Tag: Presentation

My Experiences of Gender Dysphoria and Euphoria

Personal Experiences

I have struggled to write this post because it is so intensely personal but I think it’s important for people to understand what dysphoria feels like. Many trans people talk about how their body has always felt wrong or as soon as they could talk they were voicing that they wanted to be the other binary gender. While dysphoria can present in this way, kind of like a big flashing sign, for me it is a lot more subtle and fluid.

For me, dysphoria feels like wearing a piece of clothing that doesn’t fit. You feel like you keep having to adjust it but no matter how you try it never sits right. It is a vague sense of wrongness. Like if I was a puzzle most of the pieces fit together but there are a few that sit slightly askew and I keep fiddling with them throughout the day to get them to fit. It’s irritating, annoying, frustrating, distracting, and confusing. It is also what I use to show me who I am which gives me a way to frame it in a positive way.

When I’m in an environment or around people who know who I am and are gender affirming regardless of how I’m presenting I get a feeling of ‘rightness’ or gender euphoria. This also happens when I put on clothes and look in the mirror and see a body shape that matches what’s in my head. The dysphoria is gone and because it is so uncomfortable when it’s there, the lack of discomfort feels amazing. These are experiences that cis people have all the time without realizing it because they’ve never felt the discomfort related to gender.

My dysphoria fluctuates day to day. Some days it’s barely noticeable and some days I’m doing everything I can to manage it and it’s still so distracting I have trouble getting through my day. Most of the time it sits at the level of a constant itch that you can’t quite track down. What things are causing dysphoria also fluctuates for me. Some days it is purely physical, some days it is purely social and my body feels fine. Most of the time it is a mix of the two. Separating these out has helped me find appropriate management strategies and allows me to cope much better and live more authentically.

Physical Dysphoria and Euphoria

Physical dysphoria is all those feelings that are centered on a part of my body. For me, this is typically my chest. Most of the time, I picture the shape of my chest being halfway between flat and curved. Some days it feels like it should be perfectly flat but more often I’ll have days where it feels normal as it is. I tend to feel more comfortable in clothing that doesn’t draw attention to my chest. So when my internal sense of what my chest should look like is about halfway flat I will wear a chest binder and that takes away most or all of the dysphoria.

I sometimes feel uncomfortable the shape of my body (curves, hips, thighs) for gender specific reasons ie because of how they are feminine, not because of my weight or size specifically. I generally wear clothes that are baggier or will hang straight down and avoid mirrors when I’m not dressed.

Things that I don’t feel dysphoric about that some people do: my lack of facial hair, size of hands and feet, body hair, or below the belt region.

Social Dysphoria and Euphoria

I generally experience social dysphoria when I’m feeling more male which feels at odds with how society sees me – female. I also experience certain aspects of social dysphoria when I start to have a feeling of invisibility due to no gender euphoria for more than a week.

The things that at times make me feel like I am at odds with how I’m being interacted with are gendered words such as ladies, ma’am, girl (as in ‘hey, girl!), my name, and female pronouns. Female gendered words and titles almost always feel wrong though I’m not sure if male gendered words would feel any better. Generally neutral words most consistently feel the best. Sometimes my name will feel too feminine. Unfortunately my job requires me to wear a name tag and introduce myself repeatedly throughout the day so the best I can do to alleviate this is ‘forget’ to wear my name tag.

Occasionally, female pronouns feel wrong though, again, I’m not sure male pronouns would feel any better on those days. As with the gendered words, neutral pronouns most consistently feel the best. So far I do not feel the need to use neutral pronouns at all times or change my name because my gender fluctuates to the female side enough that the hassle doesn’t feel worth it. I am open to the possibility of doing this in the future if that changes. I can also understand how, for some people, it would be necessary.

Wrap Up

As you can see, dysphoria is generally an uncomfortable experience which takes considerable effort to alleviate to the point of experiencing glimpses of euphoria. The strategies I use to manage dysphoria vary based on where my physical and social sense of my gender sit on the male to female spectrum. I will have a full discussion of this in a future post.

Even when my dysphoria is minimal it is still there at least a small amount and the fluctuations also can be frustrating and destabilizing. This takes a mental and emotional toll and can lead to burnout and difficulty coping with other life stressors. I will also talk about this more in a future post and what strategies I use to keep myself feeling stable.

I hope this description of my experiences helps you understand what dysphoria can feel like or helps give you the words you need to explain your experiences to the people in your life.

What are your experiences of dysphoria? How do you describe it to people who are trying to understand? Does anything here raise other questions you’d like to ask me? Leave a comment below!

My Initial Gender Exploration Process

WHAT I ALREADY KNEW
  • I am both male and female which leads to a fluctuating experience of gender centered at the middle of the spectrum
  • The label ‘non-binary’ doesn’t particularly fit because it’s more like I’m dual-binary
  • My physical sense of my gender and my social sense of my gender can be different from each other
  • I experience both physical and social dysphoria but don’t know in what ways or how to manage them
  • I also have difficulty with my queerness feeling invisible but don’t feel ready to ‘come out’ as something other than cis (one of the biggest reasons why I started this blog)
WHAT I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT
  • How far I actually fluctuate in either direction
  • What specifically causes my dysphoria
  • How to manage fluctuating physical and social dysphoria so I minimize the negative effects by feeling more comfortable in my skin and environment and therefore more authentic
  • How to alter my presentation in ways I’m comfortable with while feeling male or female but also that will be noticeable to the people I see every day so it will influence their interactions with me
  • Whether I will need to transition socially or medically in the future
TOOLS I USED

Gender Tracker

I created a gender tracker in my bullet journal that has a scale from 5 female to 0 (neutral) to 5 male. Each day I rated my physical feelings about my gender and my social feelings about my gender on this scale. The sense of my gender was based on a combination of what things made me feel dysphoric (feeling wrong for gender reasons) and what things made me feel euphoric (feeling right for gender reasons). I filled it in daily for a month and a half which gave me a good sense of how much I fluctuate (not as much as I thought), how these fluctuations related to other things going on in my life (most obvious influence was my menstrual cycle – of course), and how my sense of gender related to my mood (a couple very specific and useful correlations). I haven’t continued to track it objectively since then but I do use the same system in my head on a nearly daily basis and can now easily identify when my bad mood is related to dysphoria or when a shift in gender might happen.

You and Your Gender Identity: A guide to discovery

by Dara Hoffman-Fox

This is a step by step self-help style book that takes you through three broad stages: Preparation, Reflection, and Exploration. It combines advice and self-reflection questions/activities in a work book style layout. I started at the beginning of the book and worked through the sections that resonated with me and skipped sections that didn’t feel like they applied. I kept my notes in a journal specifically for this stuff so that I wouldn’t be afraid to write down my thoughts for fear that someone would see them in my everyday journal. The sections I found the most helpful were:

  • Fears
  • Positive Approach
  • Gender Questionnaire
  • Getting to Know Yourself Creative Prompts
  • Physical Discomfort
  • Social Discomfort
  • Exploration Ideas and Process

If any of these sound like they would be helpful for you I would recommend you get the book and work through it! It gave me a guideline so I no longer felt like I was floating in the middle of nowhere with lots of questions and no way to find answers.

Journal

Even before consciously starting my gender exploration process I started using a bullet journal to keep myself organized, track my personal habits and mood, and have somewhere to write down my thoughts and feelings. I found this very helpful during the later stages of my husband’s transition when all the stress and frustration had built up to burnout level. I have continued to use it since then and often journal about gender-based observations, experiences, and stressors. Mental and emotional wellness is difficult to maintain in the face of daily dysphoria. This journal gives me somewhere to put down my thoughts and feelings to help me process them, gives me a creative outlet, and keeps me organized so I don’t have to keep schedule or to-do list in my head.

Self-care Toolkit

Another idea from Dara Hoffman-Fox’s book that I talked about above. This is a physical box of whatever size you need to hold everything that goes in it. Mine is fairly small and I keep it at work as that is where I generally experience the most burnout type symptoms. It includes reminders for self-care activities and positive statements and sensory objects that will either override a negative mental or emotional state and give you something else to focus on or provide a calming and grounding effect. Mine includes:

  • Reminders for self-care activities that help me such as music playlists and phrases that I can use as a mantra
  • Scents that I find grounding or calming (sandalwood, cedar)
  • Tastes that are strong and distracting (mint, cinnamon) or enjoyable and comforting (chocolate)
  • Tactile objects that fit in my pocket and can be played with as a distraction or for calming effect (soft leather, worry stone, carved animal, chainmaille)

Everyone’s toolkit will be different. I put it together about a month ago and have used it about 3 times since but just knowing it’s there if I need it has been a big comfort.

DAILY PROCESS

When I get up in the morning I check in with my body to see where my physical dysphoria is at. When I’m getting dressed I picture myself at work and get a sense of how I want people to see me/interact with me which hints at where my social dysphoria is at. The clothes I choose (including a binder) used to be the hardest part of my day because they relate to both physical and social dysphoria and if one is female and the other is male it can be difficult. I have gotten considerably better at knowing when a binder will be helpful and what clothes I will be comfortable in since I started the more objective gender discovery process. I pick accessories to balance out my gender presentation. If the clothing I picked to feel comfortable is more masculine I will choose neutral or feminine accessories and vice versa. Throughout the day I check in with myself and alter my appearance as needed – put my hair up or take it down, take my name tag off or put it back on, engage in self-care activities as needed.

This post goes into more detail about what types of dysphoria I experience, what it feels like to have different male and female combinations of physical and social sense of gender, and specific strategies I use to feel comfortable with each version of my gender.

What do/did you use to discover or explore your gender? What parts of my process are similar or different to your own? Is there anything that I used that you might find useful or want to know more about? Let me know in the comments!

Differences in AFAB and AMAB Cross-Gender Exploration and Transition

Note: Since writing this post I have learned that the use of AMAB and AFAB to categorize people, especially nonbinary people, is exclusionary, reductive, and often not helpful in describing experiences in an accessible way. I am working to stop using these terms. I have chosen to leave this post up for now. If you feel strongly about what is written here please leave a comment or send me an email. I appreciate your input.

Historically in society the default has generally been masculine. This is slowly changing but is still true in a lot of ways. One of the main ways this is brought to my attention on a regular basis is that it is deemed appropriate for women to present in a more masculine way but it is not ok for men to present in a feminine way. The ‘androgynous ideal’ is often seen as someone with short hair and a flat chest both of which are typically masculine aspects of appearance.

AFAB people 

exploring your masculinity or trying to decrease your femininity

Pros

  • You can explore your gender and presentation without having to justify it as much.
  • Cis women who prefer an androgynous or masculine presentation are fairly easily accepted by society.

Cons

  • Your efforts to express a more masculine or less feminine gender will be seen as changes to your presentation only and will not necessarily be seen as a reflection of your gender. Therefore, people will not necessarily adjust the language they apply to you or your gender category until you explicitly come out.
  • You may have to over-masculinize to feel like it is having an impact on how people see and interact with you.

As an AFAB person exploring my mostly neutral but somewhat fluctuating gender and trying to present more masculine at times to reflect that, this has definitely been my experience.

AMAB people

exploring your femininity or trying to decrease your masculinity

Pros

  • Once you are ready to come out it will only take a few minor changes in your presentation for society to start questioning your gender and applying new language to you.
  • You will not need to overly-feminize (unless you want to) in order for society to take notice.

Cons

  • It is very difficult for you to explore your gender without society noticing and potentially putting yourself in a dangerous situation
  • Cis men who want to explore or express their femininity have difficulty doing so without having their gender identity questioned.

This leads to AFAB people having difficulty gaining male privilege because they are still deemed female no matter how masculine they present and AMAB people losing male privilege very easily as soon as they present slightly feminine.

For those people who are interested in undergoing medical transition there are distinct differences in experience with certain aspects of transition due to society’s specifications of how they identify someone as female or male at a glance.

AFAB people

attempting to be read by society as male

Pros

  • Male puberty overrides female puberty so taking Testosterone results in slow but effective changes to allow you to ‘pass’ as male fairly easily (voice lowering, growing facial hair, building muscle, body fat redistribution).

Cons

  • Producing the appearance of a flat chest is very difficult either by wearing a binder which is uncomfortable at best and injuring at worst, or surgery which has a difficult recovery and leaves obvious scars.
  • Surgery to relieve dysphoria associated with genitalia or provide a sense of physical euphoria or completeness has a high rate of complication and may require an extensive skin graft again resulting in visible scarring while providing minimal benefit for sexual function.
AMAB People

attempting to be read by society as female

Pros

  • Producing the appearance of breasts is fairly easy, either with breast forms and a bra or through a well refined surgery for breast augmentation if hormones do not produce the desired effect.
  • Surgery to relieve dysphoria associated with genitalia or provide a sense of physical euphoria or completeness, while still having a fairly high risk of complication, also is highly effective.

Cons

  • Because male puberty trumps female puberty, starting Estrogen after completing male puberty does not reverse the effects (facial and body hair continues to grow, voice remains lower) and though some breast tissue may develop, it is not always enough to provide the appearance of a typically female chest.

Caveat: The pros/cons related to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will differ if you’re on hormone blockers prior to the start of puberty.

This all results in trans men ‘passing’ more easily but potentially having ongoing physical dysphoria or visible scarring as a result of surgery and trans women having difficulty ‘passing’ but having effective surgical options if desired.

These are my own observations during my husband’s transition from female to male, my experiences as an AFAB genderqueer person, and listening to other trans people’s experiences. If your experiences match or differ from these observations please leave a comment below!

My Husband’s Transition – A Partner’s Perspective (Part 1 – Exploration)

initial reaction

We were driving in the car together (the place a lot of our more intense conversations happen) and my husband turned to me and said something like “I’ve been wondering lately if my social anxiety and awkwardness might be gender related…”. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that and tried to clarify. The conversation progressed something like this:

Jake: “What if this means I’m trans? What if I won’t be happy unless I transition?”

Me: “Wondering if your anxiety is gender related is nowhere near deciding you’re trans. Lets just take it one step at a time. And so what if that’s where it leads? We’ll figure it out.”

Jake: “You wouldn’t leave me? You’re gay! What if I end up being a guy? That’s not what you signed up for. You mean more to me than figuring this out. I wouldn’t do any of it if you weren’t going to be ok with it.”

Me: “Yah, I’m gay. So what? I love you. Let’s take it one step at a time. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be stuff that I’ll struggle with. But we’ll figure it out. You have to figure out how to be happy, figure out who you are. There’s no way I’d be ok holding you back from that.”

I don’t know if those are the exact words but you get the gist. I’ve heard from other people – either trans people or their partners – that this is a fairly common pattern. I understand why Jake would say that he wouldn’t transition if it meant I would leave him but what kind of person would I be if I said yah, I’ll stay so long as you never live authentically? Not the kind of person I wanted to be, that’s for sure.

This revelation didn’t particularly take me by surprise but I know it does for a lot of people. Jake had been living as authentically as possible and was quite a masculine woman to begin with which, I recognize, is a benefit of being AFAB that is not afforded to AMAB people who want to present more feminine (more about my thoughts on this topic here). I also had my own gender questioning experience and had been involved in the queer community for a number of years which gave me an understanding of what he might be feeling and the language to conceptualize and express it (more about my personal history here).

Exploration and Experimentation

So, we took it one step at a time, starting with a deep dive of the internet. We quickly learned terms like dysphoria, FTM and MTF, learned about binders and packers and STPs (stand-to-pee devices), and started looking for community support.

For the first few months we were exploring and talking about his gender confusion pretty much in secret. I was must happier being his confidant and helping him sort through it than I would have been finding out later that he had struggled through this part on his own while I was out/at work.

We learned pretty quickly that Jake’s experience of his gender and dysphoria didn’t match the typical trans experience of ‘feeling like you were born into the wrong body’ and ‘telling your parents that you were meant to be a [insert non-assigned gender here]’ or ‘suddenly feeling like your body was betraying you when you started puberty’. It took a while before we could explain what his experience actually WAS but now we know that, at least at the beginning, he primarily was experiencing social dysphoria (as opposed to the physical dysphoria described in the stereotypical examples). He felt fairly neutral towards his body but felt uncomfortable in female spaces, being treated as a woman, and referred to as female.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for general society to perceive you as male unless you physically appear as male so even though he was not uncomfortable in his body, a lot of the exploration required altering his presentation and body appearance (trying binding, packing, haircut, wardrobe changes, etc). This progressed at Jake’s pace which was significantly slower than I wanted things to move. I was all – yah! you can do it! Let’s figure this shit out! But sometimes people need time and space and the supporters need to give them that.

We also wanted to explore the social aspects of being male (pronouns, name, interaction) but that is impossible to test without first telling other people who you are exploring your gender and could they please use male pronouns and a different name for you. At the time we did not have a group of friends that we felt comfortable doing that with as a trial period so we tried it as best we could just between us.

My role and experience as a partner

Through all this my role was helping him see the bigger picture about how far he’d come, help him to not get discouraged or frustrated, provide support and feedback, provide options when the first thing didn’t work or feel good, provide positive distractions and outlets, and help him find confidence in his new image. Pretty much just give him a positive, safe space to explore himself in. I would often ask him how something had felt and he would struggle to put it into words so we would start with did it feel good, or bad? We used the things that felt good as a compass for what direction he was going with his gender.

I often pushed him to take the next step before he felt ready. This is partly because I didn’t want fear to stop him from figuring out who he is but also because the longer it took him to figure himself out the longer I was in limbo. How do you start the process of acceptance when you don’t know what the new status quo is going to be? I had a constant feeling of unsteadiness which worsened when I was away from Jake and improved when we spent time together. I think this is because when we were apart my mind would fixate on all the new things, all the changes, and all the unanswered questions. When we were together it was obvious that he was still the same person, we had the same inside jokes, enjoyed doing the same things, and had the same interactions as always. Together time was the major antidote to both of our mental and emotional stress during the entire transition and we learned early on to prioritize it as much as possible.

Changing my mental image of Jake

I knew a big part of accepting whatever the end result was going to be was that I had to change my mental image of Jake to match his mental image of himself. I was able to do this bit by bit rather than all at once. As he explored his gender we communicated regularly which allowed me to understand his sense of his own gender as he discovered it. This was very beneficial to me and allowed me to adjust the pronouns and name I used for him much more easily when he was ready to experiment with those.

Changing your mental image of someone who has told you they don’t identify as the gender they were assigned at birth is hugely important. In order to be truly supportive I couldn’t continue to see him as a woman – I wouldn’t be able to discuss his dysphoria or experiences of gender euphoria in ways that felt authentic to him. Yes, this took some personal work, a lot of mental corrections anytime I thought of him, and a lot of quality time talking about his perception of himself as it was changing during his experiments so I could give my mental image the best chance of keeping up. And once he was ready to change his name and pronouns it allowed me to consistently use male pronouns because my mental image of him was of a male person, regardless of what his physical appearance was. One of the things that helped the most with this was changing his name in my phone so that every time he texted me or called me I would see his preferred name. This was a huge step forward when I figured that out. We ended up recommending it to other people as he was coming out to them in an effort to help them adjust as well.

My Own Fears

I had many fears and questions that came up throughout this process. I didn’t want to talk to Jake about them all the time because I didn’t want my struggles to increase his already exponential fear and confusion. Luckily, we had a couple of friends that Jake felt comfortable telling early on in the process so that I would have someone to talk to about this stuff. Having that outlet was very important.

Some of my fears were: How would I respond to people’s questions about my identity changing? What if I wasn’t as attracted to him once he started appearing more male? What if I wasn’t interested in being married to a man? What if he changed as a person as he transitioned? Many of these questions couldn’t be solved just with introspection or discussion. Some required time and patience, some required trial and error, something I’m not as comfortable with. I had to see how I felt about him in ‘boy mode’.

So, on a vacation to an area where we wouldn’t likely run into people we knew, we planned for him to be my husband for the whole trip. We used male pronouns and tried out a couple different names that had made the short list. As we went along we realized you don’t introduce yourselves to many people when you’re on vacation, or at least not when you’re both introverted and you’re going on a driving and camping trip and the general goal is to stay away from civilization as much as possible. So it wasn’t the best test but it still gave us one more piece of evidence.

The Tipping Point

At some point we sat down and made a list of the stuff he had already tried and the stuff he wanted to try next and we realized that even if he didn’t go any further with exploration or transition he would still be more comfortable living as a man than either a non-binary person or a woman. Finally, I could let my mental image of him solidify.

At the same time, he all of a sudden had an exponential increase in physical dysphoria. He had identified that he was a man and suddenly his body was no longer what he wanted it to be or what other people would expect. This took us both by surprise. I have since learned that this is a very common experience from talking to other trans/NB people. This was extremely difficult for him to deal with and all I could do was support him, distract him, and interact with him in ways that validated his identity and avoided triggering more dysphoria.

The next step was to start telling people. This was a big relief for me because I no longer had to be alone in this. I would be able to share what was happening – take the lid off the boiling pot so to speak. But the thought of him coming out as trans increased my anxiety and fear in new ways – how people would react, would Jake be put in any danger, how he would respond to people who weren’t accepting, whether he would stand up for himself or absorb and internalize the antagonism.

There was nothing for it but to make a plan as best we could and push on.

The story continues in Part 2: Social Transition.

The story concludes in Part 3: Medical and Legal Transition.