not sure how to articulate this but I really don’t understand the ~phantom limb~ explanation of dysphoria. I often see the example of people born without certain limbs experiencing phantom sensation in said limbs used to explain how people born with certain genitals might have sensations pertaining to the other set. But this doesn’t make sense to me. Humans /all/ have two arms and two legs, unless they are born with some birth defect that causes them not to develop correctly, so it follows that there could be phantom sensation in that situation. I don’t know anything about biology/anatomy/physiology beyond high school ap bio (I got a 5 thanks very much) but I’m willing to believe that. If something’s not there that should be, I suppose there could be some sort of feeling in a missing limb.
but that doesn’t make sense wrt sex dysphoria. in that case, nothing’s missing. It’s not like all humans have penises and “people with vaginas” experience phantom limb pain since they’re missing them. They were never supposed to have them, because unlike all humans having, say, arms, all females aren’t supposed to have penises. Since nothing is missing, there’s nothing to be missed. The connections don’t exist for there to be phantom sensation, unless you want to get all castration complex and say all females have phantom penis pain. and that doesn’t even account for males having sex dysphoria–what’s their phantom limb if they’re not ~lacking~ to begin with? either way in the dysphoria-as-phantom-limb-sensation model, there’s no problem like there would be if someone was born without a limb. everything’s working fine and any discomfort has to be socially constructed rather than a result of ~wrong neurological pathways~
