The Ghost in the Wrong Shell

The Ghost in the Wrong Shell
October 12, 2018
by Debra Janet Smith

 April 7, 2017, on rogerebert.com Willow Maclay posted a commentary on the movie Ghost in the Shell. He mentions the protagonist of the story, a human living in a robotic body, has the same need to negotiate the realities of her mind and body that transgendered people do. He also mentions a study that suggests that gender dysphoria signals the brain that the body is injured. Of course, the body by it cannot by itself correct the problem, so it becomes necessary to live with a constant sense of wrongness.

 As a 13-year-old I started to feel “something” was wrong with me. I had no idea what it was. This was before the internet and before being transgender was even marginally talked about. I couldn’t tell what was wrong, only that it made me different from everyone else, I was broken. I did not know how or why. My best guess was that God had cursed me for some unknown reason.

 This was not exactly true, however. The answer was in my head. I just didn’t know it. I remember being at a high school basketball game. At half time there was this girl in a sequined outfit, performing with her baton. She was beautiful. There it was. I wanted to be beautiful too. This was what I was supposed to be. I was supposed to be a girl.

 We all know how the story goes in the movies. The unattractive girl watches the cheerleader perform and goes home and cries herself to sleep. According to the usual cliche ending, the girl learns to fix her hair, put on makeup, and change her clothing. Now, everyone notices her. She even gets the popular boy to fall in love with her. But wait, that isn’t going to happen to me. Sorry.  No happy ending for you, and just try to explain how you feel to anyone, even yourself.

 It isn’t easy to explain being transgendered. To say you feel like a woman or you feel like you are living in the wrong body is, I think, sometimes a poor choice of words that can be interpreted as being delusional. I have always wanted to ask a psychologist if they can tell the difference between someone who is truly delusional and someone who makes a true but extraordinary claim that cannot be easily proven.

 However, imagine your heart and soul filled with the most sublime heavenly music, or maybe you watch an ice skater that fills you with a sense of awe. You want to be what they are and reveal your inner beauty, but you can’t.  How do you feel?

            I want you to know, I do not “think” I am a woman. From the very depths of my heart and spirit, and with every emotion I possess I know am a woman. My body never defined who I was, then or now. The choice is living as the person I am meant to be, or being something that is broken, malfunctioning. No other choice.  When someone says you cannot change a man into a woman they are absolutely correct. Yet the error is assuming they know what transgendered individuals are to begin with.

 When I hear of a trans person committing suicide, especially a child, it fills me with sadness. I know their pain. It's part of my life. The worst part of being trans, in my opinion, has been living in fear and loneliness, and believing I am not worthy of love. Then there is trying to maintain my faith against a mountain of empirical data that suggests God doesn’t care about me either.

 Somehow, I think the protagonist of the movie and I would have a lot to talk about. What would it be like to live in a robotic body? Probably a lot like living in a body that supports my existence but does not represent who I am.