Thorny Dysphoria Issues

[garlicfiend.livejournal.com]

As opposed to porny dysphoria issues, which are much more fun.

This is an issue to which my brain returns now and again – gender dysphoria and all the other kinds of dysphoria out there people claim to experience. And it’s a thorny issue, because for so many of us, dysphoria is a reason, a motivation to make major changes to ourselves, our bodies, and our role in society. In some ways, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is a marker of legitimacy we hold tight to our breast so that we can say this is real, and it’s important, and it’s not our choice or our fault, it’s just the way we are and society should accept that.

(disclaimer: I understand that there are those that fall under the transgender umbrella that don’t experience anything they would call dysphoria. I’m not talking about you.)

I’ve taken a deep interest in the latest fandom drama with lj and the ToS. And specifically, the discrepancy between the application of the ToS to fandom communities and to the pro-ana communities. That discrepancy upsets me, as you cannot deny that the pro-ana communities, upon close inspection, are harmful to their members.

But I am also strongly cognizant of the parallels between the pro-ana communities and trans communities. Both issues surround a powerful kind of body dysphoria. Both kinds of communities tend to encourage modifying the self, the body, to alleviate the dysphoria. And in the eyes of mainstream culture, both are usually seen as deviant, sick, and harmful.

Let me be clear that I think trans communities and pro-ana communities are separated by a very thin line – one that gets crossed occasionally by individual members in both communities in both directions, but there is a line there nonetheless. Sometimes trans people do very damaging desperate things to themselves. Sometimes anorexics wake up and get a clue about things. I think that important line between us exists as a sense of perspective, a sense of reality.

An anorexic looks in the mirror at their skeletal figure and sees a fat person. There is a disconnect with reality there. Whereas a trans-women looks in the mirror and sees big ugly neanderthal MAN, when inside she knows she is a woman. For the most part, we as trans people conflict with what is there, whereas the anorexic reacts to what is not there. But it gets a lot fuzzier than that, because it could be that the man in the mirror isn’t a cave man, and may be rather feminine for a man, but her own reactions to the image distort her perceptions to make them worse than they are. And perhaps she transitions, but no matter how much she does to herself, that caveman is still in the mirror looking at her, and suddenly that line between her and the anorexic is very thin obscure indeed.

And I cannot even say that trans people are born this way but anorexics are created. Eating disorder researchers have been saying recently (apologies for a lack of links/citations) that there is a strong genetic component to eating disorders. The way they phrased it was that genetics loads the gun, but society/experiences pull the trigger. Who is to say that anorexics aren’t simply the way they are? I can’t.

But there is one very big difference. If anorexics fully embrace their dysphoria, they will die. A transperson on HRT takes risks with their health, especially DIY’ers estimating their own doses. I have seen plenty of people in transgender and mtf posting about potentially dangerous things, some of them in very bad judgement. But depriving your body of the nutrition it needs will kill it.

So perspective. Reality. There is a point every trans person faces eventually when they have to say “This is as far as I can go with transition. And it’s good enough.” It’s a topic trans communities come back to again and again because we need to hear it. It’s a point that would get you banned from a pro-ana community.

There are other dysphorias too of course. They drive me even crazier. I have an obese friend who goes on about her body dysphoria, the fact that she is a skinny woman trapped in a fat woman’s body, and this is just so hard for her. And I remain silent when she goes off on this, because damn. If I could change my body from male to female just by changing my diet and getting some exercise, I would have been all over that long ago.

I’ve made a realistic assessment of my body and what I can and cannot do to change it. And the things I can do involve a lot of work and expense, but I’ll do them anyway. When she says she doesn’t exercise because inside she feels like she is already skinny and sexy and doesn’t need to work for it, but then she looks in the mirror and oh the psychic pain… I just want to shake her. She wants to change society to just accept her dysphoria, to treat her like a hawt skinny chick without her doing the work for it. She would rather change everybody else instead of herself.

But is that what the transgender community is doing? We are certainly trying to change society to accept us. To treat us how we want to be treated instead of doing the work to fit into society’s defined roles. This is what we talk about when speak of disrupting the gender binary. And God knows I am all for that.

And I think for me, it’s important to make a distinction between my expectations for individuals and for society. For the individual, I believe you should assess what you are, what is physically present in this moment. Accept the reality of that, in that it’s there and it’s what you have to work with. And if you want to change what is there, assess what that requires and decide what you want/need to do and do it. And accept the consequences of that.

But for society, I also expect an opening up and breaking down of boundaries and prejudices. I would rather my friend were not judged based on her weight. And perhaps if society didn’t obsess about body image so much, neither would she. Society should cut individuals a lot more slack, but at the same time individuals should take up the slack and hold themselves to higher standards.

There are a couple other dysphorias that I run into that drive me nuts – furries and otherkin. Now, I know there are members of this community that consider themselves one or the other, and they would likely be very quick to point out that there are a number of crucial differences between the two. However, for the purposes of this discussion, they are essentially identical. Because what drives me nuts is that I stand here saying to society “Yes, I know that I am physically a man, but in reality, inside I am really a woman, and I would like you to respect that treat me appropriately.” But then this guy come up next to me and says “Yes, I know that I am physically a man, but in reality, inside I am really a dragon, and I would like you to respect that treat me appropriately.” And well, that kind of undermines my credibility.

brief disclaimer: yes I know there are plenty of furries and some otherkin who don't claim any sort of body dysphoria. I'm talking about the ones who do.

In this issue, I would really like nothing more to just live and let live. As a transsexual attempting to move from one existing gender category to another, my community has collected a lot of good evidence and formulated sound arguments about why society ought to be okay with that. But when somebody comes along and co-opts those arguments in an attempt to quit being “human” altogether… I get irked.

I am not strictly opposed to the idea of creating this new societal category of identifying with something other. It’s an… interesting idea. But as a trans person, I am not asking for special treatment from society beyond kindly letting me switch gender roles. I may ask special treatment because I am an omg special snowflake that shares my brilliance with the world on my lj (jk, k?), but it has nothing with my trans-ness. But when you say, I am not this person I seem to be, but am in reality a [insert mythical/anthropomorphic creature here], what are you asking of people? If you are a dragon, does that mean I should kill you and take your gold? If you are a two-tailed lemur with blue fur, what is that supposed mean in the way you relate to other people?

But the fact is, if you say you are dysphoric about your body, it’s very difficult for my to say “No you aren’t.” Because maybe you are, and I know what that feels like, and it's a whole pile of suck. But there are no hormones that are going to turn you into a dragon. You can’t go to Thailand and have an operation to become an anthropomorphized horse. It goes back to what I said about accepting what you are and the extent to which you can change it. If people are have a strong furry or otherkin dysphoria, they should probably work a lot harder at accepting who they are as a person, to make themselves something they can be proud of in their own skin. Trannies (especially transsexuals) get upset when mainstream people think it’s all about the clothes, because it’s not. But for furries and otherkin, it will only ever be about the clothes. And it seems to me to be a tragedy to only be happy whilst playing a role that has no place in the mundane world.

I do get the otherkin. There is a part of me that really does identify strongly as elvish. And it’s a lot of fun being in contexts in which that can be expressed. But I am not an elf. I look in the mirror, and I am fully human, and there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about that. And when I go to the grocery store, there’s not much point in going as an elf. On the other hand, even just going to the grocery store, there is a lot of meaning in that context to going as a woman instead of the man that I was born as.

As trans people, the concept of dysphoria has a great deal of value to us. It gives us a level of understanding about what we are and a path to correct it, to find a place where we are comfortable. But there are others out there who claim dysphoria as well, and perhaps rightly so. But their claims have the power to confuse our position. So this has been my (perhaps inadequate) attempt to clarify differences and boundaries, things we as transpeople understand on an intuitive level. I wanted to give it words if I could so that maybe we can have a good answer when random internet user asks “So what’s the difference between your dysphoria and that other person’s?” we might have an answer.

x-posted to personal journal