify with any gender (and sex) as much or as little as they feel.
It has surprised me how much people would feel 'wrong' if their body suddenly changed to a differently presenting sex. I suppose that reflects a lot on me and how I feel about myself. I wouldn't be surprised if experiencing this VR simulation can also help a lot of folks think more deeply about how much — or, how little!! — they identify with their body.
My ex (who identified as a cis man while we dated) once said something to the effect of "I don't feel a strong connection to my gender. If I woke up one day and everyone started calling me 'madam', I wouldn't care and I'd just go along with it."
Suffice it to say she's out as a trans woman now 😉
I’m cis too, so take this with a grain of salt, but a framing for expressing the inexpressible that has personally helped me understand dysphoria is Sarah McBride’s description of it as “homesickness” in Tomorrow Will Be Different:
I don’t know what it’s like to be or feel trans in my own body, but my body definitely knows the being and feeling of homesickness. I cried when I read her description of it.
An interesting phenomenon is a large portion of cis men in the game "VR Chat" choose to use female presenting avatars. https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2021/02/vrchat-avatar-identity-survey.html
It seems a lot of it might boil down to being a fasion statement, looking pretty and stepping away from being masculine IRL. But it's interesting perhaps how many many voluntarily choose this temporary gender dysphoria. I thought of this immediately when reading the article because while this is being presented as an art exhibit, this is an intentional daily reality for many in the game.
This feels a bit like people who frequent online LGBTQ spaces who have never played games discovering gamer culture (maybe because gamer is a swear word in so many left aligned places) or else just people who somehow expect VRChat to be different than MMOs. The average VRChat world is filled with mirrors, somewhat absurdly so if you compare it to real life places, so you're going to be seeing yourself pretty often. And so some people chose player characters or VR chat models by what they like aesthetically from others rather than how they choose to present irl.
In a way this is both a blessing and a curse for trans people. On the one hand, it lets them try out presenting as the opposite gender with somewhat plausible deniability if they're not sure they want to commit or are worried about stigma in their inner circle. But on the other hand, it means even if they've chosen the most feminine appearance, if they have a deep voice they'll be assumed to be male, regardless of if they actually do identify as female.