Beyond a Teleology of Transition: Re-Imagining gender transition through a trans Buddhist auto-ethnographic account

Abstract: This essay advances a trans Buddhist model of gender transition that I term “gender becoming.” Challenging progress narratives of gender transition dominant within the United States, I argue that gender transition is not teleological but a process of becoming : a constantly opening and unwieldly process that cannot be dictated in advance, but shifts based on bodily feelings, memories, and new experiences. Through a critical auto-ethnography analyzing my own bodily experiences alongside Buddhist philosophy, trans theory, and affect thought, I illustrate how gender transition is not always happy but can be unexpectedly painful, anger-some, and confusing. Drawing specifically on a Buddhist philosophy known as the 12 Links in the Law of Dependent Origination, I examine how trans people can become trapped in our desire and need for a happy and non-dysphoric bodily and emotional experience. Underlining how such narratives for happiness can cause trans people to suffer, I instead introduce a way of working through gender transition that is grounded in a re-orientation to time and feeling. Affectively and teleologically expansive, “gender becoming” posits time as always already changing, and our bodies residing in these forever times of transition.