VR Helped Me Visualize Gender Dysphoria

I’ve spent a lot of time in VR. Some of it is spectacular; some, not a lot. But at this yr’s SXSW in Austin, Texas, I acquired the prospect to strive a digital expertise known as Body of Mine that opened my eyes to what this tech can actually do. I didn’t discover “the metaverse.” Instead, I acquired to discover myself.

Body of Mine is an experimental storytelling expertise. It’s interactive, however not a “game,” per se. Instead, the VR surroundings places the viewer within the physique of somebody with a special gender than their very own. I’m a masc-presenting cis man, and so the artists who constructed it put me into a female lady.

Matching Up

The artists slipped an HTC Vive headset over my head and strapped a number of movement trackers to my physique. My ankles, wrists, higher arms, and waist every had a tracker that corresponded to the 3D mannequin of a girl’s physique, contained in the digital world. 

It took a short time to arrange, however as soon as it was prepared, I used to be trying by way of her eyes. My arms had been her arms. Her legs had been my legs. My breasts had been … wait, cling on.

The artists inspired me to discover and contact completely different components of “my” physique by trying down at myself and right into a mirror that was positioned instantly throughout from me. The phantasm wasn’t fairly good, but it surely broke by way of a psychological barrier that few items of media ever have. When I play video video games with an avatar of a special gender, I would really feel just like the character I management is “me.” But right here, I inhabited this physique in a method that even different VR video games don’t actually pull off.

Raising my fingers to the touch “my” arms felt pure. I’m undecided if that’s as a result of my movement was tracked extra granularly or as a result of the artists ready me for what I used to be going to see. But it additionally felt a bit jarring. I used to be inside this physique, but it surely wasn’t mine. I do know my physique fairly nicely. I’ve pretty sturdy arms. I’ve a good quantity of physique hair. I don’t have breasts. I had none of this in widespread with this lady’s physique.

When I touched sure components of my physique—similar to my arms, legs, stomach, and head—the mannequin would begin to glow in that spot. Then, an audio clip would play. Body of Mine’s staff interviewed round 20 trans individuals to let their phrases and tales information this expertise, and also you hear their voices when you discover.

“We wanted to dive into the actual sensation of gender dysphoria and the physical manifestations of that,” stated Cameron Kostopoulos, Body of Mine’s creator. “In order to do that, we wanted to have you relate to your own body, and then through that relate to these trans stories.”

Body After Body

After just a few clips, the expertise adjustments. The physique you begin out exploring disappears in an excellent and enchanting impact that dissolves components of your physique little by little. Then, within the mirror, I begin to see extra our bodies seem, one after the opposite.