Embodying gender: Transgender body/subject formations in Taiwan

'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.