The more subtle kind of gender dysphoria

anagnori:

For the longest time, I couldn’t tell whether I had gender dysphoria or not.

I don’t get severe “flare-ups” of dysphoria often. Most of the time it’s so low that I can ignore it. As I’ve said before, when I do feel dysphoric, it’s usually because I got triggered by being in a heavily gendered space, or by being treated in a strongly gendered way by other people. I’ve had other sources of dysphoria, too, but much more rarely.

When people talk about gender dysphoria, we almost always describe it as a feeling – a negative emotion or subjective experience, which exists only inside your head. So the implication is that, if you aren’t currently feeling unhappy or uncomfortable about gender stuff, then you must not be currently experiencing dysphoria. And if you never feel those nasty twinges of awkwardness and wrongness, then you must not have gender dysphoria at all…right?

No. There’s something else going on that we need to consider: coping mechanisms.

Keep reading