#gender dissonance

Hello everyone! This is another one of those queer culture-is blogs, made as a direct counterpart to @gendereuphoriahours.

(If you are triggered by mentions or discussions of gender dysphoria, sorry but this blog probably isn't a good place for you.)

This blog is for people to discuss their experiences with gender dysphoria, ask questions, etc etc. People who are gender dissonant, gender disconnected, dysphorifluid/flux, semi-dysphoric, or questioning are also welcomed.

The header is the gender dysphoric flag by @/arco-pluris.

(Icon ID: A picture of Kirby holding a yellow water gun. There is a trans flag in the background and text saying "kirby is here to remove your dysphoria". End ID)

Mod info:

The mod is completely nullpronomial with no auxiliary pronouns (so no they/them or you/yours unless you legitimately struggle with pronouns) and will be referred to as "mod" in the third person on this blog. Mod is also a dysphoric trans person (abinary). Mod fully supports non-dysphoric trans people and thinks the creation of a non-dysphoric trans culture blog would be very epic indeed.

Due to this being a sideblog mod cannot like posts or respond directly to comments.

General rules:

-Start asks with "dysphoric culture is" or any variation of that. You can also be more specific and say stuff like "dysphoric nonbinary culture is”.

-If your ask is an actual question and not about dysphoric culture, that's fine just please start it with "question:". Feel free to ask about terminology, if something is 'normal', coping with and treating dysphoria, or ask for advice, etc etc. Links to resources will also be provided if you ask.

-Do not TW asks unless it is a very specific/uncommon trigger. Things like biology, transphobia, misgendering, family, and body negativity will be tagged as TWs. All posts will have a dysphoria TW.

-If you use sarcasm, a joking tone, or subtext it must be explicitly stated. Otherwise mod (who is ND) will not be able to understand your ask and will most likely not post it.

-Mod is not your mental health professional. Do not send in asks about serious mental health problems or s*lf harm, even if it's related to dysphoria. Try a helpline like the trevor project or the trans lifeline instead.

-No asks for: mod’s personal info, donation boosts, blog promotions, ‘give me gender validation’ (there are sites for that), body-shaming or self-deprecation, s*xual stuff, etc. If you send them anyway they will be deleted.

DNI if you:

-Are queerphobic or exclusionistic (yes, that includes transmedicalists. Just because this blog is about dysphoria does not mean it's required to be trans)

-Are ableist or saneist

-Believe queer is a slur that cannot/should not be reclaimed

-Support incest

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Dysphoria, gender dissonance, won’t go away. I’m not saying "accept yourselves the way you are"—accepting yourself the way you are means, precisely, transitioning. Whenever I look at my thick black body hair or my protruding junk or the indelible shadow of a moustache or the oversized hands/feet/skull or the indefinable masculine features of my face, I’ll get that annoying, depressing buzz in the back of my mind. I suppose that’s defining feature of our condition, which is intrinsic to our bodies. That buzz is as part of our bodies as our skin, our bones, our blood.

But just because my body is dissonant to the secondary sexual features it had to endure, it doesn’t mean I have to hate it, you know? I mean, there’s so much hate out there already. If I expose this body in public in my home country, there’s a high chance I’ll just be killed outright. If I exposed it on Youtube or wherever, I can all but picture the venom in the comments. It’s not my body’s fault that it’s hairy and masculine. It’s a condition, an ill fate that befell the poor thing. If I don’t stand for this body, who will?

I’m 2 months into HRT, and my breasts are growing at a much better pace than I expected. Laser has already done wonders to my hand and face (all I can afford). But that’s about it. The shape of my face is still unmistakably masculine, with no visible changes so far. The laser has left these random patches of beard scattered through it, which due to their dark colour I can't hide without makeup, and I can’t wear makeup to work. Every other piece of clothing I try reminds me of "shoulders too broad for a girl". Body hair is starting to thin I think, but no matter how often I shave, its black roots are still visible inside my clear skin. My strict-ass diet has managed to reduce the pot belly significantly, and now I have no muscles and my waist is starting to look femme (I went from 46 pants to 42 and even those are starting to fall); but, on the other hand, I lost even more thighs and butt along with it, and bet I won’t be getting any curves until I stop with the diet (an idea I can only tolerate after the man-belly is 100% completely gone). I can’t even bear working on my voice. And, transitioning at 34, I have to deal with the real possibility of never passing.

So at this point I'm in this weird early-transitional, confusing stage. Still too much fur to be gendered female, even if the skin and smell have changed. Squareish face. An androgynous, skinny, bony body, with protruding femurs and visible ribs, but still a bit of a pot-belly. And breasts before everything.

And you know what? Even acknowledging the buzz, I’m ok with it. I started summer set on wearing long sleeves exclusively, to hide the arm hair, but fuck that. I don’t care what people will think anymore. Fuck people. This is my body; I am a woman and I’m hairy and I’m booby. Which means I’m fucking Lilith over here. I’m fucking mythological right now. It’s like Susan Stryker put it, about being a monster:

I find no shame, however, in acknowledging my egalitarian relationship with non-human material Being; everything emerges from the same matrix of possibilities. “Monster” is derived from the Latin noun monstrum, “divine portent,” itself formed on the root of the verb monere, “to warn.” It came to refer to living things of anomalous shape or structure, or to fabulous creatures like the sphinx who were composed of strikingly incongruous parts, because the ancients considered the appearance of such beings to be a sign of some impending supernatural event. Monsters, like angels, functioned as messengers and heralds of the extraordinary.

…and every time someone is disgusted by my hairy arms, they’re being heralded right in their damn face by my wonder-ful, chimæraic, Lilithian body, and the next time a trans sibling is forced to deal with them, they’ll be a little less shocked, and maybe act a bit less crappily

It feels like a funeral. Like mourning. I mourn the inquisitive young girl, the angry riot-grrl teen, the shamelessly hipster twentysomething woman-in-tech that I should have been and who will now never come to be, because it was taken from me. Through violence. I mourn the preemptive death that is not-even-being; the death of possibility.

My decision to transition does not come only from a place of happiness (though it brought me to happiness, in a way I didn't even know was possible). My decision to transition comes also from places of mourning, of sadness, anger, defiance. They took from me my childhood, my teens, my twenties. But that's enough. They can do their worst—

Tentaram me matar na porta de um cabaré Tentaram me matar, na porta de um cabaré Ando de noite, ando de dia, só não mata quem não quer Ando de noite, ando de dia, só não mata quem não quer

(They tried to kill me / by the bordello's door They tried to kill me, / by the bordello's door I walk at night, I walk in daylight / come kill me if you want to I walk at night, I walk in daylight / come kill me if you want to)

—African-Brazilian umbanda chant