Body antagonism

I think it's fair to say that the past decades for me have been a period of growing closer to my body. From having literally no idea what my body even looked like, to getting to know it the way it really is. This period of getting over being estranged from my body has given me a lot of food for thought, also because of the many things which I have seen and experienced during those years.

For me, the reasons for becoming estranged from my body are many. Partially due to childhood abuse and bullying, partially due to my intersex/chimeric condition, the result was that by the time I became aware of this and tried to change it, I had some seriously incorrect ideas about my body. I had been told what my body looked like, and taken that to be the truth, but as I tried to match that up with what I saw in the mirror back in 2005, I both could and couldn't see it.

The thing was that I was projecting what I thought my body and face looked like onto the image which I saw in the mirror. Only through objective measurements, and through the feedback from people who had not known me before that time, was I able to begin adjusting this self-image. This was a time when I was seeing the image which I thought I saw in the mirror literally shifting between the projection and reality. This period taught me that sometimes what I think I'm seeing is in fact not what my eyes are seeing. Question your own perception.


Throughout the following years, I would be taught to dislike and hate my body. The medical and mental health professionals at the gender teams were very clear about me having to hate everything 'masculine' about my body, and to work towards the goal of complete 'feminisation'. Because I wanted to become a woman on account of being 'transgender/transsexual'. The conclusion of my body being that of a man was repeated over and over. I looked like how a male would, was the conclusion based on that. But that's not what I saw. Nor what many others saw.

When I first let my hair grow out during the period that I still thought that I was male, ironically to look 'tougher', this practically immediately caused my environment to stop identifying me as male. Instead I would get asked whether I was a girl or a guy, would get told to leave the male public restroom by cleaning staff, and basically got identified as a woman without ever having tried to be identified as such. After many years of this, I had to quit trying to get my intersex condition diagnosed for a while as I simply had to get my official gender social contract changed from 'male' to 'female' as the constant misidentification and smoothing over of resulting issues was getting to me.

At the same hospital where a specialist diagnosed me with 'autoparagynaecophilia' ('liking to think that one looks like a female, when one is not'), the first remark by a urologist who got called in during an examination was: "She really looks like a girl!" when she saw me. Well, then.


When did I feel the most hostile and antagonistic towards my body? When those 'specialists' and 'professionals' were pushing me to accept conclusions which did not match up with what my own body was telling me. When I felt uncertain about what my body really was and felt frustrated about this. I remember feeling okay with having those butchers cut up my body and 'normalise' it to fit society's views of what a 'woman' looks like. Yet this wasn't my own free choice. One's own free choice is never to have one's body cut up or harmed.

What I hold for true is that any act that results in one's own body getting harmed in some way, whether it's for social or personal reasons, is an act of body antagonism. It says that one's body isn't good enough, that it is imperfect and needs to be 'fixed'. It doesn't matter whether it's a tattoo, piercing, or more invasive body modifications including genital mutilation surgery, all of it is an assault on one's body. It's not an act of love or a caring gesture. It's a declaration of war and the usually permanent alteration of a body without cause.

A caring gesture, or body amity, is to take of one's body. To keep it healthy. To not smoke or use drugs. To not drink alcohol and stay out of the Sun to protect one's skin. To have blemishes taken care of to improve its natural looks. Body amity is to have accepted one's body or being in the process of doing so. It is an essential part in the unification of mind and body.


Thus, body antagonism is the exact opposite of body amity. It is to treat one's body with disrespect. To pollute and harm it. To mark it with graffiti and metal fencing. To rip out parts and replace them with something that is a mockery of what used to be. To override and enforce control. Body antagonism can be born from societal pressures to conform, but also from a variety of mental disorders, or a combination of both.

In the end, body antagonism is the opposite of the unification of body and mind. It is an open declaration of war between one's body and mind, which just happens to be a war which neither side can ever truly hope to win.


I'm glad that my body accepts me. I'm glad that I can accept my body. I want to respect my body, same as it does its utmost to respect me, the mind.


Maya