Seven Great Reads to Get You Through Today’s Dysphoria
Because I only get eight shots of Euphoria per season
Welcome to Dear Cisters, the column that’s more like Dear Abby than the Savage Lovecast. I’m your host Stephenie Magister, transgender writer/nerd/editor for award-winning and best-selling books.
Today, I just want to offer a big hug to everyone suffering with dysphoria. Here are seven great reads to quiet that feeling of wrongness and awaken the parts you’ve always known to be true.
1. Dear Cisters: You (probably) transitioned too
Just what am I so desperate to go back and experience?
Because the more I stop to articulate what separates womanhood from a cis vs trans girl, the more I find myself connecting with the flux capacitor that unites us.
Cis women transition, too, you see.
2. How Do I Get Past Wishing I Had Transitioned at a Younger Age?
I am not becoming a girl. I have always been one.
Did I always know I was a girl? Did the people around me always know that? They did not. But my memories tell me new truths based on seeing myself as a girl at points of my past that used to confuse and shame me.
3. Dear Cisters: Ask Your Cis-gender Friends This Question TODAY
So if the person in front of you just doesn’t get it and maybe never will —
If the person in front of you says no one gets to be who they are all the time —
If the person in front of you begins to point out all of the great sacrifices they make —
Stop to consider that for them, their sacrifice was on the same level as you pretending to be the wrong gender.
4. Dear Cisters: Has Every Trans Person Shown Signs Since Childhood?
It’s very, very common for us not to feel dysphoria until puberty. But that’s when our bodies and the people around us tend to start sending us signals that don’t match the gender we always knew belonged to us but never needed to be asserted until now.
5. Dear Cisters: What’s the Big Deal About Calling Them Trans Women?
Dear SADISTER,
My hope is that by you putting your bigoted positions like this out into the world, the feedback you receive will help you acknowledge and take responsibility for the harmful and abusive impact posts like yours have toward women.
This includes women who have had transgender experiences as well as women who have not.
You do not need hate in your heart for your actions to have a hateful impact.
6. Dear Cisters: the False Self
If you’re not ready to come out yet, Baby Trans, just press your ear up to the inner shell. We are your allies. We are waiting on the other side. If you listen closely, you can hear our encouragement.
You deserve to be free. You deserve to be alive. You deserve to exist.
7. Gender Hacks: the Cookbook Method
You need to play with the options available to you. Make a mess. Let the food of your life and identity suck from time to time. Discover what works for you and what doesn’t by virtue of you taking chances to finally LIVE.
THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)
Hi, it’s Stephenie!
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