PODCAST: The Trans-Truth

09.01.16

Chloe Jennings-White, a 61-year-old research scientist in Utah who was a Fulbright scholar and has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Cambridge University, has known since she was 4-years-old that she is different. She feels uncomfortable with her normal, healthy, fully functioning body. She experiences a mismatch between her physical body and her mental image of her body. In an effort to achieve consonance between her body and her “identity,” she has engaged in risky activities and self-harm, hoping that injuries would result in the type of body with which she identifies. For years in private, she used props to pretend she had the body she wanted, but now she engages in these behaviors publicly.