How My Parents Handle My Gender Dysphoria

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. Everybody should try it at least once.

But then my mother intervened, "Actually, this is my daughter." My sister reports that my mother turned bright red.

I'll admit that I got unnecessarily giddy when adults around the camp gendered me as a boy. It has been happening less and less now, so I get excited when it happens. It's part of the gender dysphoria persuading me to believe there's a boy trapped inside this girl's body.

But I get the sense that my parents want me to dress feminine because they get second-hand embarrassments when someone misgenders their daughter as their son.

I personally like it, because all my life people have given me feminine presents. They have bought me feminine clothes. They have called me princess and pretty girl as compliments.

Whenever I got my picture taken at JC Penney's the photographer always told me to stand in a feminine pose by making me just out my hip (which I'm dysphoric about) or striking a sassy pose (to accentuate my curvy body). It has always been uncomfortable for me. But the first time I really pinpointed why I was uncomfortable was when I went to get my picture taken with shoulder-length hair.

Even though I looked totally feminine and wasn't even wearing a binder, because I wore a button-up and pants, the photographer mistook me for a boy, and she called me brother and man and made me stand in a masculine pose, and I loved it.

I agree with something TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists aka feminists who don't believe in transgenderism) say: if we make our society less gendered, if we stop objectifying women and forcing men to be stoic and emotionless, we will have fewer transgender people.

But most girls like being feminine. And most boys like being masculine. Cross-dressing is a game to them, or else they are embarrassed by it.

Maybe one in ten people--according to Jordan Peterson--are like me, a girl with a masculine temperament or a boy with a feminine temperament. I want masculine compliments. I want people to see me as strong, brave, and hardworking in society. When people say "I want a strong man to help me carry xyz," I wanted them to choose me.

I want to carry people on MY back. I want to be initiated into a group based on MY daring actions.

But these are stereotypes. Granted, they are stereotypes based on the natural temperament of 90% of men and women, but they are stereotypes and do not make me female.

So what makes me female? Primary and secondary sex characteristics. 

I've never cared an iota about my primary sex characteristics, except that I've always wanted to pee standing up for some reason. And yes, I do take it personally that boys think they're so cool for peeing on a tree in the woods when women have to stand in line for the porta potty, because it's not a choice, it's a disability, it's a disadvantage that I can't pee on a tree while you all can.

And I've always hated my secondary sex characteristics. Once I started wearing men's clothes, my gender dysphoria almost completely vanished when I looked at myself in the mirror (until I began getting dysphoric about my round face and narrow shoulders, which was oh-so-fun), so the fact that my parents don't want that for me makes me feel unlistened to.

At the same time, I don't want to talk about the way gender dysphoria makes me feel, because it's private.

I pay my friend to order me binders because I know that if I asked my parents, they would say no because they would be afraid I'm trying to make myself look like a boy.

Some might say, "Oh, your parents are transphobic for not accepting trans people." And true, my parents do not accept trans people, but they wish no harm on them. They also don't really understand gender dysphoria.

Besides, can you imagine raising a happy, feminine little girl who liked to look pretty in dresses and didn't care what she wore, and all of a sudden she was developing depression and calling herself Alex instead of Annabelle and chopping off her hair and binding her chest? Wouldn't you feel that she's not making rational decisions because she's not in the right headspace? Wouldn't you feel that your baby girl is hurting herself? Wouldn't you feel that you've lost the little girl you raised?

Here's a separate issue that just came up. I run a YouTube channel, and I got a comment from a camp friend correcting me on the Bible verse Deuteronomy 22:5 " The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God." I translated it to mean "Men shouldn't pretend to be women and vice versa" because I didn't want the Bible to say something that I am actively not willing to obey.

But clearly the verse is about crossdressing, and clearly I am disobeying it.

As a Christian, it is more important for me to follow God than to follow myself. Trying to make myself happy is temporary. That's why I'm starting this blog and shutting down my Pinterest account where I call myself a drag prince.

Yeah. Drag. Um... not cool for Christians to flagrantly parade the vile abominations against God's design.

I am incredibly grateful for my YouTube channel. Thank you, me, for starting it. But more importantly, thank you, God, for giving me the wisdom to say what I say. I am speaking up as one of the few Christians on YouTube who is willing to talk about the L+ community, and I might be the only Christian speaking as someone with experience and compassion and love.

I have friends who now understand my gender dysphoria, who compassionately recognize that I wear clothes to make me feel comfortable in my body, not because I'm being rebellious and giving God the middle finger.

Coming full circle, I don't feel my parents understand that. I've tried to open them up to my passion for gender dysphoric people who need the holy spirit in their hearts, but all they do is say the same thing over again. "Dress more feminine."

I guess they assume I dress masculine because I don't like myself.

So by their logical conclusion, wearing a barrette and dressing like a more feminine woman is me liking myself.

Ha! They aren't listening.