Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Help for the Cisgender Confused

Growing up transgender and living with gender dysphoria is a constant emotional pain that is compounded by the guilt, shame and fear of discovery that society places on someone who is transgender.

You are cisgendered if you see and feel your body and mind as one, single gender. It is difficult to understand what it is like to have your mind one gender and your body another. Gender dysphoria is the result of that gender incongruence and is a symptom of suppressing being transgender.

To understand the extreme discomfort that gender dysphoria creates, let’s use something you may be more familiar with, being left handed.

Like those who are transgender, only small percent of the population is reportedly left-handed.

Due to cultural and social pressures, for centuries, many left-handed children were forced to write and perform other activities with their right hands. This is extremely unnatural for the child and can cause multiple problems in the developing left-handed child, including learning disorders, dyslexia, stuttering and other speech disorders.

So using the experiences of those left-handed as an example, conceptualize the following:

1. Childhood: You were born left-handed but trained to use only your right hand. You learn from constant observation, correction and guidance that using your left is the only correct and acceptable way to do things.

2. Adolescence: Being right-handed is socially demanded by family and friends. You want to be accepted so you stopped using your left hand years ago. It is clumsy but you adapted. You still used your left one when no one is watching.

3. Adult: You totally accept that using your left hand absolutely wrong and you aggressively re-enforce the use of your right hand. It makes you very uncomfortable but it made everyone else happy.

4. Late Life: The world has begun to change. Suddenly you are told that being left-handed wasn’t your fault but unfortunately, the world still believes that left-handed people are an aberration, “If you are right-handed, why would anyone ever want to become left-handed?” You recognize that coming out left handed would still destroy all of your relationships and all that you had created over a lifetime.

5. What does the need to use your left hand feel like? It feels like the incessant itch of a mosquito bite that you have spent a lifetime trying to ignore. The occasional scratching temporarily made it tolerable but over time the itch became worse no matter what you did. You just want it to stop and go away, but it won’t.

6. There is an extreme loneliness because it is so difficult to explain all this to you or to others. Words and language fail you. Why did this happen to you? There is simply no adequate answer other than…it just has. You were never given a choice.

7. If you use your left hand, everyone either verbally or non-verbally judges, condemns and belittles you. It even draws out violence and revulsion in many people. You feel condemnation, shame and embarrassment.

8. If you come out left-handed, you drag your spouse and family down with you. You will deeply hurt the ones you love. You feel tremendous guilt and regret because what you doing to others. Once the public knows, it will never forget.

9. If you stay right-handed the itch gets worse over time. You start to think about cutting off your left hand to survive.

OK, so try this as an experiment: stop using your dominant hand for a day, or even just five minutes. Trying writing with your non-dominant hand. Feel the extreme discomfort? Realize that the physical awkwardness you are feeling, briefly, is a lifetime emotional pain for someone with gender dysphoria.

If you can understand this example, you can begin to understand what it is like to have gender dysphoria and what it is like to be transgender in today’s world. Use your sympathy to try and understand but realize that transgender individuals don’t want your pity; they want the simple acceptance of society. We are no different than left-handed people, red-heads, tall people, short people, blue-eyed people, bald people, etc., etc.

We are just people.

Emma Holiday

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