Exploring young trans people's everyday experiences of ‘out-of-placeness’ and socio-bodily dysphoria

Abstract

This paper examines how young trans people come to be positioned as, and subsequently feel, ‘out-of-place’ in certain everyday spaces, particularly in the socio-political context of the contemporary UK. Through the stories of young trans people aged 14–25 collected via participatory research, I question what it feels like to be young and trans and to experience and embody such dislocating feelings as ‘out-of-placeness’ and socio-bodily dysphoria, and what toll repeatedly experiencing such embodied emotions exacts on young trans people, their bodies, and life trajectories. To do so, the experience of misgendering and deadnaming, others' hostile gazes, and what I refer to as socio-bodily dysphoria, are introduced as examples of common modes of cisnormativity and ‘out-of-placeness’ experienced by participants. I build on Sara Ahmed's work on the socio-spatial positioning and experience of non-conforming or disruptive bodies to examine how trans youth and marginalised folk more generally become ‘out-of-place’ and experience ‘out-of-placeness’ in everyday space-times that are not affectively, socially, or materially structured to expect their bodily presence, facilitate their participation, or enable their active agency, particularly on gendered terms. Importantly, a central contribution of the article involves articulating a spatial conceptualisation of socio-bodily dysphoria. In sum, I develop geographical analyses of young trans people's everyday encounters and crucially build geographical understandings of the emergence and fixity of socio-bodily dysphoria and everyday marginality through the voices and stories of trans youth.