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 think where I disagree is that you see before and after transition as having a healthy vs unhealthy body. I haven’t developed any health conditions or had any surgical issues, so from my perspective I still have a perfectly healthy body. I’m in much better shape than before and my mental health is significantly better.

The problems with this, as I see it, is that while for a very tiny number of people it may make a sort of sense, after having tried other approaches, it firstly does introduce risks that weren't there otherwise. It also creates a solution (medicalisation) to a problem (dysphoria) that people then suggest applying in reverse- which is how we see 15 year old lesbians having their healthy breasts removed.

Medicalising dysphoria also means applying an emotive weight to the word 'healthy'. Which in itself is worth considering. What impacts are there in effectively calling a body 'unhealthy' because of how we feel about it? Or how it looks?

Telling children that pills and surgery are the solution to emotional distress is seductive and imo very harmful. We see this happen plenty, mostly obliquely with 'pride' in mastectomy scars etc. This I see as.akin to glorifying self harm.

And fwiw the number of girls and young women who have elective mastectomies who also display self harm scars is heartbreaking.

You seem to have misread my post. I didn't say that after surgery to "transition" you had an unhealthy body. I said that surgically removing healthy body parts to resolve a mental health problem didn't make any sense. There was no need for the surgery.

I didn't have an eating disorder or body dysphoria - and am sorry to hear about your difficult experience - but I very much second everything else you've said in your post. I had previously been thinking that my daughter's gender dysphoria would continue going away until it was gone. Now I recognise that it may not ever fully go, even if she fully understands and addresses the fact that it came/comes from autism-related puberty distress, and that that's OK.

That's utterly fascinating about your prostate feeling @Seethlaw

Just as a PP said on another thread, your mental map of your body probably is a part of a "gender identity", along with the masculine self that feels like you.

I'm tempted to read that book you were recommended by the PP who said it and come back here in some kind of book club capacity to discuss it with the PP and you.

I'm not going to change my mind on whether gender identity exists or not. I'm a non-believer for life now. But this feels like the closest I've been to understanding what it could mean.

I hope I'm not unfairly planting an "I'm a believer" sticker on you if that's not how you see things. To me, you're a believer who recognises that it's not going to change biological reality but who feels happier having embraced your belief with the benefit of an adult understanding. I truly hope you continue to feel this way about your own transition.

Just as a PP said on another thread, your mental map of your body probably is a part of a "gender identity", along with the masculine self that feels like you.

I wouldn't put it that way. I only have the mental map, with its phantom sex characteristics. I wouldn't call it a "gender identity" because it's neither about gender (it's about sex) and it's not an identity (it's physical phantom organs). I'm also not sure what "masculine self" you refer to? Is it my masculine presentation? Then yes, it feels like me but that's only because it brings my physical appearance more in line with my mental map, so I "recognise" myself better.

I'm tempted to read that book you were recommended by the PP who said it and come back here in some kind of book club capacity to discuss it with the PP and you.

I've started it, and I think I'm gonna like it! Do tell me if you read it and want to discuss it.

I hope I'm not unfairly planting an "I'm a believer" sticker on you if that's not how you see things.

I... think you are? The only thing I believe is my brain's faulty map. I don't believe I have any male part in me: no "soul" or anything of the sort, no identity, nothing of the sort. When I say, "I feel like a man," I mean, "I physically feel like I have male bits, and like I shouldn't have female bits".

So I wouldn't call myself a believer, because I have been a believer in other things, and it's not the same mechanism or feeling at all, at least for me. To me, a belief is not based on fact. There may be evidence but not outright proof. When it comes to my faulty mental map, it's a fact that it exists. I can't show it to anyone else, true, but to me it's absolutely real. It's the only map I have, after all, and it's not like I can plug a USB key into my brain and download a more accurate one, you know? So I have to do with this one, even if I know it's faulty. I can consciously compensate to a degree, but that requires an effort, it doesn't feel natural, because I'm literally going against what my brain "knows".

Thank you for responding.

I'll be honest that I struggle to see the difference between what you are describing and the "gender identity" that others describe. Perhaps "phantom sex" fits better as an explanation, but it still suggests an inner sense of sexed self. For the phantom physical organs to feel right, there surely has to be some sense of male self, whatever that means..

That book could well be the key to me understanding what you're saying though. If I do read it, I'll definitely let you know.

I was about to post and say I don't have any internal awareness of my prostate but honestly I don't know. That whole area is full of nerve endings so I'm sure it's possible to find those sensations if one was sufficiently interested and determined. I guess most people take their body for granted unless/until one of the warning lights comes on! But as you and other trans people have described, having this inner body map that doesn't align with the physical body can really highlight some things that others would be completely unaware of.