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Gender Dysphoria Isn’t What You Think…

There’s a simple fact about gender dysphoria that I almost never see discussed: it’s an entirely different experience once you fully accept the fact that you’re trans.

Let’s use the classic “trapped in the wrong body” narrative as an example. Now that I know I’m a woman, I can look in the mirror and understand exactly what’s causing me distress. I know that I’m unhappy with my stubble, my shoulders, the size of my nose, and half-a-dozen other things that make me feel more masculine and less feminine. I feel like I should be able to look into the mirror and see a figure that better reflects the woman I am.

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  Gender Dysphoria Test

Gender dysphoria (formerly called gender identity disorder) is a diagnosis used to describe individuals who exhibit a strong desire to be of the other gender. Take this gender dysphoria test to determine if you have gender dysphoria symptoms that could lead to a diagnosis.

Articles of Interest

When Children Say They're Transgender

Hormones? Surgery? The choices are fraught—and there are no easy answers. To Claire’s parents, her anguish seemed to come out of nowhere. Her childhood had been free of gender dysphoria—the clinical term for experiencing a powerful sense of disconnection from your assigned sex. They were concerned that what their daughter had self-diagnosed as dysphoria was simply the travails of puberty.

Alarmism Hurts Children With Gender Dysphoria

For many minors, this may be a transient phase of exploration rather than a permanent identity.

Children with gender dysphoria deserve better from the law

Gender dysphoria is when a person’s subjectively felt gender is incongruent with her or his biological sex. For diagnosis in children, that person must not just experience this incongruence for at least six months, they must also verbalise it. Recent legal developments are a step in the right direction, but further review of the law is needed as the current process remains burdensome for children with gender dysphoria and their families.

Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims

Fears of “social contagion,” used to support anti-transgender legislation, are not supported by science.

Gender dysphoria in adolescence: current perspectives

Consolidation of identity development is a central developmental goal of adolescence, but we still do not know enough about how gender identity and gender variance actually evolve. Treatment-seeking adolescents with GD present with considerable psychiatric comorbidity. There is little research on how GD and/or transgender identity are associated with completion of developmental tasks of adolescence.

Gender Dysphoria Is Killing Transgender Teens. Why Aren’t We Talking About It?

A 2011 survey of 6,500 transgender people published by the National Center for Transgender Equality revealed that 41 percent of transgender individuals have attempted suicide at least once. Fifty percent of transgender youth will attempt suicide before their 20th birthday.

Gender dysphoria patients deserve better treatment than I can give them

GPs don’t have the time or the expertise to provide the holistic treatment that transgender patients require. Proper services are required urgently.

Giving gender-affirming care: ‘gender dysphoria’ diagnosis should not be required

As people around the world come to acknowledge that gender is something defined along a spectrum rather than a binary concept, the necessity of a “gender dysphoria” diagnosis needs to be revisited.

How science is helping us understand gender

Freed from the binary of boy and girl, gender identity is a shifting landscape. Can science help us navigate?

More Children Struggle With Gender Identity Disorder

The March issue of the medical journal, Pediatrics, features a striking editorial. It begins with the following sentence: A new pediatric problem is in town. That new problem, according to the editorial, is gender identity disorder in children. Pediatricians are apparently seeing more young patients who express an interest in changing their gender.

Trans youth are significantly more likely to attempt suicide when gender dysphoria is met with conversion therapy than with hormone treatment

We found that supportive family environments and hormone replacement therapy that affirms a transgender child’s gender identity decrease their risk of suicide or running away from home, whereas unsupportive family environments and conversion therapy that denies their gender identity increase these risks.

What is Gender Dysphoria?

The term “transgender” refers to a person whose sex assigned at birth (i.e. the sex assigned at birth, usually based on external genitalia) does not align their gender identity (i.e., one’s psychological sense of their gender). Some people who are transgender will experience “gender dysphoria,” which refers to psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. Though gender dysphoria often begins in childhood, some people may not experience it until after puberty or much later.

What is gender dysphoria?

What you need to know about this commonly-misunderstood condition.

Why Do We Pathologize Gender Nonconformity?

What Chelsea Manning's gender dysphoria reveals about the limits of psychiatric diagnoses.

‘An explosion’: what is behind the rise in girls questioning their gender identity?

Could it be a temporary exploration of gender identity, potentially the manifestation of other forms of distress? Or is it an innate experience for which treatment is required? The definition of gender dysphoria is controversial in itself, and in England there is no consensus among clinicians over whether an adolescent’s desire to transition should be quickly affirmed or they should be encouraged to pause before changing their name and starting hormone treatment.

Resources

10 Transgender People Share What They Wish They Knew Before Transitioning

I felt like a part of me was always hidden, even as I tried to fit into people's expectations as best I could. I was still the jigsaw piece that didn’t quite fit.