I've read through a fair bit of the FAQ on the subject, but like, non-dysphoric trans people still don't quite make sense? I get that there's gender euphoria when properly addressed and when your body looks how you want it to, but how exactly does euphoria work without dysphoria? Wouldn't something have to be off (even slightly) for euphoria to make sense? I'm sorry if this comes off as rude, I'm just trying to understand and I didn't mean to offend anyone.
I don’t in particular identify as non-dysphoric, but I do think I experience my dysphoria in a very different way. In fact, I used to actually think I had no dysphoria. For me, this meant I experienced gender euphoria instead. Now, what is that exactly though, right?
Gender euphoria without gender dysphoria is definitely a thing that can and does happen. In my experience, I didn’t dislike my body, I wasn’t even in particular uncomfortable back in the early stages of my transition, but when I was mistaken for a guy I felt great. I could see myself living the rest of my life as a girl, but I knew that if I did that I would never be as happy as I could possibly be. I wouldn’t be content, I wouldn’t be comfortable, I wouldn’t be able to stand it once I’d known I had other options.
What I discovered as I began my transition is that I definitely still experience gender euphoria, but I do also deal with dysphoria. For me my dysphoria comes through in the form of derealization. I look to the body parts I dislike and feel a vague disconnect. My brain just subconsciously decides that these things aren’t permanent so as long as I can avoid them for now then eventually I won’t have to even think about them.
So, to conclude, gender euphoria can exist as a separate and independent entity from dysphoria. You can also start to experience dysphoria because of euphoria and vice-versa.
I recently had a friend say the following to me and it helped in my understanding a lot:
“So, imagine, when you were in kindergarten, your teacher told you to write with your right hand, and your parents both wrote with their right hands, and all your friends and classmates do to. So, you also become pretty good at writing with your right hand and you assume that everyone in the whole world writes with their right hand because you’ve never seen anything else.
But maybe one day when you’re in fifth grade, or you’re a teenager, or you’re 50 years old, you get bored, and you pick up a pencil with your left hand. Maybe it’s because you saw a friend do it, or you read some article online about left-handed people, or you just felt like trying it for some reason.
And for some reason, even though you’re used to writing with your right hand and everyone in your life up until that point has told you to write with your right hand, writing with your left hand is so much easier, and once you start doing it, there’s no way you want to go back to your right hand because your left hand feels more natural and easier and you never would’ve known this if you didn’t just try picking up the pencil. And sure, if you had to, you’re still perfectly capable of writing with your right hand. You’re probably pretty good at it, since you’ve been doing it for years, and at times you might think it’s easier to write that way since everyone else does it and you’ve always been told that’s the only way to write and you’re scared you might get in trouble or get weird looks for writing with your left hand, especially if you’ve been writing with your right hand for years and have never had a problem with it until now.
But still, you can’t shake the feeling that you should’ve been writing with your left hand your whole life, even if there’s nothing particularly impossible about writing with your right hand. You feel like if someone had just told you that some people write with their left hand, you might’ve made the choice on your own, but no one ever told you, so you didn’t even know it was possible until you tried it yourself, and now that you’ve tried it, you don’t ever want to go back to writing with your right hand.”
There are many different ways to experience and label gender identity and they’re all valid, so saying someone has to have dysphoria ignores the diversity of trans experiences- we don’t all go through the same thing, or label our feelings in the same way.
The majority of trans people do have dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean that every trans person has to.
A common misconception about gender dysphoria is that it means that you “hate yourself” or “hate your body,” but that isn’t necessarily true- while experiencing gender dysphoria can cause self-hatred in some folks, self-hatred isn’t intrinsic to dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is defined in the DSM-V as “the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender” (DSM-V, page 451). This rightly places the focus on the distress caused by the incongruence and not on identifying as transgender itself because transgender identity is not a mental illness.
While the majority of transgender people experience gender dysphoria, some of the transgender people who experience gender dysphoria symptoms do not meet the diagnostic criteria for Gender Dysphoria diagnosis because “the condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” (DSM-V pg 453).
The DSM-V also states that “not all individuals will experience distress as result of [the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender],” which means that not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria.
Experiencing gender dysphoria is not a binary yes or no question- as the WPATH-SOC states, “the intensity of some people’s gender dysphoria fluctuates below and above a clinical threshold” so it is not always a constant static experience, and gender dysphoria is also heavily influenced by medical transitioning and social acceptance.
But some transgender people don’t ever have gender dysphoria. These people may be experiencing gender incongruence and not gender dysphoria. Gender incongruence is not the same thing as gender dysphoria: gender incongruence means there’s a disconnect between the gender you were assigned at birth and the way you identify- but that disconnect doesn’t necessarily have to cause distress.
Not all people identify as having gender incongruence because some folks just plain and simple don’t want their identity medicalized, but this is the current terminology used by the psychiatric community.
Anyway, creating artificial criteria to judge who counts creates a toxic atmosphere where trans people (with and without dysphoria) feel that they aren’t “trans enough” when they are- the only person who can decide if someone is trans is the trans person themself.
Here are more articles and posts on non-dysphoric trans people- please read all of these if you think dysphoria is required to be transgender:
Not All Transgender People Have Dysphoria – And Here Are 6 Reasons Why That Matters
You Can Still Be Transgender If You Don’t Feel Physical Dysphoria – Here’s Why
Non-dysphoric trans people
Jealousy towards non-dysphoric trans people
Do I have to have Dysphoria to be Trans?
You don’t need to be diagnosed with dysphoria to be trans
Why you shouldn’t force a label on someone
Discourse over being dysphoria
A book that said not all trans people have dysphoria
What about insurance coverage if transgender identity is demedicalized under the new WHO ICD classification?
Non-dysphoric trans people wouldn’t cause insurances to stop covering medical transition for dysphoric trans people
American Psychological Association’s stance on nondysphoric trans people
A post by a post-phallo person (tw sexual assault)
Gender Dysphoria: DSM-5 Reflects Shift In Perspective On Gender Identity
Being trans is not a mental disorder
Does experiencing dysphoria automatically make you trans?
Do you need gender dysphoria to be trans?
While hopefully the links above and the other mod’s explanations helped clarify this topic for you, someone’s identity doesn’t have to make sense to you personally in order to count and be valid.
You don’t need to understand all the complexities of someone else’s identity to know that they know themself and who they are better than you do, and give them the respect of believing them when they say “This is who I am”. You should accept that they feel that way and move on.
If anyone has more links to add feel free to do so in a reblog! All of the mods of this blog are dysphoric so we especially encourage non-dysphoric followers to add on with their personal experiences and viewpoints!
These are amazing comments, but tl;dr: People can tell the difference between neutral and positive feelings, they’re not similar at all. (That is, because ‘neutral’ is the absence of emotional valence, whereas ‘positive’ is… positive emotional valence. It’s pretty darn hard to confuse the two.)
You don’t need negative feelings (dysphoria) to recognize whether something (gender) is right or wrong for you—a shift away from neutral in either direction is enough to be noticed.
