Non-binary embodiment and bodily discomfort: Body as social signum

Abstract

Transgender embodiment and transgender-related bodily discomfort have been discussed primarily from a medical perspective that downplays the role of society in shaping one’s orientation towards the body. Drawing on qualitative data on the everyday lives of non-binary individuals, the article analyses the phenomenon of transgender bodily discomfort or bodily dysphoria using a Bourdieusian framework. The data show that bodily discomfort arises in relation to the bodily parts, characteristics and processes that are most heavily invested as being the parts that supposedly tell the ‘truth’ about one’s gender, and in relation to the bodily hexis that is socially recognised as being indicative of one’s gender. The analysis shows that the embodied socially dominant schemes of perception and classifications on which a binary body typology is based contribute to the rise of transgender-related bodily discomfort. Thus, despite the bodily discomfort being individually manifested and experienced, it is (also) the socially embodied – the social body – that reaches out through the discomfort of a socialised body.

Introduction

The medical field has shown great interest in sexual and gender nonconformity since the 19th century (Green, 2020). Despite sexual and gender nonconformity being conflated at first by attempting to explain homosexuality as having a ‘female psyche in a male body’ and vice versa (Green, 2020, p. 2; see also Drescher, 2015; Kuhar, 2001; Valentine, 2007), the medical approach to transgender phenomena later crystallised distinctively, predominantly through the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative (Bettcher, 2014; Bornstein, 1994; Engdahl, 2014; Johnson, 2015).

Clinical research on embodied transgender experiences, including bodily discomfort, remains heavily focused on transgender women, neglecting a range of transgender identities, including non-binary ones (Paz Galupo et al., 2021b). The research shows that experiences of transgender-related bodily discomfort are neither universal nor static: they change ‘across time and social context’, including social interactions (Pulice-Farrow et al., 2020, p. 663; see also McGuire et al., 2016; Paz Galupo et al., 2019; Sanger, 2010). As thematised by McGuire et al. (2016, p. 104), some transgender individuals report feeling ‘liberated from traditional gender roles’ over time and with new interactional experiences of social acceptance. For some transgender people, the body and accompanying gender expression are not a source of discomfort (Nieder et al., 2020), but rather a source of satisfaction (Davidmann, 2010; Davy, 2019; Latham, 2017; McGuire et al., 2016; Nordmarken, 2014; Paz Galupo et al., 2021a; Sanger, 2010).

Yet, some transgender individuals report experiencing a certain amount of discomfort with certain bodily parts and/or bodily shape (Lagos, 2019; McGuire et al., 2016; see also Paz Galupo et al., 2021b). These experiences are moderated by various body-checking behaviours and self-imposed limitations on behaviour, as well as feelings of ‘somatic non-ownership’ (Prosser, 1998, p. 73), that is, of disconnection from the body, either in a general sense or in relation to particular body parts (Cusack & Paz Galupo, 2021; Harrison et al., 2020; Martin & Coolhart, 2022; Pulice-Farrow et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2013). Medical gender affirmation procedures have been reported as potentially lessening the grip of bodily discomfort. However, this is mostly reported by transgender binary individuals (Paz Galupo et al., 2021b), as non-binary identity cannot be (socially) ‘adequately translated into a nongendered body’ (Paz Galupo et al., 2021b, p. 107).

Moreover, Paz Galupo et al. (2019) state that body dysphoria becomes salient in social interactions that call for the social negotiation of identity. The authors (Paz Galupo et al., 2019, n.p.) conclude that some discomfort may arise not from gender incongruence per se but from the ‘stigma stress associated with negotiating social interactions in a cisnormative context’, particularly in relation to gender roles/expectations and other people’s perceptions. In this sense, Lindley et al. (2022) distinguish between body gender dysphoria and social gender dysphoria; however, the authors acknowledge that for transgender individuals, these two may not be easily distinguished at the level of experience. The first accounts for intrapersonal and the second for interpersonal aspects of gender dysphoria (Lindley et al., 2022), with social interactions acting as ‘external triggers’ that give rise to internal processes (i.e. intrusive thoughts about other people’s perceptions of a transgender individual’s gender) (Paz Galupo et al., 2019). Additionally, Paz Galupo et al. (2021a, p. 72) state that gender dysphoria and discomfort may occur when discrepancies between gender identity and social expectations based upon assigned gender exist and when the body ‘falls short’ of gendered social ideals. Zamantakis and Lackey (2022, p. 889) emphasise a similar point and call for future research that would take into account the relations between ‘gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, and doing gender’.

A sociological approach to the body can elucidate these experiences, specifically in relation to the experientially blurred nature of the conceptual distinction between body and social gender dysphoria: a distinction that can imply that there is nothing social about body dysphoria. ¹ Namely, society may play a significant role in shaping experiences of transgender-related bodily discomfort not only in terms of social interactions as such – as Paz Galupo et al. (2019) put forward – but also in terms of the social incorporated, that is, ‘the social that is instituted in the incorporated and individuate biological body’, meeting with the social objectified, that is, ‘the social that exists in mechanisms and things’ (Bourdieu, 2020, pp. 28–29). This approach thus echoes Wilchins’s (2020, p. 346) question of whether there are ways ‘to experience transgender embodiment that are untethered from and unmediated by narrow cisnormative gender ideals’.

With the help of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework, I attempt to address bodily discomfort as experienced by non-binary individuals in terms of habitus and embodied schemes of perception and classification in relation to the body as a social signum (Bourdieu, 2010, 2018; see also 1992) and provide a conceptual pathway to understanding bodily discomfort in terms of the socialised body by building on qualitative empirical data on transgender non-binary individuals’ experiences with bodily discomfort. In the next sections, firstly, Bourdieu’s main concepts are introduced, and secondly, applied in the analysis of the empirical data.

Assigning an essence

The importance of body for transgender individuals’ everyday life experiences – that the ‘material body matters’ (Hines, 2007, p. 70; see also Prosser, 1998; Rubin, 2003; Salamon, 2010; Young, 2002) – has been recognised in transgender studies and (trans)feminist discussions. In this sense, the body has been approached as unavoidably enculturated (Young, 2002) and as a materiality on which social systems of power act (Stryker, 2006, p. 3). In terms of gender, the body as materiality is subjected to ‘highly gendered regulatory schemata’ that carve a ‘sexed body’ out of the bodily flesh (Stryker, 1994, p. 249) and set into motion the practices of ‘boying’ those deemed boys and ‘girling’ those deemed girls (Moon, 2019).

The body is also at the centre of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework: ‘One cannot really describe the relationship between agents and the world except by placing at the centre the body and the process of incorporation’ (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 182–183). According to Bourdieu (2020), the social has two modalities of existence, one of them being the objectified social (social mechanisms, social things), and other the incorporated social or the socialised body (Bourdieu, 2020, pp. 28–29). Although the latter appears individual, it is of collective making (Bourdieu, 2000, 2020). Like Stryker (1994, p. 241) and other authors (Butler, 1990; Davy, 2011; Salamon, 2010; Sullivan, 2008), Bourdieu emphasises the (gendered) body ² as a matter of ‘gendered cosmology’ (1996–1997, p. 194). This cosmology, encompassing gender binary oppositions, gives rise to a particular topology of bodies clearly demarcated as ‘male’ or ‘female’ (Bourdieu, 1996–1997, 2001).

The gendered body typology itself is a product of ‘oriented choices’, of inclined perceptions of the body that emphasise bodily differences and neglect bodily similarities (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 14). Rather than the gendered body being a matter of objective and asocial materiality – a ‘simple recording of natural properties’ (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 14) – it is a matter of social interventions, investments and conditions that shape bodies in the image of the dominant principle of gender binary perceptions and classifications. This gendered and gendering principle of di-/visions produces discontinuity (e.g. masculinity or femininity, a man or a woman) in the place of continuity (Bourdieu, 2018). Therefore, similar to other authors (see, for example, Butler, 1990, 1999; Costera Meijer & Prins, 1998; West & Zimmerman, 1987), Bourdieu (2001, 2018, p. 82) also emphasises the processes of naturalisation and biologisation of gender division and acts of ‘consecrations’ that turn material differences into social distinctions, that is, into ‘something legitimate and sacred, a sacred boundary’.

As Stryker (1994) emphasises, gender attribution – and, for that matter, doing gender (Butler, 1990; Kessler & McKenna, 2000; West & Zimmerman, 1987) – is unavoidable and compulsory. The embodied agents are subjected to gendered and gendering relational experiences with the social environment (see also Fausto-Sterling, 2012), and these socio-cultural forces and conventions bring a ‘tremendous amount of pressure to bear on subjects in formation’ (Rubin, 2003, p. 152). Namely, as a social category that is assigned as an agent’s essence, gender also comes with obligations to ‘become what you are’ and to conduct oneself according to this gendered social verdict (Bourdieu, 1992, pp. 120–122). By framing gender through social obligations to become what one is socially ‘destined to be’, Bourdieu’s concepts enable us not only to conceive of bodies differently, as Butler calls for (Costera Meijer & Prins, 1998), but also to conceive the weight and the grip of being assigned an essence by acknowledging not only the possibility and reality of resistance but also the ‘resistance of “reality”’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 108).

Because systems of social power act on the body, Stryker (2006, p. 3) elaborates that they are capable of producing pain and pleasure, and the author thoroughly discusses this power in relation to ‘transgender rage’ (Stryker, 1994). Yet, because social power is not only external to an agent – thus acting only on the body – but is also incorporated, it also acts, so to speak, from within the body. It is because the social world, with its principles of di-/visions, including gendered cosmology (Bourdieu, 1996–1997), is embodied that a range of affective experiences may arise, with rage being only one particular affective modality among others (e.g. discomfort, shame). A sense of one’s body, therefore, is shaped by social rules (Davy, 2011), as the forces of the social world shape the most intimate and individual experiences and feelings of one’s embodiment (Salamon, 2010, p. 77).

To capture transgender individuals’ experiences of the social world and the sense of their bodies, ‘the inner conflicts and tensions arising from the construction of body images’ (Davy, 2011, p. 169) need to be accounted for. For Davy (2011, p. 8), Bourdieu’s concept of habitus goes some way in addressing the social aspects of bodies by providing a ‘dynamic generative understanding of bodies’ while being capable of taking into account the deep-rootedness of gender differentiation (Davy, 2011, pp. 8–9). ³

Indeed, according to Bourdieu (2020), the social world inscribes itself in the bodies, giving rise to a habitus, that is, to practical dispositions or practical knowledge (Bourdieu, 2020; see also Bourdieu 1996–1997, 2000, 2001; Wacquant, 2015, 2016). Habitus, as a set of dispositions that orients and inclines rather than determines an agent, is a complex, ‘multiscalar and multilayered set of schemata’ (Wacquant, 2016, p. 64), consisting of cognitive, emotive and conative constructs. Its gendered formation is one of the most fundamental, as social inscription of gender begins early in the social game with the assigning of a gendered ‘essence’ and giving rise to a gendered collective habitus, thereby setting in motion the processes of becoming what one is socially destined to be (Bourdieu, 1996–1997, 2001). ⁴

As such, habitus encompasses practical knowledge of masculinity and femininity, including bodily hexis – a physical shape of the body and its comportment (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 64; see also 1996–1997). ⁵ In addition, among its significant building blocks are the ‘patterns of the perception’ (Bourdieu, 2020, p. 65), principles of vision and divisions of the social world, that is, schemata for perceiving and classifying the world and oneself (Bourdieu, 2021, pp. 87–90; see also Atkinson, 2020; Bourdieu, 2000, p. 139). As part of an agent’s habitus, these schemes of perception and classification are naturalised and predominantly taken for granted.

In this sense, transgender-related bodily discomfort and unease, as are potentially experienced by non-binary individuals, may at least partially stem from the agents’ practical knowledge of what must be present – and absent – in terms of bodily constituency and comportment to be socially recognised as being of a particular gender. This embodied practical knowledge may give rise to an ‘exceptional awareness’, to an ‘unhappy consciousness of his body’ (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 86; see also Cromwell, 2006), especially when the body serves as grounds for collective misperceptions. These misperceptions and misclassifications are difficult not to take seriously by non-binary agents precisely because they are not (only) present in the ‘society out there’ and embodied in the countless others with whom one interacts, but are also incorporated in the non-binary agents themselves. These misperceptions then might prove to be powerful – in terms of producing discomfort and unease – precisely as they spring into life the transgender agent’s incorporated social: society and its structures, including the principle of (gender binary) classification.

Transgender subjects, as discussed by Davy (2011, p. 58), are thus ‘not situated outside their habitus’. Despite transgender identity already representing a significant break with what is supposed to be taken for granted (i.e. gender as natural and unchangeable), the social world, encompassing the binary principle of gender and body classifications, may continue to hold its grip over one’s socialised body. Thus, according to Davy (2011, p. 58; see also Johnson, 2007), the gendered structure and composition of agents’ habitus need to be negotiated to lessen the grip of the social as it is incorporated. These negotiations can prove to be full of tension and unease (see, for example, Martin & Coolhart, 2022), as dispositions are durable and resistant – but far from eternal (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 133) – due to the subjective history of their formation and being continuously sprung into action by countless others, wielding the power of the entire social order.

Body as a social signum

Binary gender di-/vision embodied in the form of one’s practical knowledge, or ‘pretheoretical common sense’ (Bettcher, 2007, p. 49), enjoys moral certainty and the power of common sense (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Within the dominant principle of classification, sex organs supposedly tell the truth of one’s ‘sex’. However, because these are usually covered (Bettcher, 2007, 2012; Rubin, 2003; see also Elias, 2000), various substitutes step in and guide social attributions of gender, such as other physical cues (Rubin, 2003) and gender presentation in general (Bettcher, 2007, 2012).

Bourdieu (2008), similarly, tackles the issue of the social power of perception – of perceiving and classifying the social world according to the particular dominant vision – in his work on matrimonial changes in Bearn’s village and, additionally, in Distinction (2010), where he specifically addresses the body and bodily hexis as being made into a social signum. Both – the body and its ways of comportment – are perceived as ‘symbol[s] of economic and social standing’ (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 85), that is, as symbols of one’s social position.

This is, for example, evident in the case of Bearn’s peasants, who apply to themselves the dominant schemes of perception and classification that value urban-styled bodies and hexis (Bourdieu, 2008). The devalued image produced by these dominant schemes is imposed on them as an ‘essence, a destiny, a fatum’ (2008, p. 198), and thus, the peasants perceive themselves and their bodies as ‘[bodies] marked by a social stamp [. . .] as an empaysanit, “em-peasanted” body’ (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 86). This not only gives rise to an unhappy consciousness of their bodies – experienced as the ones betraying them by telling a tale of their devalued social position – but also to an acute practical consciousness of the social conditions that disable them from being perceived as valued and legitimate (Bourdieu, 2008).

Practically knowing what a ‘legitimate body and legitimate comportment’ consists of (i.e. urbanised elegance instead of slowness and a heavy gait) and being acutely aware of being hardly able to achieve it, agents experience their body as alienated (Bourdieu, 2010, p. 204). Instead of the body being experienced as a ‘vessel of grace’, it is experienced with unease because of the disparities between the ‘legitimate body’ – the body as it should be according to the socially dominant schemes of perception and classification – and the real body (Bourdieu, 2010, p. 204). These disparities are not only continuously manifested and mirrored in the reactions of countless others but are also practically known by the agents themselves (Bourdieu, 2010).

Although Bourdieu’s discussion on the body and bodily hexis primarily refers to class positions and, secondarily, to the urban–rural divide (2008, 2010), in the following section, I attempt to show that his approach to the body, particularly as a social signum, could be applied to transgender embodiment and bodily discomfort. Despite being subjectively experienced, transgender-related bodily discomfort may at least partially stem from an agent’s embodied and durable social principles of perception and classification. Put differently, discomfort may arise from practically knowing which parts of one’s body and bodily comportment are betraying the non-binary agent by enabling misclassification of their body according to reinforced social schemes of (gender binary) perception and classification rather than to one’s gender identity. ⁶

Methods

In what follows, I turn to non-binary individuals’ experiences with bodily discomfort by analysing data from a research project on the everyday life of individuals with non-binary identities. ⁷ In this contribution, I focus on a specific subsample of transgender (non-binary) individuals (7) who reported experiences of bodily discomfort related to their gender identity. These individuals identified with various gender identities, ranging from demiboy (1), woman (1), agender (1), transgender (as an umbrella term) (1), non-binary (5), and gender queer (1). Three participants identified with more than one identity. Individuals who were 18 years old and were living in Slovenia at the time of the study, implemented between 2015 and 2019, were eligible to participate. The average age of the participants in the subsample included in this contribution was 23.4 years. The participants were initially sampled with the help of the researcher’s personal network by applying a snowball-sampling method (Handcock & Gile, 2011) and, subsequently, with the help of relevant LGBTIQ+ non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that act as trustworthy gatekeepers (Emmel et al., 2007).

All participants gave verbal informed consent. Throughout the interviews, additional checks were conducted to ensure the well-being of the participants, and the participants were continuously reminded that they could opt out either from answering the particular questions or from the interview as such. For the research, I obtained approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana.

Interviews were transcribed and analysed (Berg, 2001; Braun & Clarke, 2013) using MAXQDA. ⁸ Transcripts were read several times to make a series of initial observations and to identify core themes across the data. Codes were then assigned, and a set of higher-level categories based on the thematic similarity of the codes was formed (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2019; Saldaña, 2009).

In Slovenia, administrative measures regarding legal gender recognition (LGR) have been put in place; however, LGR is limited to gender binary categories. Explicit legal measures are lacking, meaning that the procedures are vulnerable to the arbitrary will of administrators (Kuhar et al., 2018). After mobilisation by LGBTIQ+ non-governmental organisations, in 2020, a formalised body (Interdisciplinary Council for the Confirmation of Gender Identity) responsible for medical gender confirmation procedures was established by the Ministry of Health. For LGR, a referral letter stating that ‘the person has changed their gender’ must be obtained from a health professional. However, no compulsory surgical intervention or sterilisation is required for those who seek LGR. In recent years, anti-gender movements have been gaining traction, relying on ‘gender ideology’ as a particular strategic interpretative framework in which gender- and sexuality-related rights and accompanying scientific (for example, gender studies) as well as political discourses are constituted as a threat to society (Kuhar, 2015; Kuhar & Patternote, 2017; Patternote & Kuhar, 2017, pp. 4–5; Šabec et al., 2021). Transgender individuals continue to be exposed to stigmatisation and discrimination across various social spaces, including public ones, which greatly influences their everyday life experiences (Koletnik, 2019; Perger, 2020, 2022).

Before presenting the findings, I want to acknowledge my standpoint as an academic sociologist and researcher who was – as a member of the LGBTIQ+ community – previously politically involved in various forms of LGBTIQ+ activism and community building, and who attempts to continue to do so, albeit perhaps in slightly different ways. The research is based on the following points. First, naturalised gender binary division – with everything it implies – is a highly restrictive one, and the horizons of gender need to be expanded in parallel with socio-political conditions enabling a ‘liveable life’ (Butler, 2012). Second, ‘the apparently most strictly subjective tensions and contradictions frequently articulate the deepest structures of the social world and their contradictions’ (Bourdieu, 1999, p. 511), and approaches from the social sciences give us the necessary tools to sensitively and respectfully analyse the lived experiences of marginalised social groups.

Relations of power require critical examination, regardless of one’s identity in relation to the researched social groups (Browne, 2003). Moreover, acknowledging one’s social positioning on its own does little to address the power relations inherently present in research situations (Stacey, 1988). With that in mind, it should also be noted that the research process, from formulating the research questions and protocol for semi-structured in-depth interviews to checking the interpretation and findings, was implemented in cooperation with individuals who were members of the LGBTIQ+ community and institutional actors (NGOs).

It should be taken into account that the population I focused on was a specific one, encompassing only those transgender individuals who identified as non-binary and, additionally, only those who reported experiencing bodily discomfort related to their gender. Research shows that transgender non-binary individuals report less gender incongruence and higher body satisfaction scores compared to transgender binary individuals, which may account for their lower rates in seeking medical gender affirmation procedures (Fiani & Han, 2019; Jones et al., 2019; Nieder et al., 2020; Paz Galupo et al., 2021a). ⁹ Paz Galupo et al. (2021b) also report that social and medical transition do not offer the same kind of relief of dysphoria that they do for transgender individuals who identify within a gender binary framework. In this sense, some non-binary participants perceive medical gender affirmative procedures that enable either masculine or feminine bodily presentation as a ‘trade-off’, as these may address some aspects of dysphoria but may also give rise to other dysphoric feelings (Paz Galupo et al., 2021b). According to Fiani and Han (2019, p. 190; see also Davidmann, 2010), achieving social recognition is often perceived as unattainable by non-binary individuals, and some endorse ‘preferences for one pole or the other of the gender binary’.

Given the particularities of non-binary individuals’ experiences, the findings should be read accordingly, that is, as giving insight into this particular social group rather than the transgender population as such.

Bodily discomfort arising from bodily constitution, characteristics and processes

Concerning bodily discomfort related to gender identity, the participants most frequently mentioned those body parts that are socially perceived as the key indicators of one’s assigned gender category. These body parts elicited intensely affectively charged feelings towards, for example, their genitals, as is evident from Alex’s narrative. Their discomfort towards genitals spills over into various situations where one’s genitals are directly exposed and made visible to self and others, as is a situation of nudity, which Alex attempts to avoid with the aim of closing down the possibility of experiencing bodily discomfort:

I was in complete denial about the existence of genitals. I hardly had any contact with myself, with others, and I just felt a huge disgust towards nakedness, towards my nakedness, towards the nakedness of others, which continues to this day. And I have hardly, hardly accepted genitals in general, and what came out of that was. . . a form of dissociativity [. . .] also at the level of personal hygiene, when I am in the bathroom, I have always relied on rationalisation and intellectualisation, as if – to be just in your head, to turn off everything else, when you are showering. . . as if [the body] is not completely yours, as if you are not completely there. (Alex, non-binary, queer; assigned male at birth; 24)

In addition to genitals, feelings of bodily discomfort were also directed at the chest. For Izak (demiboy; assigned female at birth; 23), this is because the chest area is perceived as one of the most important indicators of one’s gender:

Yeah, it’s important to me. The breasts are the body part that’s the most dysphoric to me [. . .] I know that’s not really politically correct or something [laughter], but yeah, breasts are still the symbol of a woman [. . .] Breasts are the things you either fully want or fully reject, the part which is the most. . . it either betrays you or affirms you the most.

Feelings of discomfort towards one’s body, however, are not just about genitals and chests. Sometimes, they are also related to the general body shape and to how one’s nails are done. This was pointed out by Metka (woman, agender – both in a gender-fluid way; assigned male at birth; 23):

Sometimes, I feel a lot of dysphoria towards my body, in the sense of. . . how my nails are done, how hairy I am [. . .] You don’t know what to do with yourself because you can’t reshape your body. I can’t reshape my bones. I can’t shift my body fat. It would be nice if you could do that. But, you know, it is very hopeless, pointless, helpless.

In addition to the body and its particular parts, some of the participants also pointed out discomfort related to their voice. The latter can be perceived as low or high. As such, it is classified as an indicator of one’s gender assigned to birth, thus, potentially causing discomfort. This was brought forward by Jaka (non-binary; assigned female at birth; 23). In certain situations, Jaka is, according to his narrative, misrecognised as a man rather than recognised as non-binary. Consistent with what Fiani and Han (2019, p. 190) thematise on non-binary individuals endorsing preference ‘for one pole or the other of the gender binary’, this type of misrecognition is nonetheless preferred by Jaka in comparison to being misrecognised as a woman. Yet, Jaka is misrecognised as a man as long as his voice does not ‘betray’ the gender assigned at birth (female) and supposedly reveal his ‘true sex’:

When speaking, yeah [. . .] that’s why I became a very quiet person. I don’t know, it was uncomfortable for me to speak up. I didn’t like my voice. Like, when I’m shopping and I’m saying ‘thanks’, because I see people are shocked, they don’t expect such a high pitch of voice. [. . .] Sometimes I think that I. . . I don’t know. . . I could go completely silent.

For Jaka, the possibility of the voice ‘betraying’ him is the reason he became ‘a very quiet person’. Similarly to Alex’s narrative above, attempts to avoid voice-related discomfort, stemming from people being ‘shocked’, entail avoiding the situations – ‘external triggers’ (Paz Galupo et al., 2019) – in which the voice can be mistakenly read and classified as an indicator of one’s (binary) gender. However, it is not ‘external triggers’ giving rise to ‘internal processes’ (Paz Galupo et al., 2019). Rather, it is the interplay of the social objectified – social mechanisms evident through interactional experiences, in which ‘shock’ acts simultaneously as a recognition of ‘gender disorder’ and a call to ‘gender order’ – and the social incorporated, of being practically aware it is one’s voice misguiding gender classification, and being disposed to take these classifications seriously, because they are incorporated in the very same body that is being misrecognised (Bourdieu, 2020).

Discomfort and unease do not attach only to certain bodily parts; there are also certain bodily processes that can be experienced as discomforting. A study implemented by Frank (2020; see also Rubin, 2003, p. 102) shows that not only bleeding but also other menstrual symptoms (i.e. cramping, back pain) may be experienced as dysphoric for transgender and non-binary individuals. Lex (non-binary; assigned female at birth; 26) recounts experiencing their menstruation for the first time. For them, this was something they did not expect to happen, as it is something that women, thus, not Lex, experience. When experiencing it for the first time, for Lex, the only common-sense explanation was that they were bleeding internally. The discomfort was perhaps particularly heightened because experiencing menstruation for the first time is a highly ritualised situation, signalling supposed entrance into ‘womanhood’. The discomfort that Lex experienced at the age of 12 is still present today, and menstruation gives rise to heightened gender-related bodily discomfort:

I was saying – that was my imagination when I was 12 – this isn’t a period, that I’m having internal bleeding and this is how it’s coming out. And after the first period, I didn’t experience it for the next 6 months, and I was like ‘see, I am not a woman!’ [. . .] Yes, and I still notice that my dysphoria intensifies [when having a period].

The narratives above show that bodily discomfort as experienced by non-binary individuals predominantly attaches to those bodily parts and processes that are socially invested with the power to ‘tell the truth’ about one’s gender the most (Bettcher, 2007). Genitals, after all, serve as the most significant indicator for gender assignment at birth, itself being an act of rites of institutions that – almost like magic – create what they name (e.g. a woman) (Bourdieu, 2020, pp. 138–140; see also 2021). Gender assignment at birth sets in motion countless micro-actions and interventions that act like a ‘drip feed’, aiming to generate someone ‘born a boy [to] feel more and more a boy, proud of it and duty bound to be one’ (Bourdieu, 2020, p. 139). The act of instituting an agent as being of a particular gender sets in motion the process of becoming that gender: ‘[The rites of institution] consist in telling a boy that he is a boy, and that changes everything, because the boy believes he is a boy, because the girls believe that he is a boy’ (Bourdieu, 2021, p. 89).

Regardless of the acts of institution being socially arbitrary, the agents are inclined to take them and the categories they put to life seriously and to ‘rise to the heights of [their] socially constituted definition’ (Bourdieu, 2021, p. 89). Although non-binary individuals who do not identify with the gender category they were assigned, an inclination to take gendered social verdicts seriously remains incorporated, at least in traces that are a product of the subjective history of incorporating the social. These traces form part of an agent’s practical knowledge and its classificatory schemata of the gender binary division that are reinforced at every step of one’s social life. Practically knowing and being aware – as well as being constantly reminded – of what makes the gender category they were assigned at birth (female or male) ‘true’ and ‘natural’, they feel the weight of the social verdict most strongly in relation to those bodily characteristics that are perceived as speaking the ‘truth’ about one’s gender.

Additionally, the whole process of body change as experienced throughout puberty could be experienced as a ‘betrayal of the body’ (see, for example, Roen, 2019). The changing materiality of the body going through puberty intensifies social distinctions and segregations and thus puts into place the full consequentiality of one’s gender classification. This is evident in Veronika’s narrative about their body going through puberty and seemingly starting to affirm the ‘truth’ of Veronika’s gender assigned at birth by changing out of line with their self-perception:

I found it disturbing that my body started to segregate me. At a certain point, I don’t look like my brother and I’m not supposed to hang out with him anymore and our relationship totally changes. [. . .] Yeah, so that’s why I felt a lot of aversion, and then came the anger and stuff like that [. . .] towards my body, because it didn’t do what I wanted it to do. (Veronika, non-binary; assigned female at birth; 23)

Bodily discomfort arising from bodily hexis

The following narrative from Djuro (transgender, non-binary; assigned female at birth; 22) foregrounds not only the materiality of the body as such but also its comportment and motility, in short, bodily hexis. He considers himself to be mostly and unconventionally masculine. Practically knowing what it means to realise bodily practices in a masculine way – ‘moving and talking in a certain way constructs masculinity, after all’ (Aboim & Vasconcelos, 2022, p. 53) – Djuro feels unease towards his bodily hexis not being perceived as masculine enough, thus threatening to reveal the ‘truth’ about his gender assigned at birth. This unease is particularly heightened when Djuro is surrounded by cisgender men. In these situations he puts an extra effort into his bodily hexis to appear – to be perceived and classified – by others as ‘properly’ masculine, and for that reason, he feels the need to overdo the masculine bodily hexis:

If I want to be masculine, I have to be five times more masculine than a cis man to be legitimate. [. . .] This is a very toxic thing, honestly. Because you start controlling your expressions, your movements, and once you are doing that, you think to yourself, ‘[expletive], would I really like to live like that?’ Thanks, but no thanks. [. . .] The self-control, yeah. And you have to be. . . your movements have to be slow, controlled, not too expressive. Your speaking has to be, you know, not too much – far from it, it has to be limited, but what you say, it has to count.

As put forward by Bourdieu (2001, p. 17), bodily hexis is a part of one’s self-presentation, revealing and displaying one’s social identity. It is a matter of how one uses the body: ‘The opposition between male and female is realized in posture, in the gestures and movements of the body’ (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 70). However, discomfort in relation to bodily hexis does not arise only concerning one’s hexis being misclassified in line with one’s gender assigned at birth rather than one’s gender identity, as is Djuro’s experience. It can also be experienced when an agent attempts to avoid being perceived as gender and/or sexually non-normative due to the possible social consequences – that is, violence. This is evident from Alex’s narrative about putting a conscious effort into securing a perception and classification that is in line with the gender assigned to Alex at birth (male) and socially expected heterosexuality. Marques (2019) discusses this type of practice – ‘masking’ in the sense of adapting to the assigned gender due to social pressure – as one of transgender people’s strategies in everyday life. To achieve that, the spontaneity of Alex’s – otherwise more gender non-normative – bodily hexis needs to be controlled, and a conscious effort has to be made to put into practice a masculinised bodily hexis that is socially expected from Alex (non-binary, queer; assigned male at birth; 24):

I definitely use my deeper voice. I speak slower than usual. Deeper also. I’m paying more attention to word expressions. I’m paying more attention to eye contact. I’m paying attention to body comportment, to my legs – are my feet openly planted, do I have my legs crossed or not, to my posture. To touch, because I’m generally a more tactile person, but then I try not to be so tactile or to be tactile in a different way.

Djuro’s and Alex’s narratives show how the taken-for-granted attitude towards one’s body and bodily hexis – ‘of being “as one body with [their body and their language]”’ (Bourdieu, 2010, p. 205) – is suspended. Instead of experiencing it as ‘most natural’ (Bourdieu, 2008, p. 85), bodily habitus, in terms of its hexis, is subjected to self-discipline and self-monitoring. In contrast to the ‘inhabited and forgotten body’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 133), the body and its hexis are pushed to the consciousness and subjected to checks (e.g. ‘Are my feet openly planted?’), corrections (e.g. ‘I try not to be so tactile’) and control (e.g. ‘You start controlling your movements’). This self-monitoring arises with the aim of either avoiding misrecognition according to one’s gender assigned at birth (Djuro) or avoiding the potentially severe social consequences of being perceived as gender and/or sexually non-normative (Alex). Both cases point to socially necessitated self-monitoring practices and, thus, to the socially produced absence of bodily spontaneity.

Bodily discomfort as experienced in relation to non-binary identity is, as the next and final quote shows, hardly only a matter of thoughts or cognition. Therefore, it is hardly malleable by will and cognition alone (Bourdieu, 2000). Some of our participants expressed an awareness of gender stereotypes and gender norms as socially constituted, yet this awareness did not necessarily translate easily into their practices of doing gender in disregard of social verdicts and the accompanying ‘obligations’ of doing gender. As Metka (woman, agender; assigned male at birth; 23) puts it, it is about being pulled towards practically realising gendered ‘obligations’ at the same time as trying to distance oneself from their weight:

I’m asking myself why do I need to perceive my gender expression as feminine, and then the answer is, once more, because society perceives it as such. [. . .] At the same time, I want to express it, the femininity; however, I also want to express the absence, you know, of gender attributions.

The final narrative shows the gap between cognitively based knowledge – about the social construction of gender, an awareness of gender stereotypes, and so forth – on the one hand, and practical knowledge or a feel for the game that disposes one to act according to social regularities, on the other. It makes evident that the social understanding of gender, despite being fictional and arbitrary, has material consequences – embodied gendered dispositions shaped according to the dominant schemes of perception and classification. Because they are embodied, they are incapable of ‘being destroyed by a simple statement of reality’ (Bourdieu, 2018, p. 116) (e.g. ‘because society perceives it as such’).

Conclusion

I argue that bodily discomfort as discussed in relation to non-binary individuals is not only a matter of individual and subjective feelings, nor of social interactions and the potential for misrecognition by others that these interactions carry. The issue of bodily discomfort goes, so to speak, deeper and can be found in the agent’s socialised body (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 145; see also 2020, pp. 27–30). Accordingly, Izak’s feelings of the body betraying them can be misplaced: it is not the body per se that ‘betrays’ a non-binary individual. Rather than being ‘betrayed’ by one’s body, an agent is betrayed by the social objectified and incorporated, that is, the social as it exists in mechanisms and bodies. They are betrayed by the arbitrary and naturalised ‘truth’ of the world that turns the body into a gendered social signum and puts into place seemingly unchangeable gender classifications and their boundaries. Bourdieu’s concept of body as a social signum enables us to take seriously the weight of the social world not only as it is reproduced by social interactions as such (see, for example, Paz Galupo et al., 2019), but also as it is embodied by the agents themselves who live, persist and resist in the same social world that they embody. Precisely because agents are exposed to the world and its principles of perception and classification, they are disposed to take these social schemes of perception and classifications – as well as their verdicts – seriously (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 142).

For non-binary agents, their bodies – as they are constituted and as their constitution is perceived according to dominant social schemes of gendered classification – mostly wrongly point towards one or the other socially legitimised body type (male, female) and, thus, to a gender classification, which is incongruent with one’s non-binary identity. As socially dominant schemes of perception and classification are binary structured, they leave no room for socially legitimised non-binary identities and bodies, whose materiality is therefore predominantly forcefully read through a binary matrix (Paz Galupo et al., 2019). As non-binary agents are perceived and classified according to the naturalised vision and division of gender, a disparity emerges between objectified and embodied social – naturalised gendered cosmology of male and female body typology – and non-binary agents’ gender identity.

At the level of the social incorporated and the social objectified, Bourdieu’s concepts contribute to the discussion of gender-related bodily discomfort as reported by some non-binary individuals. These objective structures continue to be embodied and are reinforced even when an agent rejects the (gendered) social destiny (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; see also Davy, 2011). This may offer a possible and partial explanation for the emergence of non-binary individuals’ bodily discomfort. In this sense, Bourdieu’s apparatus appears to be particularly useful, contributing to a discussion on the deep-rootedness of gender differentiation and agency, which is situated and embedded within social conditions and is as such an ‘agency within gender orders’ (Davy, 2011, p. 57).

However, within a Bourdieusian framework, it appears more difficult to discuss the phenomenon of absent bodily discomfort and to address the agentic potential of ‘feeling liberated’ from gendered obligations and social conditions that enable this potential to be brought to life. Nonetheless, with a detailed analysis of the subjective trajectories – of ‘learning, training and incorporation’ (Bourdieu, 2020, p. 26) – and of the conditions of primary and secondary habitus formation in relation to social positioning, steps could be made towards gaining additional insight into the ‘agency within gender orders’ (Davy, 2011, p. 57) of non-binary agents and their diverse experiences of embodiment. As the research was focused on everyday life experiences rather than life trajectories and social conditions of habitus formation, our data do not provide us with this kind of insight. Additionally, one of the important limitations of this study is the sample size (7) and its focus only on those non-binary individuals who do report experiencing bodily discomfort. This undoubtedly limits the breadth and depth of the insights from the perspective of diversity of non-binary individuals’ embodiment experiences, especially of those experiences in which transgender-related bodily discomfort is absent, and of social conditions that contribute to their absence.

As habitus is responsive to new experiences (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 160–161; see also Atkinson, 2020, p. 67), its structure can be negotiated and reconfigured. This is shown by McGuire et al. (2016; see also Bishop, 2016; Davy, 2019; Hines, 2007), whose study shows that gender affirmative practices within interactional experiences – the experiences that give space to bodies of difference (Davy, 2019) – account for feelings of liberation from gendered obligations. This implies a possibility for reconfiguring one’s dispositions, or, the social embodied, and possibilities for conceiving and experiencing bodies differently from socially dominant schemes of perception and classification (see also Costera Meijer & Prins, 1998; Stryker, 2006). This again testifies to the pressing need to change the social objectified – its principles of vision and division (Bourdieu, 2000, 2018, 2021) that are embodied in agents and that turn their bodies into a social signum of gender in the first place.