This article explores how transsexual men and women talk about shifts in self-perceptions and embodiment. Often there are remarkable changes in transsexual people's fleshy physicality that affect not only how their gendered bodies are perceived but also how they experience themselves as embodied subjects. Yet despite the advances of medical science and a growing investment in new bodily technologies, the author argues that the transsexual body cannot be seen as entirely malleable, because it is often marked by previous physical features and cultural bodily practices that are difficult to shake off. This is particularly the case for male-to-female transsexuals, because the markers of masculinity appear harder to escape. Thus, in a move toward a theory of embodied subjectivity, the author argues that transitions in a sense of gendered subjectivity are intrinsically tied to and inseparable from shifts in gendered embodiment.
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