Third Keyword Blog Post: Using Euphoria to Combat Dysphoric Shame
In his essay, "Resisting Shame: Making Our Bodies Home," Eli Clare talks about dysphoria as shame. Dysphoria as the shame others make us feel for the way our bodies look naturally. Shame for not passing well enough. Shame for being our authentic selves. I believe the euphoria is the way to fight against this shame and dysphoria, and I believe that euphoria can be found amongst community, as Clare posits.
When transgender people let themselves fall into the false thinking of their transness being a defect, it is them letting shame and dysphoria take ahold of them. Transness is not a defect. It is our identities. It is our beauty. It is our lived experiences. As Clare says, "trans-ness not a disease, gender nonconformity not a pathology, and bodily uniqueness not an illness. A strand that turns the word dysphoria inside out, claiming that we are not the ones dysphoric about our genders, but rather dysphoria lives in the world’s response to us" (Clare, 460). What I believe Clare is saying is that dysphoria is a product of the world, of society, being unable to see past the gender binary, past the sex binary, past the gendered body binary. Because they see us all in such a rigid fashion, that is what gives us dysphoria, that is what convinces us that we are defects instead of radiant and beautiful and trans. Instead, we are wrong, or at least not quite right. I believe the solution to this is gender euphoria. Finding a way to celebrate our bodies, love our bodies, and exist peacefully within our bodies is the solution to thinking our bodies are defects, are something that needs to be fixed or cured. Even a re-framing of the conversations surrounding hormone replacement therapy, or gender affirming surgeries, can be beneficial for this shift from dysphoria, from shame, to radical happiness, to gender euphoria.
(WC: 314)