Gender Trauma or Dysphoria?

 

Image from Dominic
Swain on UnSplash.

When you spend a life dealing with gender dysphoria, often, gender trauma comes along with it. Interestingly, I have encountered some in the transgender community who claimed they had no dysphoria at all.

One of those encounters I had, happened one night at a transgender-cross dresser support group I was attending. I mentioned my struggles with gender dysphoria and the moderator stuck her nose up in the air and said she never had experienced any dysphoria at all. I recovered from her statement by simply saying she was lucky. I would have not wished what I went through with my gender struggles on my worst enemy. As a sidelight, I wondered later if the moderator knew what gender dysphoria was anyway. Since that time, she has gone through gender realignment surgery and has married another transgender woman. What I consider a remarkable journey for someone who never had experienced any gender trauma supposedly at all.

My trauma started quite early in life when I knew something was wrong with me but just could not come up with what it was. In fairness to me or my parents (if they knew), the information on gender dysphoria was completely missing in those days when I was young. In fact, I don’t think I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria until I went to a Veteran’s Administration therapist. Which would have been sometime in my thirties and allowed my therapist to prescribe gender affirming hormones to me and start the paperwork towards all my legal gender change documents. So, it was very important.

Along the way, I had the public to blame for furthering my gender trauma, which made my ordeal of coming out of my gender shell even worse. I was insecure enough until I made it to the ordeal of having the police called on me because I simply had to use the restroom. To make matters worse, I was kicked out of one of my regular venues. That was the place where the crew came down to a nearby venue I was going to and invited me back. It turned out, the manager who told me to leave was fired for drug abuse and stealing. I had my revenge, but my gender dysphoria remained.  

It turned out, my newfound success in the world as a transgender woman was followed by extra pressure to do better. I wanted to be better at my art of makeup and fashion. I wanted to be able to blend but do it better than the average cisgender woman. I wanted to be respected but at the same time not threatening the world. I had my setbacks such as being called a pervert by another woman in a restroom. I got even with her too when I found out she owned a hair salon, and I reported her to the local powerful LGBTQ center.

When something like that happened, I desperately needed points of gender euphoria to balance out the bad spots. It seemed for every gender bigot I encountered; I ran into another nice person who was genuinely curious about me. Many times, even better, I was able to learn as much from the other women I met as they did about me. For weeks at a time, if I was lucky, I grew confident in my presentation and my gender dysphoria subsided. Not completely, as there was always a new obstacle on my path to being a full-time transfeminine person. On the plus side, I spent less time stuck in reverse on my transition journey.

By being out in the public’s eye, I spent less time dwelling on what I was going to do about my future. Was I going to keep pursuing a part-time male life until the wheels came off or was, I going to take the actions necessary to make progress towards my dreams. As I put off deciding on my life, my gender dysphoria simply would not go totally away. Every day and time I looked in the mirror, I struggled because sometimes I would get a glimpse of my real feminine self but on others, I could not shake the old male image looking back at me. No matter how much change was occurring from the gender affirming hormones I was on. Disappointment ran deep with me as the transition wheels fell off when I saw him in the mirror.

Sheer willpower, as well as elation when things were going right kept me going through the dark days of dysphoria. In fact, to this day, I still suffer from gender duress when I look in the mirror. I have made it to the point where I am not as bad off as the mirror is telling me I am or as good as the mirror is suggesting. I am tired of fighting and the world will just have to take what it gets from me.