A New Vagina Didn't Make Her Sad (It Didn't Have To)

Abstract Andrea Long Chu's New York Times article, “My New Vagina Won't Make Me Happy (And It Shouldn't Have To),” marks a shift in trans discourse, raising issues about the challenges of surgical outcomes and being a post-op transgender woman with a candor that has heretofore been rare publicly. Yet it devotes little attention to the actual experience of being transgender. Similarly, much of gender theory succeeds at cycles of better and more accurate deconstruction, without mobilizing this to explore what it's like to be transgender. This article calls for renewed academic attention to the phenomenology of transgender—on issues like psychology, sexuality, and embodiment.