In her essay “Queer Feelings,” Sara Ahmed asserts that one feels queerness by “the tiredness of making corrections and departures” (424). She demonstrates how compulsory heterosexuality forces a discomfort in the queer subject by consistently making the subject see the difference between the self and the norms. She also puts this assertion into the perspective of a heterosexual subject. She explains through a metaphor using the body that when one is aligned with the norms, the person “[doesn’t] tend to notice when one experiences [comfort]” (425). She uses comfort to deliberately illustrate the “ease” and the lack of distinction between “one’s environment” and “one’s body” (425). The heterosexual subject does not need to see “the everydayness of compulsory heterosexuality” (424). 

Ahmed’s idea, applied to transgender identity rather than sexuality, reveals the intensity with which one can feel being non-normative. The transgender subject consistently feels being transgender by the constant “corrections and departures” involved in having a non-normative gender identity. For instance, I “correct” the relationships I have to people, shifting from a daughter to a son. As a trans man seeking social and medical transition, I “correct” the spaces I enter and the hormones in my body, by going to the men’s restroom and injecting testosterone weekly. 

Though the “corrections and departures” can be verbal for a trans person like those of the queer subject, they are often they are physical. Ahmed uses a metaphor of the body becoming seamless with its surroundings when it does not grate against the norms. Ahmed’s body metaphor becomes literal using the transgender lens. The queer subject makes a verbal departure by  having a boyfriend, not a girlfriend. Whereas the transgender subject might have a physical characteristic that does not align with the normative ideas of an assigned gender.  For example, a stand to pee device or STP, a device used to stand to pee, presents an aspect of a trans man’s identity that seeks to fulfill the functions of a penis expected in the normative male gender. 

To address the weight of the discomfort felt by queer subjects, Ahmed points to specific “moments of ceremony (birth, marriage, death)” which are connected to compulsory heterosexuality (424). These moments might include the typical marriage vows being written for a man and woman. Transgender identity is connected to many other everyday things, like public restroom use; it also connects to weighty, ceremonious things, like birth. A transgender person using a new name must go through legal proceedings to change the name on their birth certificate. These proceedings force the transgender person to be reminded of or feel their trans identity in the slightest daily actions. For instance, all of my legal documents and identification carry my birth name, which no longer reflects my male identity. Showing my ID at a store for a purchase becomes a longer, more uncomfortable conversation due to my seemingly conflicting identification.

When implementing the body metaphor, Ahmed also describes the queer subject’s discomfort as  “experienced as bodily injury” (424). According to Ahmed, the queer subject experiences the compounding stress of consistently defending oneself and resisting the norms. In the context of transgender identity, “bodily injury” becomes much more visible (424). In certain views, a person assigned female at birth presenting as a man can cause or be construed as “bodily injury.” Sexual reassignment surgery faces claims of being “bodily injury” because trans-exclusionary radical feminists, people who believe one can only be their assigned gender, and others see it as an unwarranted changing of the body (424). Since sexual reassignment surgery requires going under anesthesia many people consider it a severe reaction to what poses, in their view, a small or nonexistent problem. In the case of phalloplasty, the patient requires multiple surgeries and recovery periods to go through the entire procedure. Bruising and bleeding are necessary. Ahmed’s theory does not account for this physical visibility. This high visibility makes for an intense feeling of trans-ness. Many forums discussing top surgery, a surgery to remove breast tissue, focus on reduction of scarring, rather than the pain of recovering from a major surgery. 

Hormone replacement therapy, a treatment used to make secondary sexual characteristics align more with one’s gender, reminds one of the innate deficiencies seen in a transgender body by those viewing through a normative lens. If done through injections, hormone therapy causes “bodily injury” at the injection site (424). Cisgender people producing their own hormones do not have this concern; therefore, they do not have this moment of literally feeling their gender when injecting hormones. 

The transgender identity closely matches Ahmed’s theory about one feeling their queerness due to the outside stressors of society; however, the transgender subject takes her theory of stress and shifts it into a theory of scarring. The identity lends a visible physicality that the sexual identity does not.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. “Queer Feelings.” The Routledge Queer Studies Reader, by Donald Eugene. Hall, Routledge, 2013.