LOOKING FOR MERCY STREET\/WHERE YOU\u2019RE INSIDE-OUT<\/span>: Ch 2: \u201cA Skin of One\u2019s Own: Toward a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment.\u201d This is my favorite chapter. So rich and chewy! There\u2019s so much to talk about here, so I\u2019ll just pluck out the thing I love most.<\/p>\n Prosser connects narratives of people with bodily agnosia\u2013a brain disorder in which their body parts, for example legs or a hand, feel completely alien\u2013with narratives of people who have sensations in \u201cphantom limbs.\u201d For both of these sets of people, their sense of their own body is visceral, physical, provoking real loss of sensation or presence of sensation\u2026 and yet this sensed body doesn\u2019t match up with the visible flesh. Prosser quotes a lot of transsexual autobiographies describing alienation from the parts of one\u2019s body associated with the sex one was assigned at birth, and a sense of homecoming and integration after (or even in preparation for) surgery. He draws an analogy: It can be said that a transsexual woman suffers from bodily agnosia toward her penis (and presumably also Adam\u2019s apple and other physical markers of maleness?) and a \u201cphantom limb\u201d sensation in the breasts and vagina (and again, presumably, womb?) she doesn\u2019t yet have. And vice versa for a transsexual man. Their post-reassignment surgery bodies are the homes they were never able to dwell in before. A post-surgery transsexual woman is not a mutilated man, or a man made into a woman from parts you can find at home, but a woman who has had major reconstructive surgery. The basic argument is summarized by Prosser\u2019s subsection heading, \u201cFrom Mutilation to Integration: The Poetics of Sex Reassignment Surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n You can see why this resonates with me, since it sounds so much like my usual Eden-via-Plato \u201call knowledge is memory\u201d shtik. The idea of a home we\u2019ve never so much as visited, but which we remember and which is real, is one which makes a great deal of sense to me. In fact, the world-in-general doesn\u2019t make sense if there isn\u2019t such a home, or if we\u2019re utterly unable to recognize it when we encounter it.<\/p>\n On a side matter, I\u2019ll note that if Prosser were willing to assert forcefully that sex difference is a core difference, rooted in human nature, ontologically prior to many other differences, he\u2019d get out of some of the minor traps in this chapter, like his quick and I think too-blithe acceptance of cosmetic surgery.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LOOKING FOR MERCY STREET\/WHERE YOU\u2019RE INSIDE-OUT: Ch 2: \u201cA Skin of One\u2019s Own: Toward a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment.\u201d This is my favorite chapter. So rich and chewy! There\u2019s so much to talk about here, so I\u2019ll just pluck out the thing I love most. Prosser connects narratives of people with bodily agnosia\u2013a brain disorder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n