Personal and collective trans-mythologies: Creative attitudes to gender incongruence among transgender individuals

Abstract

Embedded within the biographies of some transgender people are narratives elements more frequently found in culturally-specific legends settings and the interplay of mythological figures. Individuals who specifically identify as transsexuals (unlike other, non-binary or gender-queer transgender people) sometimes report the wish, the dream, and/or the desire to understand or alleviate their experienced gender incongruence in a surprisingly creative way: through some type of magical transformation. Calling upon recently collected interviews, this study examines those narratives and their use of such elements, noting their reliance on binary gender formations. Through philosophical and cultural-anthropological analyses, we suggest that these fields grant powerful and imaginative personal allowances, opportunities and perceptions to transsexual identifying transgender individuals – magical transformations and justified transpositions to alleviate dysphoria, a surrender of personal responsibility to unseen universal forces, and especially an inherent wisdom gifted during transitional liminality – that neither scientific nor academic evaluations of gender transition can. While these creative allowances are fictive, fantastical, and temporary, they nevertheless articulate a need if not an imperative for understanding, expression and ultimately action on behalf of the transitioning individual.