I want to talk about the Cage in relation to gender dysphoria and being closeted
The Cage's chapter talks a lot about detachment from the body, viewing the body as something separate from you that perpetuates your suffering. The Cage herself says she isn’t mad at you, and doesn't really want to kill you, but her body continues its slow march forward anyways, a slow march towards its own death.
The lack of choice with what happens to your body is central. It changes physically in horrible ways without your permission, it is gendered without your permission, it is policed by restrictive constructs without your permission. The body doesn’t align with your mind, but the body is what physically interacts with the world, and it’s all people will see. The world is a prison for the body and the body is a prison for you and you can't control it.
Another key element of Cage's state of mind is the awareness of the walls. You might recognize that something feels wrong, you might even know what you would need to fix it (whether you admit to it or not), but you don’t do anything about it. You can't do anything about it. And how could you?
For one thing, when it comes to gender, openly admitting to what you really want, let alone actually reaching out for it, is terrifying and potentially dangerous. This construct can be deeply hostile to what you are. It thinks you deserve to suffer. It thinks the world is better off without you.
Maybe in order to be free, you would have to risk severing important ties, losing parts of yourself. Maybe past attempts at vulnerability went poorly for you, with a knife to the back, or being left to bleed out, and with you just as trapped as when you began, only wounded and jaded.
Leaving the cage is simultaneously as simple as saying a few words and as impossible as cutting through steel.
If there is No Exit, then the only way to survive is to dissociate entirely. The only agency you have left is in your mind, so your mind is where you will stay.
You suppress, suppress, suppress, suppress, lock your desires in a birdcage, bury your pain and discomfort towards the body because you're not getting out any time soon, scratch that, you're not getting out ever. The chains pull tighter, the pit grows deeper. Actually, it's not painful at all, you've accepted it now. The violence committed against you is just how life is: this is what the construct dictates must happen, so you will let it happen. In a way, detached from it all, your suffering is beautiful.
With this comes an apathy towards what happens to the body, and how it gets hurt. (and through this lens the allusions to suicide in the chapter become even more devastating, with the nooses scattered in the woods, and her pushing the blade deeper into her heart in the riddle of steel)
And throughout all this you isolate yourself from others. Maybe there are people in your life who you care about, who care about you too (or at least, the body), but you hold them at a distance. They can't change your situation, and even if you did consider expressing this part of yourself, if you'd separated yourself from the misgendered body and bared your bleeding inner self for them to witness, the risk of rejection, of abandonment, is painful enough to stop you.
And the painful irony of it is that by not sharing your struggles, not sharing your needs, even well-meaning people won't be able to support you. They may turn away and leave you behind simply because they didn't know you needed them.
…so I think, in spite of everything, it’s important that an ending exists where Cage states plainly what she really wants, where she is vulnerable, where she is listened to, and where she escapes alongside someone who was similarly trapped in the gendered construct. (gestures at transfem TLQ readings)
The truth was right there the whole time. What Cage needed was proof that change is possible, and hope that things could get better, for others and for her.
But even with the support of TLQ, it is Cage who stops marching towards death, who hoists them both out of the pit. She acknowledges the body as a part of her, but also is able to leave it behind for the sake of reaching for what she needs.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a way out, someway, somehow, even if you don't see a path forward. But the first step to leaving is believing that it's possible.











