That I can't really imagine the body is maybe not just connected to the plural, but also to the transgender conditionality of my consciousness, but it does contains this strange colouring in plural existence, that I am truly internally different, but can't imagine, what it is, that is and lives differently in that. This contributes not little to denial, as to the unpicturability of life in this form. Still, this nonvisual element is probably a better witness of truth than false visualization.
I see the body, but not directly, only in the mirror; I can't really think it as a whole. Leib [phenomanal/experiential body] is already something different, and objectively not the same (as e.g. the back isn't part of it, not visually anyway, as is the face). Gender is oriented towards the body, not the Leib; it is directed therefore for me towards the nonvisual element of representation without imagination, of the pure energy of presence without satisfaction, of which the completed signification is the desire to desire, the desire for example, to exist, to be able to cry and stay here. That is at that point no element of my imagination/picturing [Vorstellung] any more, because it is a desire, that does not picture itself in its desiring and doesn't even want to.
The unwillingness of gendered elements to be depicted, like it showed itself historically in the taboo around sex, is exactly of this kind. This is not really about a social taboo, like in the temple or around talking about money, but a drive within this topic, to reject depictions that misrepresent it. Gendered elements cannot be depicted, without either coming into medical treatment or [pheonomal] bodily visuality, that both precisely don't depict it. Gender is real, if it depicts the body that I want to be or with which I want to be, that is itself unreal; only in in the dream it has a real content. That doesn't mean, that there is no real gendered interaction, but, that this "performance", like Butler called it, does not touch that, what is the content of gendered imagination, but is itself a means for overplaying it in activity with each other, like theater in general is the method, to neutralize mythology, by taking the mask of the god.
Notice for example, how unreflected cosmetics/makeup presents itself to this day! Many other things are enlightended and ironized, but here it becomes deadly serious about beauty, or one ignores it completly, out of uninterestedness or out a kind of despisement created out of the taboo, or maybe precisely out of going againt that. To have beautiful nails is in some way strange, but is in some way still understandable for the aesthetic sensibility, because hands are something one also phenomenally often sees, but in case of the face it becomes even stranger; after all, I don't see it. Pragmatically one could expect to wish for others to have a beautiful face, and for oneself only, as long as looking into the mirror, which is quite rare. It has an effect on others as a symbol - but therefore precisely in a form that isn't completely external (it's no assimilation to a norm, like in the uniform), but in a form, that pictures that body imaginatively, that isn't my Leib but also not the body of the other, that is absolutely nonvisual. Genderedness in this sense, as the beauty of a nonvisual body, that is believed to be seen, without ever being able to free it from the ban of the mirror sphere, is something principally nonvisual, what however only exists to be seen.
But that's also not my body! The body is something in between. It's neither this imaginative body, nor the Leib of my perception, nor the medicalized of external visitations or the uniformed; it is the carrier of the will, the shared inner point of perception of the system, but simulatenously related to myself alone. It is the carrier of the tear, as a medium of truth, as witness of the spirit of plushies and ghosts. It exludes itself, as nonvisual, from the medium of imagination that it challenges. It challenges therefore also myself, to make it the object of my desire and change, but precisely therefore it remains deeply mute for a time. Body perception as discontinous with the feeling of the Leib is the discontinuity of gendered existence; it is the vagueness, with which the feminine only sees its reality, if it has the conditions, in which it can exist, already discarded, and tries after the fact to persue after the tear that once it didn't want to be noticed.
Translation Note: The Term "Leib" is hardly translatable to English with all its connotations, so I left it in the original. Also, the term "nonvisual" stands for "unanschaulich", as does "unpicturability" for "Unanschaulichkeit", which in German refers to the opposite of that what is "anschaulich", which roughly means common-sense visualizable, and mixes the English notions of "visible" with "understandable"; the body is here presented therefore as opposed to both. Also, the original plays quite a bit with words surrounding imagination, of which German has both the Germanic and the Latin words (Vorstellung vs. Imagination); this is more of a gimmick, and is therefore folded in by the translation.