I'm afab and I experience dysphoria with my feminine features, like my hips, chest, etc. My parents let me cut my hair short and they want me to be able to wear what I want. But when I asked for a binder months ago, they refused under the pretext that I wasn't trying to accept my body for what it is. Their reasoning is that not only can it cause physical health problems, wearing a binder dances around what they think is the real problem - that I can't accept what I look like. They believe wearing a binder will actually be detrimental to my mental health. I've tried to explain the whole dysphoria-as-a-mental-health-issue thing, but they just don't understand what dysphoria is like or what it means. How can I convince them/get them to understand?
ooh gosh this is much more difficult than what I thought you were going to talk about based on the title (I thought you were going to talk about being OK with not transitioning personally if you wanted to). There are two or three things that come to mind. The first is, sometimes if you're still under the care of your parents you can get stuck not being able to progress with important things in your life. While I fully believe that people understand who they are and how they want to live before they're 18, some parents don't and exorcise their parental control powers to keep you from getting to where you need to be. Unfortunately something like that can damage the kind of relationship that you all have once you have the opportunity to get free so it's kind of sad. Unfortunately this advice... is basically "wait until you're 18 and have that kind of control over your own choices"... probably not the best or happiest advice. The second is, there are some great youtubers who talk about transgender issues, and get into GQ/NB experiences specifically. Not just top dysphoria but all kinds of stuff. What you could do is take a soft/slow approach to educate your parents around what trans dysphora really is and what the experience is like. If they absorb it and start to understand this approach could make the conversation about dysphoria improving your mental health a little easier. The third, which is similar to the second... maybe find some articles online that talk about what the risks of binding are and some others that talk about what dysphoria really is. Try to get them to read them so that they can understand from an outside perspective what your experience is and why you want to do this. I am not sure that any of that will be much help... It's probably all stuff you've thought of but I do wish you the best of luck! Remember you know you better than anyone and it's worth it to try to be who you are if you really want to good luck!
Maybe go to a therapist who could help talk through what the dysphoria is - transgender or body dysmorphia or something else. If you can talk it through it with someone they can work with you to work through it all. Sometimes you think you know what you are but really it's a whole different problem.
Personally, I hate the idea of being forced to accept your body or appearance the way it is. And it's not just and LGBT thing, if everybody had to just accept their body/appearance, the entire plastic surgery industry would not exist.
But the OP's parents might not think the plastic surgery industry is right. I kinda am the same way, for example. Medicine has a lot of limitations, besides. You fix one thing, and break another on the way. This is the way it frequently is. So it's better to avoid unnecesary and potentially harmful interventions. And it's in no way related to it being LGBT or not.
I was really trying to say that a lot of people don't accept their given appearance and try to change it and that people should not be forced to just accept things the way they are.
Yup and I was saying the opposite: that not accepting might for some people be wrong or it might be impractical in some cases.
I had my parents think a similar thing when I asked for a binder. Eventually I just decided to order one without their permission. Though I'm not suggesting that you necessarily do the same. The problem seems to be that your parents believe you're experiencing body dysmorphia and not gender dysphoria. In the first case, binding would be a matter of being unable to accept your body, and doing things which are potentially detrimental to your health because of that. In the second case, binding would be a form of relief for the dysphoria. The health risks still exist, but they outweigh the pain of dysphoria. This is what your parents need to realize. If possible, I would recommend trying to find a therapist (or if you have one, ask them) to be a mediator between you and your parents. If the therapist suggests binding as a good option for dysphoria, then having that expert opinion may change your parent's mind. If getting a therapist is not an option, I would suggest having a dialogue with your parents and try to explain how gender dysphoria is different from body dysmorphia. And that the health risks for binding are not too bad if you bind with a real binder in the right size, and take breaks. I hope your parents come around.
