Diary of a Recovering Gender Dysphoric

This is not going to be a didactic post. This is going to be wholly self-indulgent as I map my feelings of the way my parents deal with my gender dysphoria. "Make sure you look feminine" is something I hear whenever I'm going to some gathering of people. It always fills me with frustration. Why do you care? It's my body and I should dress in what makes me feel good. "Just dress feminine." It's like telling an anorexic to "Just eat." Well, dang, I hadn't thought about before, Professor Obvious. The problem is that my BRAIN MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I'M FILLED WITH FREAKING INSECTS WHEN I TRY. When I visited camp last week, as I was signing in, the man greeted me, "Hey, bud. Are you excited for camp?" He talked down to me as if I were a little boy, because I'm 4'11" 3/4, I was wearing a collared button-up, and my hair was short and shaggy. I did not correct him. I found that I liked being called bud and sir and man. Everyb...

Gender dysphoria is like anorexia. Let me explain. Anorexia is a condition wherein you are disgusted by the natural processes of your body and fantasize about mutilating them in some way. Gender dysphoria is a condition wherein you are disgusted by the natural processes of your body and fantasize about mutilating them in some way. Anorexics look in the mirror and see a bigger version of the body they actually have. This false image of themselves drives them to make themselves lose weight so that they can become skinnier.  Gender dysphorics tell themselves that they are men trapped in women's bodies and vice versa. This drives them to look in the mirror and see every feminine or masculine attribute, respectively, as a flaw, and to seek hormones and surgeries to change them. Anorexia is often a result of trauma and an urge to take control over something easier as a way to cope. Gender dysphoria is often a result of trauma and an urge to change the body you had when you experienced tr...