I am Jazz. ***Trans content. Please do not open if you just want to post insults or whinge about another trans thread***

Gender dysphoria involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify. People with gender dysphoria may be very uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned, sometimes described as being uncomfortable with their body (particularly developments during puberty) or being uncomfortable with the expected roles of their assigned gender

This is the APA definition of gender dysphoria. To me it differs from body dysphoria understood as someone looking in the mirror and thinking 'that penis is wrong and does not belong on me' (ditto - why is that leg there - it isn't mine! or, 'why am I so fat' when I weigh 4.5 stone).

Datun - "phoria" is from the Greek for "feelings", "morphia" from the Greek for shape. So gender dysmorphia would be thinking your body was the wrong shape - an old-style transexual who wanted GRS to make their bodily appearance match their beliefs about what it should look like.

Gender dysmorphia, on the other hand, I take to mean feeling your own "internal gender" (whatever that is - a bit like a religious person's belief in their immortal soul, I don't personally have that belief) doesn't match the gender other people are projecting onto them based on their biologically sexed body. Explains the Alex Drummonds of this world, I guess - people who are quite happy with their actual sexed body, but want to insist that they really, really are women in every sense of the word woman. (Again, not a belief I share, just trying to make sense of where they claim to be coming from).

In my original post, I distinguished between 'body dysmorphia' (probably tautologous), where someone does see their body as 'wrong' and gender dysphoria, where someone is unhappy or discontented re their gender identity. I see body as biology (put crudely) and gender as about social roles. Does that help?

YetAnotherSpartacus

Can you explain what you see as the difference between dysphoria and dysmorphia?

Because my understanding was dysmorphia having a disconnect between your actual body and your perception of your body.

I thought gender dysphoria was the specific term for dysmorphia connected to your genitals (or sense of identity as it has now become).

Unfortunately, even gender dysphoria is now being discarded as a reason for being trans.

Trans is now becoming a lifestyle choice. With possible irreversible surgery and lifelong medication as a result, or byproduct, glossed over.

So children like those of the previous poster who think they can opt in or opt out of their sex are merely buying into something deadly serious with dangerous repercussions, because it's being sold to them as a lifestyle choice. And one that will get them special treatment, to boot.

It's almost Machiavellian. You like playing with girls' stuff? You can identify as a girl. Yay. At what point is it vehemently impressed upon them that according to trans ideology, this means surgically altering your body is a very real possibility. And the very first stage is taking hormones to arrest your sexual maturity.

I'm not suggesting people like Elsa bought this, in any way. She was devastated over her child identifying as trans. And has done her level best to steer her child away from medicalisation. Unfortunately, because medicalisation is pushed so thoroughly, she was left high and dry with zero therapy and had to scrape together the money to go privately. Fortunately, it seems to be having an effect on her child.

It's a mental illness.

Does this help explain?

www.theguardian.com/science/2012/nov/14/please-amputate-this-leg

I know there genuinely are people born in the wrong body

I think it is certainly possible to feel an overwhelming sense of disconnect from your body- but HOW - philosophically, practically, - could one have the 'wrong' body?

THAT IS your body!!!!!! Unless you believe in reincarnation or transmigration of souls or even that one day you will be able to have your brain transplanted- how could it be otherwise?????

Or have there always been people with autism or ADHD or ADD or whatever?

Adalind - have there always been anorexics or people who think their leg does not belong to them? I'm not sure we know either way.

But there have always been these people

Have there?

How do you think people are born in the wrong body

My understanding is that it isn't so much this as thinking that there is something wrong with their bodies. Just as anorexics see and experience fat where there is skin and bone there are those who look at their bodies and see a penis where there should not be one (and vice-versa, but FtTs are much more recent in surgical terms). It's a dysphoria - a mental illness - that is why I think that the term should be resurrected and used when appropriate.

Not so long g ago I made some comment to DS about him being a boy (can't remember the context but something like "you're such a kind boy"). He replied he was at the moment but might find out he was a girl

Jesus fucking Christ that shit is so fucking dangerous. That is what drew me here in the first place - knowing that this kind of way of teaching children and young people is becoming more common-place.

I have no idea. I don't claim to understand it. Maybe I mean strong sense of misidentity. But there have always been these people. But there has been a huge explosion in numbers of trans

I know there genuinely are people born in the wrong body

How do you think people are born in the wrong body?

Transsexuals - fine. I do get that. I know there genuinely are people born in the wrong body and everything should be done to help imo. But surely those numbers are tiny

stealth I absolutely agree. I have another son who is a complete stereotypical boy. He's now a teen and it hasn't occurred to me that he could be trans. Of course he could be hiding something from us but I think the likelihood is so remote that I don't pass time thinking about it.

I have ASD and was anorexic as a teen and into my early 20s. I felt there was something 'wrong' with my body- it didn't feel like mine, I hated the changes of puberty, I hated having periods. I wanted to carry on playing out and liking 'boys' things' like sci fi and fantasy and all things military.
However, I also had blonde curly hair, was very slim and liked girly clothes. Sometimes I think I had a very hard time growing up- but perhaps nowadays it would be worse....

^ I agree - but I also know that there are people with body dysphoria - they do think that something is 'wrong' with their bodies more so than they want to play with girls' toys, etc. This is like anorexia or where people think that their leg does not belong to them. These were the transsexuals of old. This is very rare but is a real mental illness.

Not so long g ago I made some comment to DS about him being a boy (can't remember the context but something like "you're such a kind boy"). He replied he was at the moment but might find out he was a girl.
He was 9. They'd been talking about trans issues at school. I have no problems with that but they shouldn't be raising doubt for children where none previously existed.

I have primary aged children and am pleased and relieved that DS is a traditional boy and dd more girly (bleurgh to both). I still encourage both the other way.
Five years ago it wouldn't have bothered me either way. Now I'm relieved the chances are low they'll ever be brainwashed into thinking they're something they're not if they happen to like 'the wrong toys'/equivalent as they get older.
Dh has a male cousin. Ten years ago he was into make up, outlandish female outfits. That was fine then. These days he'd be under the trans umbrella. He still is into all that but in mid 20s can do what he likes :)
Please tell me I'm talking crap. Happy to take it.

One of my sons spent several years in princess dresses, admiring female characters in films and cartoons with towels on his head to be rapunzel and a penchant for appearing in his sisters bikini's. He had no interest in football, power rangers, spiderman and other "boy" things It would have been very easy to go down the trans route with him if we were so inclined, he ticked all the boxes that those who trans their children highlight as reasons why their sons are actually girls.

What did we do? We went with it, we didn't make a big deal about it and as he has got older he's well over the princess phase but his interests are much more "girlie" and 90% of his friends are girls. Does that make him trans? No it doesn't, it makes him a boy who knows his own interests and isn't afraid to explore them. Will he become trans? Who knows? I suspect not, but when he's old enough he can make that decision for himself but he'll be nowhere near any hormone treatment during adolescence.

He currently has a very clear mindset that he's a boy and because he's confident in his interests and we've not made a big deal about it either way it's not a problem. My instinct is that he'll be a gay man and that's absolutely fine. If he's straight or he's trans that's also fine but it has to be something that comes to him naturally and in time without intervention either way from us. This is where Jazz's parents have behaved appallingly.

IMO TA is gender fascism.

What I'd like to see emerge from this is that people belonging to the female sex aka women and people belonging to the male sex aka men feel free and are not discriminated against whatever clothing they choose to wear, whatever activities they pursue, whatever professions and sports the prefer. There shouldn't be any girly/laddish categories and people of either sex should feel free to live a life that suits their personality.

However sex segregated spaces must prevail. Sports, women's refuge, girls/ boys school must not mix the sexes.

My grandfather once got thrown out of a relative's house as he claimed that the reason this relative's son turned out gay was because he played with dolls when he was younger.

We laughed at the time, but it seems the height of sophisticated reasoning compared to some of these experts.

Jazz didn't say they WERE a girl they said they wanted to be a girl. Because they wanted long hair and girly clothes

So much of this would be solved if we let boys be whatever they wanted to be as children

Also meant to say in relation to Jazz I'm not sure it was dysmorphia - a real, tangible feeling that something is wrong with a (sexed) body, as being stereotypically feminine and feeling something was wrong with his 'gender' (rather than sex).

i rarely read stuff from transwomen who don't have gender dysphoria. It can be mild or it can be severe

The poster formally known as Elsa described her child with dysmorphia and I think this is what TumbleTrans also described a while back. I'm getting at a distinction between dysmorphia and dysphoria because they are about different things. Also, the DSM dropped dysmorphia a while back and replaced it with dysphoria. I personally think dysphoria is a dangerous idea, but I 'get' dysmorphia because it describes a real, actual mental illness (like anorexia).

I'm not trying to distinguish the 'real' dysphorics from the fake ones. I'm suggesting that dysphoria is a dangerous and silly term altogether.

Apart from autogynephiles, i rarely read stuff from transwomen who don't have gender dysphoria. It can be mild or it can be severe.

They seem to be in a minority, at the moment.

Problem is someone with AGP absolutely yearns to be a woman, but it's sexually motivated, rather than motivated by gender dysphoria.

But you can't tell by looking. Both motivations rely completely on the person telling you.