Auto-Phenomenographical Understandings of Transness: Lessons in the Self

This auto-phenomenological account of my experiences in competitive softball versus my current experiences in Division I women’s rugby addresses the question: What does an alternative understanding of embodiment look like when sports becomes the means to develop a different “felt sense”? I use my experiences to argue that phenomenology offers an alternative to conventional understandings of trans embodiment that argues comfort is primarily found through medical transition. Instead, being comfortable in one’s body as a trans person can occur in sporting spaces. I complicate this claim by attending to how I and my sporting spaces’ backgrounds (both literal and historical), as well as the essence of my sports (constituted by what we do to or with it), demonstrate that not all sporting experiences are the same and must be deeply contextualized.