Bodies, Pain, Gender: Trans Pain and Creation (NMS Capstone)
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Authors
Amanda Baker
Issue Date
2026
Type
Language
Keywords
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Abstract
Contemporary media representations of trans life overwhelmingly fixate experiences of pain, but it’s a pain framed for the cis gaze, and which often works to perpetuate single stories of trans identity. There remains a dearth of stories about trans people which actually grapple with our perspectives, about the pain that comes from living in a body which doesn’t feel like our own and in a society which treats us like we don’t belong. As an adolescent growing to understand my own experiences and identity, what helped me understand myself and develop a larger social perspective was reading queer theory and watching video essays. These theoretical perspectives worked to highlight how this experience of trans pain may have an internal, inborn component, but is equally, if not moreso, created and shaped by the hegemonic, cisnormative discourses of gender and the gender binary. As transgender people are a group for whom articulations of their own identity often hinge upon descriptions of pain, representations of this pain, especially representations which cater to the cis gaze, are an important site for examination, and the theoretical lenses of Elaine Scarry, Jay Prosser, Sandy Stone, among others are especially relevant to this analysis of trans pain and body politics. My NMS honors presentation, “Bodies, Pain, Gender: Trans Pain and Creation,” will preview a video essay that utilizes these lenses alongside an interdisciplinary approach to analyze representations of trans pain across biography, film, and theory to examine the origins and meanings of the language we use to describe our own bodies.