Is it gender dysphoria or just anxiety over body image?

I would say it does not really seem like you are gender dysphoric. The issue of you bring uncomfortable with others seeing or touching you is very common, not just in transgender humans. I'd say you simply have a need for privacy and personal space. As for the clothing preference, shorts are always more comfortable and practical than skirts. No question. Of course, many people would immediately classify you as some sort of gender identity, but I'm just gonna say first that what you described does not exclusively determine any gender dysphoria. Hope this helped. I apologise if it didn't or was confusing, annoying, boring, or any other form of unpleasant. Now I have to go cuddle with my dog.

 

I had similar experiences growing up, wore coats or winter coats to highschool classes, never wanted to take my shirt off, always worried people would see my body. part of it was I was a bit overweight, but it got like, super built up in my mind (People would probably have said I was normal or skinny, but in my head I had boobs and felt exposed. Not withstanding phantom body parts).

Gender dysphoria means different things to different people, and it can be pretty nuanced, but I wouldn't rush in and say this is the case for you. Sometimes people experience stimuli and environments differently; maybe your insecurity stems from something else.

I know a lot of girls that hate skirts and the like, prefer shorts (Sometimes settling for skorts), and I'm sure your sentiments would get shared. Anxiety over body image is very very common, and there is nothing wrong with dressing or wanting to dress modestly.

At the end of it, how you feel when alone and by yourself is what's important. I have anxiety so regardless I'm always nervous about people staring at me or being around/near me.

 

To me it sounds like you're just not comfortable w/ your body or others seeing it but not necessarily dysphoric. I know trans people and cis people who have the same anxieties about body image etc. so it's not exclusively dysphoria if that makes sense?

 

I have felt similar ways, but am curious to know for all of those saying that it's probably not as much gender dysphoria and just typical body image issues, when does it become gender dysphoria? I can't say that I'm completely uncomfortable in my body, but then I also remember many times growing up when i was happy i had a smaller chest or thought i would be totally fine with having an even smaller one, while most girls seemed to always wish theirs was bigger. I can also remember having thoughts of how it would be so much easier to wear guy clothes and hate all the beauty things that are stereotypically female. I didn't get a manicure for the first time until my mid-twenties after pressure from my sister, i hated wearing any kind of make-up and never felt the need to put much effort into my hair. Yet I feel like most of these things are more gender norms/roles, and not so much gender dysphoria. Any ideas on how better to distinguish between the two?

 

More practical, sure, but more comfortable? Let's agree to disagree...

For me, it was a slow thing to come to terms with. At first, I blamed clothes. It was confusing, because I could flip through magazines and catalogues and point out things that I liked, but at the same time I didn't want those things on my body at all. It wasn't even a question of modesty or of being covered up or anything like that, just that I had this idea in my head that it's fine for other people to wear those things, but not me. I would flip flop between exclusively dressing boyish, and exclusively wearing dresses, trying to feel comfortable in my appearance but never quite getting there. Then I realised it had nothing to do with what I liked or didn't like, it was my body itself that felt problematic.

I would go out of my way to not look in mirrors, constantly keeping mine covered up with a tapestry, because I didn't like looking at myself even on a good day. But mostly it was a social thing. I always got along fine with both guys and girls, so no problem there. But there was always a sense of otherness. If I was hanging out with girls, there was this divide there - I was quirky and odd, and there were so many things I didn't grasp, and nobody could quite get a read on me. If I was hanging out with guys, I was often the token girl, somehow different from other girls in my approachability, and almost never a romantic interest. I was even dubbed an official bro while I was still in a phase where I frequently wore mini skirts.

My two issues, social and physical, really started to come together more near the tail end of high school and afterwards - what I mean is, there were more opportunities for both things to rear up at the same time. Dates were awkward, with much misinterpretation. I felt I was getting judged more on the basis of being female, with strangers, and at work. And everything I had been led to believe - that after puberty when things evened out, I would like my body...that after I got used to them, I'd probably want even bigger boobs, like most of the girls I knew...that I would somehow stop wishing I could have grown taller, or that heels would be enough to console me about it...that I would eventually overcome my discomfort with my own voice and start talking more...that I would just stop feeling like a cross-dressing gay man once I had the right kind of sex, or that with the right guy, these inner feelings would cease to be an issue...that I would start to notice my own beauty, like the proverbial duckling turned swan...that I really was just attracted to these androgynous guys, rather than idolizing them, wanting to be them - none of it got any better. It only got worse, with each passing year. I wasn't just idolizing these guys any more, I was supremely jealous of them. My body changed, and instead of becoming comfortable in it, seeing my own beauty, I became incredibly depressed, even self-destructive. I was conflicted. What did it mean for me, someone with a feminist background with fierce beliefs in equality, to hate everything feminine about me, every trait that comes with being female, to the point of developing issues with self injury?

I guess maybe it means I'm not a woman. But it took me ages to come to terms with that, because I didn't even know dysphoria was a thing for so long.