Gender dysphoria is for life

[Seethlaw]

Gender dysphoria is a life-long condition, with or without transitioning.

Even after transition and in no particular order:

• Gender dysphoria is the unrelenting knowledge that under it all, despita everything you've done, your body is still and always will be the wrong sex.
• Gender dysphoria is scars on your body.
• Gender dysphoria is feeling guilty because you make your loved ones' life more complicated.
• Gender dysphoria is having to choose which pre-transition memories you can share and/or having to carefully rewrite them in the opposite sex.
• Gender dysphoria is having to choose between telling your new healthcare provider about your transition and your hormonal treatment, or risking them giving you inappropriate care.
• Gender dysphoria is a lifetime of medication and specialist appointments.
• Gender dysphoria is never being sure whether people truly support you or only humour you.
• Gender dysphoria is being clocked every once in a while and wondering how many people figured you out and you didn't notice.
• Gender dysphoria is wondering how and when you're going to explain to that new person you like that you weren't born the sex you present - and being anxious about how they are going to react.
• Gender dysphoria is never having the sex you really wish you had because even the best fake plumbing is nothing like the real one.
• Ironically, gender dysphoria can even be wishing you could dress or present in a more genderfluid manner, but anything that takes you closer to your birth sex presentation makes you feel worse, no matter how great you think it looks on other people of your desired sex.

And so forth and so on.

The idea that transition ends gender dysphoria is a harmful myth. Gender dysphoria is something that all trans people must learn to live with, whether they transition or not, and no matter at what age they transition. There's no avoiding it; there's no ending it. There's only managing it, carving a happy life for yourself around the good bits, and learning to handle the bad parts in a productive way.

I wish more trans people faced that reality, instead of insisting on living in a fantasy where going through the perfect transition and forcing people into behaving in the perfect manner would mean never having to suffer gender dysphoria ever again.

I've given this post quite a bit of thought and reflection over night, and I think that the list of continuing symptoms of gender dysphoria you have compiled is not particular to 'gender' ( apart from the obvious medical interventions and their consequences).

I think we all, to greater or lesser degrees, have to manage our feelings and internal conflicts on a daily basis, and we all have to negotiate our relationships with others too: the ways in which they perceive us or respond/react to us, and the ways in which we feel they misunderstand us - and often quite badly. This can occur at the more intimate and personal level, but also at the level of the general public and those we encounter each day in various types of situation.

I think we all suffer from degrees of cognitive disonance too, when we find ourselves living a life, or elements of a life which feel incongruous or not in tune with what we'd really like, or what we long for. We need to accommodate our desires, longings and imaginings within reality and the bounds of the practically possible. We can all feel fake at times; or just winging it; or just performing a role - which is lifeless ,or with no real authenticity or true motivation.

This is the human condition, and you seem to have a found a way of dealing with your dysphoria and dissonance and in a way which makes you feel able to say that you are " doing fine". That is all we can all hope for. To reach a level of relative contentment and having developed a practice of managing (and trying to resolve) our more difficult feelings. The way we do this is by altering our mental approach to matters and by learning to let some things go.

The difference for you is that you have embarked upon a medical/surgical pathway in pursuit of your own feelings of authenticity - and that must be tough, and you must sometimes have regrets - but have to justify or rationalise them to yourself in order to cope? Which is an additional burden.

I recently watched the latest series of 'I kissed A Girl' - the lesbian dating show on Channel 4 - and it was very notceable that those women who identified as 'mascs' were particularly tied in to enacting a role which they felt compelled to continue. One of the 'masc' women, at the end of the show, said how she'd realised this and that going forward she was going to try not to be so suppressive of what she saw as her 'feminine' side. ( holding the body in a more rigid or controlled manner seems to be very consciously studied and then applied)

One woman entered the show who it was announced had a 'non-binary' identity - and then everyone had to be very conscious to use 'they' pronouns and adapt their language - which felt very artificial and really quite annoying. She was no different to the other 'masc' women ( none of whom seemed to have any issue with she/her pronouns) other than in claiming she wasn't a girl ( Danni Minogue, the host, referred to the women as 'girlies' or 'girls'). I do hope that after the show and watching it back she might reflect on how artificial the 'non-binary' identity was and how she could really just learn to relax with the fact that she's female, and with being a more 'masculine' woman -who also happens to like other women.

From what I understand OCD sounds bang on. And as anyone with experience of that kind of condition understands, can be very difficult to treat.

There is not much at all on women who are older than this group.

Are we surprised that nobody looked into what was going on with a small group of women 😛? Granted, the fact that transmen tend to be a lot more quiet than transwomen doesn't help either.

She has an interesting take on gender dysphoria (a term she refutes as having any validity).

Yeah. I agree with that. "Gender dysphoria" validates the very notion of "gender identity", which has no basis.

In short she feels that this psychological problem can be better associated with OCD, and that an individual becomes fixated on the notion of being in the wrong body.

Oh, that's one theory I hadn't heard before, but I can totally see it for some trans people.

This is such an interesting thread which, thankfully, hadn’t been hijacked so far, touch wood that I haven’t jinxed it now!

This from an earlier post from @Seethlaw really made me think:
**
And also... Quite frankly, I don't understand the trans people who experience euphoria at being succesfully taken for the opposite sex in situations where they cannot participate by virtue of their sex. Like, if a group of men had a discussion about, say, prostate problems, I wouldn't feel euphoria that they take me for a man. I'd feel dysphoria because I'd be horribly aware that I can't participate, and that I'm witnessing something that isn't my business. So sometimes, being "a transman but not a man" is better for me!

I’m not exactly sure why this has stood out to me and I need to think it over more, but it is something to do with that it puts into stark relief how the current trans movement has grown around entitled men with fetishes bullying their way into women’s spaces.

I think that the list of continuing symptoms of gender dysphoria you have compiled is not particular to 'gender'

That... makes sense, yeah. Common problems, interpreted through the specific lens of gender. Logical, yes. And... liberating, in a way. I mean, I don't even have that much dysphoria, but being reminded that it's just a normal human experience, just focused in a particular way, is really relaxing.

The difference for you is that you have embarked upon a medical/surgical pathway in pursuit of your own feelings of authenticity - and that must be tough, and you must sometimes have regrets - but have to justify or rationalise them to yourself in order to cope? Which is an additional burden.

Hmm, no, I wouldn't say that. I've never had any regrets about anything I've done, and I don't remember ever needing to rationalise anything. That's one thing I'm pretty happy about, at least 😁

I agree that the mind and body are both physical parts of a person, so accept your point that the mind being unhealthy is a physical unhealthiness.

However the point you appear to be side stepping is that when people talk about "healthy bodies" they do mean everything that isn't the mind that is objectively physically healthy. It doesn't make any sense to surgically remove breasts because someone is in mental distress, in the same way that doctors don't amputate arms/legs of people who are obsessed with the idea that they should be amputees. The mental distress needs addressing not the part of the body the distress is focused on.

@Seethlaw Sorry if you have answered this before, but does your mental map of your body as male extend to internal sex organs? I guess you saw your womb on ante-natal scans. Did it and/or the baby growing in it make you feel dysphoric? Does your mental map include a prostate and testes?

That's good, and must be a relief. Though there are many people, particularly women, who have endless cosmetic procedures, and none is ever enough, and each one leads to another one; to another area of bodily focus which needs to be improved or changed. And surgical procedures can go wrong, leaving the woman with scarring or disfiguration, or even leading to death.

I also have dysphoric feelings about my body - which I live with every day; which I'm always conscious of. In my mind I should have a very different body shape/figure to the one that I have. I feel like my nature is quite different to the body shape I have. This impacts upon my self esteem, and on the clothes that I wear; and I'm always conscious of how my body is, or might be, being viewed or assessed.

I'd love to be able to wear different types and styles of clothing to the ones that I actually do - but i'm always conscious of how unflattering they would look on me - and my strong aesthetic sense makes just wearing what I'd really like a 'no-go' area for me. I've often thought about or considered surgery - but on another level I suspect that having surgery would not significantly change my life - even if it might make me feel better about certain body parts if I did. But I also worry about surgery going wrong, or causing complications - and how I'd feel angry at myself for not being able to deal with my psychological issues without recourse to surgery in the first place. Just get over myself, sort of thing'.

It can be very difficult to live with a sense of oneself that is very different or separate to one's body. Because in certain ways our bodies are our selves.

Having said all of this, I am fine in myself and keep an even keel in my life. I manage my feelings and try to keep them in proportion. I'm fairly steady and settled in myself. I think this is all we can do. We have to adapt, modify and be more accepting of the things we cannot change, and try not to be so inward focused and naval gazing for too much of the time.

Sorry if you have answered this before, but does your mental map of your body as male extend to internal sex organs?

Nobody's ever asked me this before, no! And yes, I can "feel" my prostate, right there, and my testes, squashed into the armchair I'm sitting on. Though let's be clear: this is a peripheral knowledge. I can "feel" them when I focus, but in my daily life, I'm no more aware of them than i'm aware of my liver, you know?

Of course, the very act of "focusing" brings into question whether I'm really "feeling" them through some distorted internal sensing processes, or whether I'm just imagining that I'm feeling them. I'm well aware of that, but how do I make the difference??

Oh, and by contrast, I can't "feel" my uterus; I just know that it's somewhere around here, but it's an intellectual knowledge, you know?

(You have no idea how weird it is to write stuff like this 😅)

I can't unfortunately answer the questions about the pregnancy, because I had several issues that made it incredibly difficult psychologically (several different kinds of familial abuse, some of them I was aware of at the time, some others I was in denial of), so I can't differentiate between what would have been "gender dysphoria" and what would have been anxiety related to other things, you know?

Also, you have to remember that at the time, I had entirely repressed my knowledge of my being trans, and saw myself as a tomboy woman. I didn't hate my female body or anything. I saw my breasts, for example, as annoyingly too big, and as pointless in the absence of someone who would enjoy playing with them, but I didn't hate them. So when I got pregnant, I don't remember developing any issues around the physicality of it, like hating my uterus, or the physical changes I went through. As for the baby: I had terrible anxiety about how I would treat him once he was born, but watching him grow was magical! No problem with that.

Seetthlaw: How does your son refer to you? Mummy/Mum or ?

And has having had a son caused you to reflect upon, or change, any of the ways in which you view or experienece your male sense of self?

I resonate very much with everything you've said here!

Though there are many people, particularly women, who have endless cosmetic procedures, and none is ever enough, and each one leads to another one; to another area of bodily focus which needs to be improved or changed.

We see that happening with some trans people too, who keep looking for more body modifications to pass better in their own eyes.

And surgical procedures can go wrong, leaving the woman with scarring or disfiguration, or even leading to death.

Those are the reasons I went, "Nope!" when I read about phalloplasty. Sooooo many ways it can go wrong! And even when it goes right, the result is just not satisfying to me in terms of looks or functionality. Absolutely not worth it.

I also have dysphoric feelings about my body - which I live with every day; which I'm always conscious of. In my mind I should have a very different body shape/figure to the one that I have. I feel like my nature is quite different to the body shape I have.

Huh! That's really interesting, because it feels exactly like what I'm experiencing, just not focused on the same bits/aspect. I wonder if we could be two different expressions of the same basic disconnect? I mean, in a way, I could describe it just like you did: "In my mind I should have a very different body shape" - it's just that instead of being another female body shape, it's a male body shape. So yeah, I really recognise myself in your description.

We have to adapt, modify and be more accepting of the things we cannot change, and try not to be so inward focused and naval gazing for too much of the time.

Exactly! And I know it might look like I'm doing a lot of navel-gazing on this board, but I don't do any navel-gazing outside of this board, if you see what I mean. And I only do some here because I hope it's relevant and useful to others too, not just me.

@Seethlaw thank you for addressing the elephant in the room that no one seems to want to acknowledge. I am not GD, but I experienced its older sibling of body dysmorphia [BD] as a teen and developed a severe life threatening level of anorexia and bulimia by my late teens/early 20s. I largely recovered from the ED, in that I recognised the behaviours and curtailed them, but my relationship with food has remained difficult and the one with my body - the BD - is equally pervasive. I don’t know whether that is because they really haven’t cracked the way to treat either GD or BD in a way that is effective - how can they, in terms of GD, if they don’t even acknowledge it is a MH illness that NEEDS treatment and exploratory therapy and not something to be celebrated and affirmed? But it seems that there is so much work on a clinical application level that needs to be done to support sufferers better and to train practitioners in their care.

Am humbled by the contribution you make to these threads, sharing your experience and understanding of yourself and how it has shaped your journey. I really am in awe of the insight you have and beyond grateful that you share it here. Your posts have been so enlightening and helped me, as the mother of a YP with GD, to understand her better, to navigate our relationship with more sensitivity to what she may be experiencing. I genuinely think our interactions here, your posts more widely, have helped me to dial down the conflict and be a better mother to my child.

So I thank you, with much love, for the generosity you have shown in revealing your vulnerabilities and the compassion, empathy and virtual friendship you have offered to many of us as we try to understand the issues on a social/political and on a deeply personal level.

How does your son refer to you? Mummy/Mum or ?

The equivalent to "Mum" in his language, yes (not French either, it's complicated 😛) That's how he started, and I saw no reason to make him change. I am his mum, I am the person he knows as "Mum", I still want to be in his life as his mother and not some kind of "other father", so why change, you know?

And has having had a son caused you to reflect upon, or change, any of the ways in which you view or experienece your male sense of self?

Hmm, no, I don't think so. If anything, I think the challenge would have come if he had been a girl! Oh dear, that would have been a problem indeed... I mean, I was a tomboy woman, my husband was a man, and our child was a boy: it was all a continuity, you see? No problem whatsoever. But a girl!? That would have been a total disruption, and one I would not have felt well-equipped to deal with. How do you raise a girl to be anything she wants, when you yourself never felt like exploring the full range of feminine presentation, you know?

And then, I might not have transitioned when I did, if my son had been a daughter, because I would not have wanted to send her any message regarding her own femaleness. Not: you should think you're a boy too. And not: you must remain a girl at any price. I would likely have waited at least until she was an adult, so she could grow up free of any subconscious messages from me about her own relationship to her sex.

Brrr. So, so glad he was a boy...

Thank you for answering, and I'm sorry that your pregnancy experience was marred by such awful anxiety and so glad that the experience was better once your son was born.
The bit about being able to 'feel' your prostate is very interesting. Your mental map of your body must have added that quite late on in childhood/adolescence, when you learnt about male and female internal anatomy.
Tbh, I don't suppose any of us actually feel our ovaries or wombs or other internal organs, unless we have a medical problem. I can't feel mine even if I concentrate on them. I don't think men feeling their prostate when sitting is a normal everyday experience, so your mental processes appear to have taken you beyond a normal male experience.

Wow, I'm really touched, thank you!! And I'm so, so glad to hear that my posts are useful, including on such a personal level. Thank you for letting me know!

#💙💚💜

I don’t know whether that is because they really haven’t cracked the way to treat either GD or BD in a way that is effective

Well, they'd have to research them properly first, and I don't know about BD, but we know that the type of research that TRAs want to allow for GD is narrow and can only be gender-affirming, so...

how can they, in terms of GD, if they don’t even acknowledge it is a MH illness that NEEDS treatment and exploratory therapy and not something to be celebrated and affirmed?

Yeah. I mean, when I transitioned, my understanding was, "It's a mental illness, but we don't know how to treat it in the psychiatric way, so for now, physical transition is the best option, even though it's hard on the body and the life of the trans person." That made sense.

Seeing the rise of, "Oh no, it's not a mental illness at all, it's a wonderful identity, and it's amazing that people can transition medically to fit their identity," was depressing, both in the way it denied the actual problem, and happily created new ones! That's not progress, people, quite the opposite, dammit.

Oooh, that's an excellent point you make about my imaginary prostate! I shouldn't feel it, so the fact that I can pinpoint where it "is", is an indicator that this is more about my brain learning about male anatomy and integrating that knowledge into the faulty map, than about it is about said brain somehow getting signals mixed or something. And, well, that would make total sense.

Now, of course, the question is, "Why does it do that?" I can think of several reasons, the most obvious, I think, being that I've somehow integrated at a very early age that I was supposed to be a boy, so my brain compensates for what's not actually there. Heh. Interesting!

Yes, it seems like your brain has really wanted to reinforce that incorrect mental map, even to the point of adding an experience that a male wouldn't have!

1. Children are known to come to believe truly extraordinary things when under great emotional duress, so that wouldn't be particularly surprising.
2. We get right back to, "How can trans people ever know what being the other sex is like?" Answer: intellectually only - and my brain got caught red-handed because it didn't realise that a man wouldn't feel his prostate! That's... hilarious, in a way 😂And very sobering in another 🤔

Raising children tends to 'surface' our own hang ups and issues. Not saying it can be easy by any means, but it can offer a chance to heal.

just checked with DH and he says he def can't 'feel' his prostate, without exploring in a way that he has no intention of doing😂

That makes perfect sense: I only feel my internal reproductive organs when I have ovulation pain or menstruation pain. The rest of the time, they're insensate. Same with the vagina, I'm only aware of it when it's doing something nice (or something unpleasant).

I spose t's the same for a lot of internal organs like liver, appendix, intestines 🤔

Please write a book with all this stuff in that you're posting!

I've never seen most of it before and it's really vital these messages get out there to today's young people balancing in the edge of trans identification.

This is the first thread on MN I've ever bookmarked, it's truly insightful and educational.

I'm pretty vague about the exact location of any of my internal organs, and I'm quite happy to keep it that way, otherwise if I get a random weird pain, as one sometimes does, it will just be 'a weird pain' and not
'OMG that's my pancreas! there's something wrong with my pancreas! that's really serious! I must see a doctor immediately! Mayday mayday! 999 emergency! Medevac helicopter over here, now!'
and then a minute or two later
' oh wait, the weird pain has completely disappeared..'

This is the best way (short of medical problems) to 'feel' (some of) your internal organs:

https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/this-is-what-happens-when-your-stomach-drops-on-a-rollercoaster