Celestial Bodies - Flipbook - Page 6
Over the past decade, we have seen more and more
members of the trans community taking the helm as
they embark on an interstellar journey of gender
expression that ventures far beyond the limits of
medical thinking; our bodies have become our
spaceships and we need to make sure that they are
outfitted accordingly.
“We’re taking hormones, we’re having surgeries, we’re at the
gym, we’re in the bathroom with a secret tube of mascara
brushing it onto our lashes or trying to make our goatees look a
little thicker…We are making our ways, and we’re looking in the
mirror every morning for signs of change, and when they
happen we are so excited! So pleased to be moving toward what
we need to look like, how we need to walk through the world,
what it is we need to see when we examine our reflections in the
mirror for ourselves. We’ve taken change in hand, and we’ve
made it, and that is so satisfying. It is like living in a house you
built yourself, paddling down the river in a canoe you built with
your best friend, making something with great tenderness and
great care that will serve you forever and give you a lot of
pleasure. And that is why it is great to be trans.”
The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You (S. Bear Bergman, 2009, p. 220)
Bodily autonomy––ownership of one’s own body in
resistance to the societal expectations for how
that body must be used and displayed––is at the
heart of transness. Tattoos, piercings, and other
forms of body modification, originating from
outside traditional networks of medicine and
social work, have become rich sources of selfcompassion and self-exploration that hit at the
core of trans acceptance and expression.
As a collection of interviews, photographs, poems, and
activities, this zine is an attempt to reveal some of the
ways in which artistic and collaborative systems of body
transformation provide indispensable gender-affirming
care to the trans community and suggest ways in which
these learnings can be applied more broadly in the
interdisciplinary fields of social work and medicine.
Ultimately, my hope is that this can be a catalyst of
connection that (like many other personal writings,
interpersonal dialogues, and community spaces)
facilitates the ongoing fight against trans isolation,
as well as a source of information for social workers
and medical practitioners who want to contribute to
the empowerment of their clients as they confront
gender dysphoria and regain bodily autonomy both in
and outside of traditional apparatuses of care •
