An epiphany for dysphoria

Sigh, if the post was called "an Epiphany about Gender" the replies would have been along the lines of "good for you" and "thank you", however, the thread is called "An Epiphany for Dysphoria" which gives a whole different meaning to the post in a similar manner in which a thread called "About cancer" is drastically different than one called "About the common cold".

In the case of people suffering from gender dysphoria, gender matters a whole lot. Gender expression and even acting according to gender roles can help relieve the inner anguish associated with it. Personally I've met at least one young trans girl who is suffering because she isn't willing to act in ways that she perceives to be feminine because doing so would mean to acknowledge that there are actual differences between men and women and she was taught that stereotypical feminine behavior is inherently negative as she has been misgendered for most of her life.

For people who are trying to construct an adult identity, gender can be perceived to be meaningless or even a hindrance , but it is in no way meaningless for gender dysphoric people and teenagers who rely on feminine or masculine behavior to establish their identities and themselves as a person and in the case of transgender people take away gender dysphoria by doing so.

Going back to the cancer example, the advice here is akin to someone telling someone with cancer that they should just ignore it because in their experience when you are ill you can just wait and everything will get better.

Anyway, sorry, I shouldn't be replying to this thread as it was causing Linus distress and truthfully that's the last thing I ever wanted to do, I just feel the need to clarify why I responded as I did originally which lead to a heated discussion, something that I most definitely never wanted to happen. :icon_redf

 

....unfortunately, i do know what dysphoria is like.

i just think that OP's original post and subsequent things that they've been saying have been severely misunderstood.

how society perceives us is a common cause for peoples dysphoria. it's not the only cause, because there are various other kinds of dysphoria as well, however it can be a very large part of it. what is stopping some people from being able to identify as trans is that they don't fall into the correct number of things that society perceives as being attributed to (in this case) either gender, 'male' or 'female'. these things are usually based on gender roles, on stereotypes, and are completely irrelevant. it doesn't determine our internal gender (which is an indescribable experience of 'being', not '"well, i conform to X stereotypes that are masculine/feminine, therefore i must be a man/woman).

for all trans people, those stereotypes and gender roles are linked to their identity without given a choice, because society inflicts those stereotypes and gender roles on everyone. if that weren't the case, then there would be no standards that trans people have to live up to to be able to freely say "i am trans". without all of those things, people could just go in reply "oh okay, cool.". but at the moment, they're more likely to say things like: "but you look like X", "but you play football/ do ballet", "but you always cry like a girl and have crushes on guys" (or whatever) that can invalidate a trans (and even cis persons) identity.

these are the things that don't matter. these aren't the things that define us, or our gender, but can trigger dysphoria however, because these expectations and skewed views of gender exist.

i think everyone has all more or less been saying the same thing on this thread, just not understanding each other.

 

People who were left handed in the past got bullied [hand cut off, I think] because left handed was seen as the sign of the devil. Now, there are no boxes for left or right hand. However, people are still left handed and are accepted. I think if, on forms, we removed all the boxes then people would still be male, female, variant - but the box wouldn't be there so there would be no box divide. I mean, I was applying for University and they wanted to know what our sexuality was - it's a university application not a dating website ( ! )

 

True - perhaps except that trans people can be variant on more than one level. Being variant in terms of gender expression is primarily a question of social acceptance. Were there no boxes, people would just be masculine, feminine or a mixture as they please without any dysphoria. This would really solve a lot of problems.

If you have body dysphoria things are obviously different.

Really? Is that even legal to ask? (I suppose since they did but very creepy)

 

Yes. I was getting my hopes up thinking they were going to change that. However, what they are changing that your name is on the application form. I really can't believe people are so lacking intelligence and common sense to discriminate based on names. If they're taking off names, they really need to take off gender too. They say they want gender as to not discriminate against e.g. a male wanting a primary teaching job, but a male wanting a primary teaching job is more likely to get offered the place just because they're male to balance out the already female:male bias ... but that's still discrimination. [Hiring a person just because they're X, where X has no relevancy to the job, is discrimination.]

And yes, they wanted to know our sexuality, but luckily this was one of the things you could put 'other' or 'prefer not to say'. Anything irrelevent to me as a candidate for university I put 'prefer not to say'.

This is why I want my child to have the name Sophie/Sophia/Sofia as this is the most widley common name in the world and therefore no ethnic/race discrimination. I do like unique names, but way too much discrimination. The other ones would be Rory or Dylan/Dillion/Delan as these are more unisex, but not as commonly known.