Body Sovereignty: This Fat Trans Flesh Is Mine

by
ALEX GINO

I live at the crossroads of fat and trans. I have navigated this body through a web of medical professionals (and unprofessionals) and a society that tries to tell me how my body should be. I’m bombarded with advertisements from a diet industry that wants me to literally be less, along with media that believes that my fat is a moral failing. I’ve also had to jump through hoops and bear substandard medical care in order to ensure my access to hormones.

On the one hand, my people and I say, “I don’t need to change my body,” while on the other, we say, “I have every right to.” This does not mean that fat and trans communities are at odds. Nor that fat people can’t lose weight or that trans people need to medically transition. It comes down to choice. Honest choice. And that comes down to body sovereignty.

Body sovereignty is the belief in self-determination of our own skins and everything inside them. Body sovereignty says this fat trans flesh is mine, and I get to choose what happens to it. Me. For my well-being as I know it to be.

Here’s a little chart I made:

I am highly skeptical of the ease with which many doctors recommend radical diets and weight-loss surgeries. I am also highly skeptical of barriers to gender-affirming hormones and surgeries. In case that sounds like something doesn’t line up, I want to bust open a nugget that will help bring nuance to the matter: purpose. Why does a person want to be smaller? Why does a person want to transition, whatever that change looks like for them?

The fat person who becomes thin is a cultural hero. They have defeated the demons of fat and sugar and sloth and receive accolades of moral triumph. Even if that change is at the expense of their health. Even if that change is a result of illness itself. But the trans person who transitions is a burden. There are new names and pronouns to learn, mistakes not to make. Public questions of bathrooms and athletic competitions. We complicate the system by making the system visible. The norm only exists if there is an abnormal to compare it to.

While a fat person losing weight is often seen as the birth of a “whole new you,” transitioning is often seen as a death. There’s a common fear, especially among families, of “losing” someone if we transition. A family member once told me not to ask her to use my name because it made her feel like “birth name” was dead. No, really. She has come around since then and uses my name and pronouns. Hurray for growth, but it doesn’t change that her comment hurt me and our relationship.

And that’s not to mention dating and sex! Many fat people try to change their bodies for their partners, or potential partners. Many trans people fear losing partners, or potential partners, if they come out or transition. The good news for trans folk is that many couples do stay together, and grow closer, once both partners are able to share more of themselves. It’s not always immediate, and there are good and bad moments, but there’s so much more potential for emotional intimacy when you’re able to bring your full self to the table.

The same thing is true for fat folk. Partners who want you to diet so that you will be more attractive to them are scum. And even the ones worried about your health are caught up in a modern myth. The idea that “thin is healthy” is a lie. Losing large amounts of weight, only to gain back more, is a natural effect of dieting, as the body learns that starvation mode is around every corner and builds its defenses. Health is something we control a lot less than the diet industry would like us to believe. It is tied up in our genes, our histories, our resources, and our communities, and none of it is about morality.

Medical intervention is jammed down fat peoples’ throats, rather literally in the case of feeding tube diets, which is a real thing that doctors prescribe. Feeding tubes are a valuable tool for people who benefit from them; but wanting to be thinner is a questionable motivator, and feeding tubes do not support someone in developing a better relationship with solid food. But nothing is too risky or untested to try in the name of “weight control.”

In contrast, many trans people are denied medical intervention unless and until we perform to a doctor’s standard. And even then, we are monitored heavily. I take hormones, and my blood levels are tested regularly, often twice a year, for my “safety.” All’s well and fine while the numbers look good, but the moment that my physical health competes with my emotional health, medical experts may well make the decision for me and refuse to prescribe my hormones.

Dueling medicalizations create a special dance when trans people are denied surgery unless they lose weight. I can’t count how many transmasculine folk I have witnessed lament that they can’t get top surgery until they drop an arbitrary number of pounds. And most of them are right that doctors won’t operate on them, but they say it with a note of shame instead of indignation, as though they are not worthy of surgery until they are less fat. As if it isn’t ridiculous that they aren’t allowed to change their bodies for themselves until they change their bodies for a doctor. As if it’s reasonable for doctors to use excuses like “the results don’t look as good on larger bodies” instead of learning how to operate on us.

The fat body that loses weight is conforming, where the trans body that takes hormones and/or has surgery (or surgeries) is pushing against conformity for the right to exist. And there’s another difference: Weight loss is generally temporary and takes work and sacrifice to maintain.

Transition, whether social, medical, or both, allows people to flourish. Diets don’t work. Transition does.

As fat and trans people, our body sovereignties are questioned on a daily basis. We are ridiculed and our bodies are turned into jokes. This dehumanization puts us at risk, not only in bearing the emotional brunt of society’s scorn, but for physical violence. There is a balance between safety and connection, and sometimes we need to juggle between sharing ourselves and keeping ourselves hidden and safe to share another day. Please, in your quest for body sovereignty, consider your safety a valuable piece of the equation. And if you see someone else being harassed for celebrating their body sovereignty, consider whether it’s safe for you to say hi to them, and ask if they’d like you to stick around.

But even when it’s questioned, we have the right to body sovereignty. Even when that right is delayed or withheld. Even when we withhold it from ourselves. You get to change your body, even if that complicates someone else’s plan. And if changing your body is someone else’s plan, you don’t have to participate. Either way, it is your right to determine for yourself what happens to your body. And if someone is stopping you from doing that, they are violating your right to body sovereignty.

What can body sovereignty look like? Well, all sorts of things:

• Eating in public
• Eating candy in public
• Eating candy in the park at 10 a.m. while smiling at people taking their daily run
• Running in the park at 10 a.m. while smiling at people eating candy
• Shaving your body
• Not shaving your body
• Shaving half your body
• Shaving your head
• Not cutting or processing your hair
• Wearing that bright yellow dress
• Wearing that bright yellow bikini
• Wearing nothing at all
• Taking off your bra in the car after work
• Not wearing a bra in the first place
• Taking off your prosthetic limb when you get itchy
• Wearing lipstick that complements your mustache
• Tossing out magazines that tell you your body is wrong
• Choosing media that celebrate people like you
• Ordering dessert and eating every last bite
• Reading this book with the cover displayed wide

Body sovereignty is doing something because you want to, not because you’re supposed to. A fat man eating ice cream in public is an act of protest against a world that shames and demonizes him. A tall trans woman who wears six-inch heels flaunts her pride in the face of gender norms. A Black nonbinary person who wears their kinky hair naturally looks white beauty standards in the eye and says, “I don’t need you.”

I was nineteen before I found the word genderqueer in Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein and quickly took it on. (Thank you forever, Auntie Kate, for letting me know that I am real and that there is a rest of us.) And while it was deep in my head, I didn’t actually say the word fat until I was twenty-three, when reading Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann out loud with my dear friend Beth. I was an adult before I was able to describe my body, and both times, it was a book that got me there.

So yeah, that’s me ending with a shameless plug to read. The better informed you are, the more the decisions you make are genuinely yours. But no matter where you get your information, study it. Question it. Does it match what you know about yourself? Does it bring in new ideas worth exploring? Or is it trying to get you to follow it instead of yourself? You can tell it to stop.

Remember, you have body sovereignty.

PROVIDED BY AUTHOR

ALEX GINO
loves glitter, ice cream, gardening, awe-ful puns, and stories that reflect the diversity and complexity of being alive. They would take a coffee date with a good friend over a big party any day. Alex is the author of middle-grade novels You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! and the Stonewall Award–winning George. You can read more about their books and thoughts at alexgino.com and on Twitter @lxgino.