“The Wrong Body”

“The Wrong Body” presents a beautiful account of being transgender as a lot of different lessons learned through different forms of gender expression. From the beginning of the story, the narrator sets up expectations and breaks them: for instance, he titles the story “The Wrong Body” but negates the sentiment that he was born into the wrong body within the first few paragraphs. The story’s unique visual layout also helps tell the tale of a cohesive identity created from a combination of different parts, of the human soul and body’s variety.

This account was surprising to me because my interactions with trans people in real life and through the accounts I read led me to believe that the experience of gender dysphoria was an essential part of the trans narrative. Even though I think of myself as well-informed on gender issues, this story awakened me to the limits of my current understanding. I realized that I, too, had tried to box the trans experience within my own expectations. This structure of setting up and compassionately breaking expectations that the narrator offered gently led me to them to acknowledge my tendency to overgeneralize without making me feel judged.

The narrator’s unique experience — of being born as a girl, identifying as a man, and believing that he was not born in the wrong body — shows that contradictions can be embraced and that there is wholeness in complexity. The idea that the narrator was able to avoid the toxic masculinity of his father by virtue of being born a girl moved me and also inspired me to interrogate the way we educate children about gender expectations. By understanding the complexity of many distinct forms of gender expression and infusing the understanding that nothing is monolithic to children at a young age, they can feel free to define their own destiny.