• DOI:10.1080/14649370600673888
• Corpus ID: 43951816

Embodying gender: transgender body/subject formations in Taiwan 1

@article{Ho2006EmbodyingGT,
  title={Embodying gender: transgender body/subject formations in Taiwan 1},
  author={Josephine Ho},
  journal={Inter-Asia Cultural Studies},
  year={2006},
  volume={7},
  pages={228 - 242}
}

• Josephine Ho
• Published 1 June 2006
• Sociology
• Inter-Asia Cultural Studies

Abstract ‘A soul trapped in the wrong body’ is a common description employed by trans subjects to explain their unusual condition. While useful in illustrating the often contradictory feelings, perceptions, self‐images, and social expectations that trans subjects have to negotiate as they move through social space; the body–soul imagery also obscures the manifold differences in endowment and resources among trans subjects that may limit their embodiment. Important aspects of contemporary socio‐cultural culture also add to the complexities of trans existence or even seriously hamper the logistics of their body/identity‐construction. The present paper demonstrates such specificities of Taiwanese transgender existence in relation to body‐ and subject‐formations, in the hope to not only shed light on the actualities of trans efforts toward self‐fashioning, but also to illuminate the increasing entanglement between trans self‐construction and the evolving gender culture that saturates it.