"body dysphoria makes you trans"--questions

I don't know where it originated from, but people who hold that view usually do because they think it's sexist for gender to be based on anything else (and they also don't believe in brain sex).

BDD and BIDD refocus if you fix your problem, like people who can't stop getting plastic surgery. Dysphoria goes away (or is lessened) by transition.

Transgender people have brain structures correlating to their preferred gender (corpus callosum size, amount of white matter, neuron count, hypothalamus size, etc.) so it's theorized that dysphoria is caused by a female brain developing in a male body, or vice versa. Considering the brain differences in transgender people, I think it's safe to say it's not socially constructed.

As far as I know, there have been no studies of body dysphoria in animals. Unlike homosexuality, it's hard to observe so it's hard to say.

I can't think of any historical narratives, but transgenderism wasn't well understood at all back then. It was either some 3rd gender, because they didn't understand gay/trans/gender nonconforming people (and they were all grouped together), or treated as a sexual perversion.

In my opinion body dysphoria is necessary, because I think anything other than that is just re-branded gender roles, but not every dysphoric person is trans because for some people it's either not clinically significant enough for them to need to transition or they might be experiencing something like dysphoria caused by trauma or mental illness or something--in which case, transitioning would give them actual dysphoria.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that gender dysphoria is not really comparable to BDD. When you have gender dysphoria while you feel an intense discomfort and wrongness about your body, it doesn't mean you think your body is ugly or have body image problems. A while back a former male model came here who transitioned and was struggling with body image issues after she transitioned. I would say that it is more common to have body issues after transitioning than before, especially if you are a trans woman, but the thing is that gender dysphoria is a whole different beast and is really not comparable which is why people still transition despite the huge cost.

There are many medical conditions that they don't know the cause, that are idiopathic. However, the conditions still exist as the symptoms are obviously there. As gender dysphoria is neurological it is much harder to pinpoint the exact cause but there is fairly strong evidence that it originates in the exposure to hormones in the prenatal phase of a babies life. However, it doesn't really matter because the symptoms are fairly obvious and unique and you can usually tell if a person is suffering from gender dysphoria after talking to them for a short while. The treatment is exceptionally effective and if not treated, the symptoms don't really go away. There is a reason why doctors recommend such a hard course of treatment for gender dysphoria, if there were doubts about its effectivenes and the lack of an alternative, it simply wouldn't be a good idea to take such a drastic course of action to treat it.

 

The ideas of physical beauty are socially constructed, you only need to check the models of painters, of sculptors. There was this heroin chic look that Kate Moss made popular on the 90s, and had something to do with the 20s boyish/flapper look, still those women were women : They had breasts, tiny breast but breasts.

The dysphoria felt by a transgender person is not about having a bigger penis, or bigger breasts : It's about having them or not having them. Sure most of us would prefer to have a nice looking body (and about that I believe we are the same as cis), still we'd rather have a not so good looking body that fits out gender than having a perfect body that is the wrong gender.

Dysphoria is about the physical, but the physical produces the mental or spiritual as well. There is nothing more revealing about someone than his or her own voice. There are men with high pitched voices, and women with low, husky voices. The transgender person doesn't want a higher voice, she wants a female voice, because she is a woman, and everytime she hears a male voice when she speaks, it hurts her. Just imagine how would you feel if you opened your mouth and gave out a deep roar, like Isaac Hayes'.

You know what, I never asked myself that question... And I've asked myself quite a few, but that one...

To answer that question you need to keep in mind that the ability of writing and reading wasn't that common worldwide before the 20th century, which means that unless someone able and willing to talk about somebody decided to document the case, all the information about someone who was transgender was lost. Or you could have transgenders who were lucky enough to go stealth, and never spoke a word about it. Or (I believe this was quite common) the transgenders ended up locked up on a mental institution for the rest of their lives until death, and their stories were lost forever, unless you are able to read the (few) papers left by psychiatrists. The only that comes to mind right now is Von Krafft Ebing. His works are on public domain, you might want to check them. Please keep in mind he might be outdated from a scientific point of view, and that is specialty was more human sexuality than gender.

 

To add to what Michael said about historical narratives. It's important to point out that many of the older trans women and men felt gender dysphoria long before they learned what it means to be trans, when I look back at my writing when I was younger, I wrote about how wrong everything feels, how lost and disconnected I felt. Pretty much everything I said here to describe how gender dysphoria feels to me, I wrote the same thing multiple times over the years. That in itself is a historical narrarive because it came before gender dysphoria or being trans even existed for me.

 

Animals exhibit gender dysphoria/incongruence. It's been observed in apes, for example; e.g. natal male apes who wish to socialize as females and do so, etc.

 

Animals exhibit gender dysphoria/incongruence. It's been observed in apes, for example; e.g. natal male apes who wish to socialize as females and do so, etc.

 

I do think transition is a good treatment for most dysphoric people. Most dysphoric people who have transitioned have said it improved their life, and transitioning socially (I haven't yet transitioned medically) really improved my overall functioning.

There is proof of brain map/brain sex and its correlation to transgender people, but map/sex being connected is speculation. Dysphoria is supposedly caused by brain map, how you expect your body to be.

Brain map theory is supported by a lower percentage of trans women having phantom limbs after bottom surgery than non-trans men who lost their genitals in accidents.

“The first finding was intriguing. Only 6 out of 20, or 30 percent, of the transsexual women who had had their penises removed reported feeling a phantom phallus. But 58 percent of “normal” men have such sensations after the surgery.The second finding was surprising. A third to a half of “normal” women experience phantom breasts after a mastectomy, as opposed to only 3 out of the 29 transgender men. The third finding was downright astounding. Among the transsexual men, 18 out of 29, or 62 percent, said they had experienced a phantom penis long before their surgery.”

Disconnect from sex traits is also explained by this.


Brain sex also has proof

Sexual dimorphism of brain developmental trajectories during childhood and adolescence

http://archive.ideafarm.com/[email protected].!.sex_diffs_in_the_brain.pdf

---------- Post added 4th Feb 2016 at 09:33 AM ----------

Personally, I want bottom surgery because I'm disgusted and disconnected from my female anatomy, so seeing something else there would make me feel more like myself. Also I would be able to do things like using urinals, which would be a huge improvement for me. Not being able to be completely biologically male, or being able to father children bothers me, but current surgery's better than nothing for me.

 

Well, here's the thing, I don't actually buy into that particular claim anymore. But I don't think it's important to use that claim to show a biological source for the dysphoria either. A recent study showed that most people don't have a stereotypically male or female brain. Those sort of readings were a small minority (~5% I think?). Which helps put a nail in the coffin that there is a biological essentialism that makes men, men, women, women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, super cute. That said, it mostly shows that there's no way to tell if someone is male or female from brain structure, nor can you say anything specific about male or female behavior as a rule. Are there still statistical differences? Yes, but the gap isn't as big as many think. So I suspect that there's actually something more complicated going on that will take time to sort out. Especially when we have a specific idea on what is masculine or feminine without really understanding why, and how the brain can develop differently due to upbringing in a gendered way.

That said, the best example I can think of that demonstrates a biological source is the studies of male individuals who had accidents with their circumcisions. In one well documented case, the accident was very young (~9 months), and they reassigned the child's sex under the idea that our self image as male or female was socially constructed, and so you could raise the child as female and they will be better adjusted than being a mutilated male.

Even without testosterone, the child did grow up dysphoric. Even without a clue what had happened, they had a clear male self image. It would be hard to claim that there isn't some biological element to our self image as male/female/etc without somehow explaining cases like these and the many similar cases with intersex children surgically assigned at birth.

 

Can you link that study?

I know there's a large margin of error, but in general male and female brains fit certain patterns (which is also affected by hormones, and thinking patterns are also affected by socialization, but there are definitely some intrinsic differences). I only brought that up, because dysphoric=/=trans and saying so ignores crucial parts of identity and if it were widely accepted, would lead to more detransitioners (much like saying dysphoria isn't necessary to be trans has. Middle ground is good).

 

Your Brain Is a Mosaic of Male and Female from LiveScience. The key take away really was that the vast majority of people are a mosaic of male/female brain features. Yes, you can find statistical differences, but it provides compelling evidence that there is no trait you can point to as a result of being male or female, nor can you really tell what gender a brain is from inspecting these regions.

And yes, I understand why it gets brought up (since I've run across it a lot the last couple years), but honestly, I think you don't need to go to the simplified answer. There's room in my mind for diversity in brain functioning (that argue against biological essentialism), but also having a biological source for gender identity. And I think the direct evidence of what happens when we assume it doesn't have a biological source can stand on its own.

 

I don't want to see my future genitals as less real than the ones I have now that's so depressing

 

It sounds like you have strong social needs OP. That's not me. I have social needs, but I had an even stronger need to not feel like butt all the time. And presenting myself as a woman reached a point where it didn't alleviate my own dysphoria any more, months before I started my transition proper. My own dysphoria only went away when I transitioned physically. I also have not transitioned completely physically; I don't match a lot of people's definition of woman, and I'm comfortable with that. What society thinks and defines really doesn't matter much at all to me to be honest. I fixed the parts that were messing up my life and moved on. In my case it was my hormonal balance.

I don't think body dysphoria makes you trans, just like I don't think social dysphoria makes you trans. I think dysphoria itself is something you do something about, and whatever that something is, if it means stepping out of your prescribed role - whether that's society or mother nature doing the prescribing - that's what makes you trans.

Anyway it's all semantics, and this business about coming up with an official definition in a messageboard is, I feel, counterproductive. I think we just be supportive of anyone that comes here and let them use their own words to say who they are. You shouldn't have to go to college to learn how to be trans.

 

I think that one of the pitfalls of transitioning at a relatively young age is that there is a much larger focus on physically transitioning and often the psychological element of transitioning is ignored entirely. Unfortunately, physical transitioning loses its effectiveness if your mind doesn't accept that the process of change is real, if you don't accept that you really are female and that you were never male. Trans is, in my eyes, just a descriptive word that describes the process of change that you went through, it is a label that is connected to your past. You are female, you were always female and will remain female for the rest of your life, that's why you transitioned and even if you wanted to, you couldn't change the fact that you are female.

It means that for the rest of your life, you will have to deal with the burden of femininity and the price girls pay for being beautiful. When I read your posts, I see a girl struggling with problems that many girls struggle with in their early 20s, body issue problems and the tough process of constructing an identity and how lost and confused you can feel trying to figure out who you really are deep inside. Many girls feel as if they are fake as a result of the media objectifying women and other reasons. As part of this process of coming to terms with who you are and constructing a stable identity, you need to look back to your past and piece together a narrative that will serve as the foundation of your identity. In your case, as I see it, that narrative connects with transitioning and you need to figure out what the journey you have been through really means to you. What parts of it will serve as building blocks for your identity. However to see the strength that you showed and resilience and bravery, to truly appreciate the fact that you survived and how huge an accomplishment it really is, you need to start seeing these achievements as your own. There were never two versions of yourself, you were never male and everything you've been through happened to you, the girl that you have always been. You responded to every word told to you, to every event that happened to you and you tackled the momentous task of transitioning as a girl would.

That's at least how I see things, I will always be female and it is independent of what my body projects, it simply doesn't matter because why should it? What matters is who I am inside and everything that I've been through would have not happened if I was born as someone male, every interaction that I had would have been drastically different and I simply wouldn't be who I am today if I wasn't female. There is nothing fake about this narrative because our identities are subjective constructs, every person writes his or her own narrative and my story is just as real as any other person's story. The events that have happened to me are very real and putting them in a certain context makes them more so for me. I filled in the gaps in my story in such a way that it makes sense to me and that is at the heart of every person's identity.

I hope this doesn't come off as presumptuous, I can't see into your mind and all I can do is reflect on your words and try to understand them in context of my own life and what I know about identity. My hope is that you do find some sort of meaning here and it helps you find a tiny bit of peace.

Much hugs,

(*hug*)

Eveline

 

Back during the Greek and Roman times trans* people definitely existed. They often worked in temples or as prostitutes, etc...