I Saw That You Mentioned Butch Dysphoria ... Can You Please Post Resources Or Just Any Knowledge That

i really do think that we, as a whole, are becoming more and more disconnected from our bodies. 

we’re being encouraged to view our true self as separate from our body—the body is a collection of disparate parts, to be discarded at will or exchanged for new ones, separate from our mind or soul. instead of viewing our bodies as something that developed alongside our minds, they’re an object of scrutiny and judgment; if you don’t like your nose, your fat, your breasts, your labia, your forehead, your lips…don’t worry, because you can (and should) change those things. 

go under the knife and reveal your new self, molded into the vision in your mind’s eye for only thousands of dollars and an ultimately unimportant risk to health and life.

adopt a strict new diet. obsess over an idealized form of yourself. shift the goalposts of what “perfect” looks like so the chase is never complete. hate every natural function of your body. devote all your time, money, and energy to an idea.

stare at your breasts and hate them. hate them so completely that you decide that you need new ones, or to get them removed so you never have to look at them again. never try to come to terms with how they look—that’s settling, that’s giving up, that will never lead to happiness. stare at your genitalia. hate it. daydream about something that would look better, feel better, be less objectified, be more acceptable, be more featureless, look more male, look more female, look different.

your body is not you; it’s just a vessel. and it’s your right to customize your vessel with anything that you want—whether it’s drugs, surgery, injections, or extreme diet restriction, it’s not you. you’re not doing it to yourself. you’re doing it to the flesh that formed around the real you. so how can that be wrong? 

how can your idea of what your body should be, in complete contrast to what it is, be wrong? how could it ever be influenced by a complex combination of factors when it’s not even you, when it’s barely even connected to you?

how could dysmorphia, dysphoria, body image issues, or a desire for extensive cosmetic surgeries be misguided when you can neatly separate the mind from the body?

It perturbs me when I see people write that detransitioners “were just confused cis women”. At best, it’s a stunning lack of empathy or understanding of our experiences. But often than not, it’s an attempt to neutralize and silence women who are getting too loud or causing trouble.

At no point during my transition or detransition was I “confused”. I was many things, but confusion wasn’t part of the equation. If I had to only one word, it would probably be something like, “deliberate”, “driven”, or “ambitious”.

The insistence that detransitioners are helpless or confused is a two-pronged attack, both a shutdown and a theft. If a detransitioned woman is painted as confused, it implies that she is unable to make a sound choice, and/or can be easily manipulated by an outside force as a result of her confusion. It removes her agency from her story, and casts her in a secondary, inactive role in her own experiences. It renders her story open to reinterpretation by ideologically motivated parties of all kinds (be it conservatives, ROGD moms, doctors/surgeons/psychiatrists, trans activists, people across all parts of the political and moral compass). It’s an old trick; it has been used against women for ages.

Every step of the way, I was doing my best to make careful decisions that were in my best interest. I had a boatload of problems, and when presented with my options, I used what I knew at the time to address those problems as best I could.

I made lifechanging decisions at a young age, with limited information, incomplete knowledge, like all people do. Many of those decisions are not ones that I’d repeat or recommend to anyone else. Many of those decisions led to outcomes that I am not satisfied with, even if other people are satisfied with similar results. I’m especially dissatisfied by the parts of these experiences where I enlisted the aid of outside experts, who ended up causing me more harm than help – real harm, real physical and mental and financial harm. I’m especially dissatisfied by the broader social context I made these decisions in – I’m dissatisfied by things that were outside of my control, and sometimes beyond of my awareness. None of this means that I was “confused” or unable to think critically.

Both then and now, I’ve wanted the very best for myself and those on similar paths. I yelled back then, and I yell now, because we deserve better!

We aren’t confused. We have demands. We want freedom, agency, safety, respect. We want quality medical care. We want improved, honest information made available to people. We want people to listen and actually incorporate our experiences into their workflows, learn from the things that have harmed us, so that they don’t keep happening. We want apologies from those who have caused us harm. We want peer support, actual allies, not just people looking to indoctrinate and use us. We want to be taken seriously. We want these things and more. We want so many things. We wanted these things then, and we still want them now. We haven’t stoped wanting, and therein lies the problem. Nobody likes an unsatisfied woman.

Enduring a trip to hell and back doesn’t make a woman confused, it makes her resilient and pissed off.

now since tumblr apparently loves to support non-american authors, but is surprisingly mum about this, imma tell you.

you see, everybody's favorite evil corp, Amazon, bought Indian publishing house Westland some six years ago. Now Westland is a very famous and reputed publishing house in India, and has put forth some of the best titles the country has seen. It didn't shy away from controversial and uncomfortable topics, and some of its books quite vocally criticise the current government, which has been responsible for the current state of india as a pseudo-democratic, pseudo-secular, economically ruined country, the most notable one being The Price of the Modi years by Aakar Patel. It also produced Amish Tripathi's pathbreaking Shiva Trilogy.

Now here's the thing that got me nuts.

AMAZON. SHUT. IT. DOWN. A WEEK AGO.

JUST OUT OF THE BLUE, IT IS CLOSING DOWN WESTLAND FOREVER. NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IS TO COME OF THE HUNDREDS OF TITLES PUBLISHED BY IT, OR OF THE AUTHORS ITS CONTRACTED, OR THE PEOPLE EMPLOYED BY IT.

It has triggered a buying surge in India, as people go on shopping spress to get their hands on the titles they want from this house. Short on supply and high on demand, bookstores across India are showing solidarity and moving surplus books around.

here you go with a few links that i think sum up the problem quite nicely, and please guys. just. please support westland.

here they talk about how this is becoming a trend with global corps.

here they talk about the future of indian publishing houses.

this one talks about a bleak future for literature and how it feels like we're living in a dystopian novel

spread this around. jeff bezos continues to be evil, and will be. he is quite literally, irredeemable.

practicing female separatism by being female and being alone all the time always

do you know any ways that alleviate dysphoria without transitioning? i kinda just woke up from my trans nightmare. i'm female if ur wondering. if you don't know, could you redirect me to a blog that does?

Hey anon, so, i had written down my own advice, and also asked my friends, many of whom are detrans and have suffered from dysphoria.

But first I want to say that I'm glad you woke up. It's hard to leave and change a mindset that felt right with our feelings even if not with our common sense.

Forst are my friends' advices. I'm copying it as they are, without paraphrasing (only certain replacement, [like this]. My own advice is below my friends', as i believe theirs to be more experienced.

Without further ado, here are all the advices:

——

— Hello!

It's been a LONG time since I've experienced dysphoria(I detransitioned).

It feels like your mind doesn't belong in the current body you're in and that you want to just rip [your] skin off. (Mental health issue)

For me, I wished I could just close my eyes and never wake up. Or be "reborn" a male instead of female and just some...other thoughts along the lines.

How did I "get over it"?

I...guess I surrounded myself with more positive influences. I grew up in an abusive household that held sexist views. When I left, I could think clearly for myself.

I suppose my suggestion for her would be to try and find some positive influences(ex. Could be as simple as hangout out with loved ones, finding role models,etc) in her life and think critically(ex. "Why would you feel better if you transitioned to male?")

I realized I wanted to transition to escape my life...and also because I had internalise misogyny to where I did not think I was "allowed" to do certain things because I was born a female...

— Something to have her consider is that what she likes, and who she is doesn’t change what she is. She is female. A woman. A girl. Zero percent of her outside world or her mind can impact this. I hear a lot of young women trans [recte transition] because they feel like they enjoy masculine things. Well, if a woman does it it’s a women’s thing. Gender tells us women should only pursue and enjoy certain things and not others. This is just simply, False with a capital F.

Another help is recognizing that the way porn and indeed most media presents women to the world is also False. That is not what and how sex is. You don’t have to like it or accept it to be a woman. It is at odds with womanhood.

To reconnect and learn to love your body and accept it, a trick I learned a long time back is to focus on what your body does for you. Rather than how it looks while it does it.

Look at your bones and muscles working together so you can walk and stand and pick things up. Dance. Run. Your throat and lungs do this cool thing where you can speak. Sing. Your heart, keeps your body supplied with nutrients from your digestive system. Digestive system all on its own without any prompting, turns food into fuel for this amazing robot suit that is your body. Brain can interpret every single impulse from every nerve in your body. In real time. It allows you to connect with the outside world and experience it. But you also get to control it. Meditation, therapy exercises, physical exercise, these things have an impact on your brain. And you choose to do them.

Your body and your experience in it is really remarkable.

Thighs aren’t fat. They’re strong for carrying you around. Arms aren’t skinny. They are perfect for hugging loved ones. Eyes aren’t too small, they allow you to see the world around you. Focusing on what the body does takes that focus away from what it doesn’t look like. Breasts? Nourish new life in a way nothing else can. Don’t want children. That’s ok. Just recognize what your breasts can do. They don’t have to do it. Uterus and ovaries? Literally creates a human life from two single cells. You have the power of creation in side you. Whether you use it or not. Period? This amazing way your body protects itself from non viable pregnancies and keeps your body safe. Periods are the ultimate cleanse. And your body does it for you. All on its own.

These are the thoughts that help me deal with having a female body and accepting it.

— The thing that helped me most was radical body acceptance. Just 'this is me and I accept that I am the way I am'. Idk how effective it would be for that individual but it was foundational for me overcoming my dysphoria

====

My advice:

~ it's sometimes impossible to look at the mirror. The body feels bad and ugly and overall just wrong. But it's ours. It's ours to keep, and not to destroy. Expose yourself to yourself gradually. Especially the parts that make you at most unease. Treat it like a phobia, or some forms of allergies. Gradual exposure can help. First, love the parts you can't see — your heart, your lungs, dammit, tell your tendons you love them (!) because they're part of you.

Slowly reach parts you feel most dysphoric about. You'll already know how to love your other parts. Your hands that let you touch loved ones, hold them, rub a cute cat or dog. Your mouth and your stomach that tear apart these nutrients into the most basic units. Your skin that protects you and that lets you feel sunlight and raindrops. And then, when you know how to love these more or less basic parts of you, reach the complex ones. You don't need reasons at some point, but you have the love to give and it's enough. You don't need any reason besides it's yours.

~ i suffered (and still sometimes relapse) from body dysmorphia, and well, music and self reminders helped me a lot. I drew on my skin with pens and sharpies, soccer teams logos, random lyrics. My reminder to myself, before i started giving myself good reminders was "don't fear death"" but to not fear death,,, i needed no more reminders of that. then I realized, i can remind myself more important things, of better things. Birthdays, my favorite teams' wins, my most hated teams' worst losses. Then it went to 1238 "grammar teacher said something grammatically wrong", "x mathematical axiom", drew emojis and flowers. I did so to remind me to smile, to breath clean air (as clean as possible at least). At this time of self isolation, you can leave the notes at your house. Sticky note with "the only parabola that matters is the smile" or some other body positive puns. Dysphoria is a different hatred of your body, but all self hatred can be fought with self love.

~ a feeling I still feel a lot is hat i don't deserve to live, i only take too much space. It's what brought me so quickly into dysmorphia. Try to find what brought you to dysphoria pull out the source, or face it so you know how it looks like when it sneaks up to you. Recognition and acknowledgment means you can deal with it better as it won't shock you. You'd be able to throw it out before it attacks you.

~ surround yourself with positive influences, and also avoid negative influences. If your close friend group is sexist and/misogynistic, then distance yourself from them. A lot of the self hatred comes from what we've been taught for years about ourselves. Female role models, positivity, cute little notes, etc, and surround yourself with actual body positivity.

~ creativity: Maybe start a cute bullet journal or something similar. Create things and surround yourself with your own creations. Bullet journals are a fun way to keep you busy while also help you be more productive in school and/or life. You can fill it with quotes and pretty pictures and fun doodles.

~ you and your body are not different entities. It's part of you, part of your life since birth, especially because you're female. It feels a bit degrading at first, but in reality, we are our bodies. When were stressed, our body reacts physiologically. When we see someone we love, our heart beats faster.

I remember reading something another woman wrote, saying her dysphoria is at its worst during her period, she got panic attacks every time she started getting it. We're told that our period is what makes us gross but also what makes us women/feminine, but it only makes us women, not feminine, and it's part of our physiology, it made us have lower social standing but only because men decided so. Some women don't get periods, but all those who get periods are women (and I'm not talking about TiM "periods" but real ones). It's one of the parts that can be the hardest to embrace, but it's also a reminder that we, women, are actually the most ideal creation of mother nature regarding humans. Long lasting, unrelenting, strong and (usually) the actual creating power. We're the power of creation as a means for creation, and men? Most of them only create as a means for destruction.

~ healthy lifestyle: a lot of things start looking better when we start a healthier lifestyle, especially life. Add a salad to one of the meals

~ lastly but most helpful for me was writing all my negative feelings down and then just tearing the paper apart, and afterwards throw it to different trashcans, like you'd do with an old credit card. It helped me during some of my most depressive episodes.

“Gender is a social construct” does not mean that gender is meaningless and can be used any way you’d like. Money is a social construct, too. That doesn’t mean that you can decide an American five dollar bill should actually be worth ten American dollars, or it’s the same thing as 500 Indian rupees, or you only have a $20 bill but it just feels more like a $50 bill from the texture of the paper. Tell that to a merchant when you’re trying to purchase a good and they’ll laugh you out of the store. Social constructs still have meanings and rules and specific functions which are culturally determined – it is not up to any one individual to decide how a social construct is or should be used. That’s not how it works. Gender is a social construct, but you must actually seek to understand the rules and functions of gender before you can deconstruct it – and deconstruction of a social construct can therefore only be a collaborative social project and not an individual pursuit.

Do you or your followers have any thoughts on that new book by Abigail Shrier? I'm not sure if to make a purchase because the cover alone and sensationalistic title gives me be a bad gut feeling

No, I will not be supporting this book with my money.

The Amazon listing for the book says “Abigail Shrier is a writer for the Wall Street Journal.” What it doesn’t say is that she also contributes to The Federalist, a well-known conservative hellhole. Anyone who willfully collaborates with the right does not have my best interests in mind, I can promise you that.

The title speaks for itself. Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The cover has a vintage photo of a little girl with a hole punched out of her pelvis. This is not my narrative. I am resilient, not ruined.

The title and cover align themselves with the conservative idea of “protecting our daughters”, protecting a commodity that belongs to men. It does not recognize that we were already being harmed before we transitioned. It does not recognize what we were responding to with transition. Instead, it posits that the “transgender craze” is swooping in and corrupting sweet young women, reefer-madness style.

The description in the listing says everything I need to know:

These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.”

Uh-huh. Never experienced any discomfort, huh? Right-o. Sure.

A generation of girls is at risk. Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it—or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.

Condescending. “Inoculate your child”? Christ, transitioning isn’t the result of a disease. We aren’t “crazy”. Women who have gone down this path have reasons for doing do beyond being ~infected by those crazy liberal transes~. But the reasons for our trauma aren’t something they’re going to publish in a conservative thinkpiece, because they aren’t looking to solve the root of these problems. They’re looking to preserve it. They don’t want change. They want things to stay the same.

She’s using detransitioned women’s experiences and trauma as a pawn in her arguments, just like everyone else does (across all ideological lines, both left and right). These people don’t care what we actually think or want, they just want the juicy trauma porn they can pick pieces from and use to bolster their own point of view. This book is another example of using the “damaged woman” narrative as a boogeyman. “Look at this pitiful creature, see her moan and gnash her teeth and feel so much regret for what she has done -- your daughter could be next!”

No thanks. I’d maybe borrow a copy if I feel like seeing the latest in how conservatives are warping our stories for their gain in the year 2020, but I’m not supporting it with my money or clicks.

hi, not sure if this blog is active bc im on mobile but you seem v knowledgeable so i hope you are. i have a question if thats ok. ive been id'ing as ftm trans/nb for about 6 years now but havent rlly been able to come out to many ppl or transition at all so im still largely presenting as female. i wouldnt rlly call myself gender critical or anything like that, but i know transitioning is a long & difficult process and im wondering if there is a way to alleviate my dysphoria without going (1/2)

“thru all that. i dont want to transition only to realize that i dont feel better and there was an easier way. in other words, id like to rule out any possibility that im not trans before medically investing in being trans. any chance you have any advice for me? (2/2)”

hey there—still active, if sporadic.

when it comes to healing from dysphoria, there’s no cure-all, no hidden path to healing that you’ve simply yet to uncover. just as there’s no way to guarantee transition will make you happy, there’s no opposite guarantee either. i can only share some of the stuff that has worked for me and some of the hardships i uncovered about living as trans, which i hope you find helpful.

what helps me?

get clear with yourself about what you believe about gender, ideologically. i personally feel, if my beliefs do not stand up to critical thought, if they cannot be supported by rational arguments, then those beliefs are not worth holding on to and i need to let them go. this is what happened to me WRT transness, gender, and all that.

start small—what is gender? is gender innate? do we have gendered souls? how could we have gendered souls if gender is a social construct? okay, so we can’t have gendered souls, so what is gender, if not innate? is gender the social expectations and norms attached to the two sexes? is it possible to break those roles and expectations? does breaking those roles and expectations change anyone’s sex? no—males can behave in typically feminine ways and females in typically masculine ways and that does nothing to change their sex. so what would conceivably make someone (or myself) trans? inhabiting the social roles and expectations of the gender associated with the opposite sex. since we already established that gender isn’t innate and we don’t have gendered souls, there’s no merit in the “born in the wrong body” narrative; it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. we each get one body, no matter how we change it. but if i wasn’t born in the wrong body, why do i feel so uncomfortable with mine, especially with the sexed aspects of it? if you’re female, the likely culprit is misogyny. you don’t actually have to hate women on a conscious level to be suffering from internalized misogyny. we live in a misogynistic world, it saturates everything. if you’re female, it affects almost every factor of how you move through this world—how people treat you, what opportunities you’re given, which behaviors are encouraged for you and which are discouraged, etc. if you are inclined to prefer masculinity—for whatever reason—society will encourage this in males and discourage it in females. having your way of being subtly discouraged all the time can easily lead to feeling disconnected from your body, perhaps even hating it, especially since you know that your way of being would be ENCOURAGED if only your body were male. and that’s when many of us encounter trans ideology that tells us we CAN be male—in fact, we actually were all along! all we have to do is change our bodies drastically with lifelong medication and surgery, all we have to do is trade money and time and health to convincingly imitate the opposite sex—THEN society will finally recognize that our way of being is okay—because we were actually masculine MEN all along, it was simply our female bodies obscuring that. does this feel like a good or healthy trade to you? it doesn’t to me, but i can’t make these decisions for you.

there IS an important caveat, a shortcut that bypasses this bad trade entirely—and that’s realizing that your way of being is ALREADY okay. masculine females and feminine males are healthy and good. it’s not always easy to comfortably BE that way in a society that does not embrace masculinity in women and femininity in men, but the solution is not to change your self, it’s to change the society. and the only way you can do that is by carving out that path—BE a masculine female/woman and you’ll show little girls today that there’s a place for them in this world.

i did try out the trade for myself, however, and i learned a few things you might find useful—maybe these lessons i learned can save you the time and money and pain i’ve already spent.

1) you never actually change sex. you’re always chasing the aesthetic imitation of the opposite sex with transition, but never becoming the opposite sex. in this and so many other ways, transition never ends.

2) passing is conditional. when your sense of self is predicated upon others seeing you a certain way, it can be taken from you in a second. i could be treated like one of the guys for a year, until one of them finds out i was born female. now that he knows, he cannot unknow. now my experience is tied to how he sees me—does he see me as a woman now that he knows? is he comfortable with me in the locker room? it was stressful and uncomfortable for others to have this level of control over my experience of the world and of myself. it’s also out of my control whether he decides to lend manhood to me now—will he use male pronouns with me? will he call me a woman? will he out me to the others? will he sexualize me or sexually assault me based on my female body?

3) as stated above, transition never ends. no matter how well you pass, transition always requires maintenance. you’ll need bloodwork as long as you’re on hormones—that’s time and money you wouldn’t have otherwise spent. you’ll need supplies for your hormone shots—time and money you wouldn’t have spent. there will be instances where you need to disclose your trans status, thus repeating the coming out process infinitely—doctors or EMTs, new intimate partners, friends. this process is exhausting and othering, it’s an ever-present reminder of the fact that you’re trans.

4) medical transition is expensive in terms of money and heath. taking hormones is always a risk. there’s potential for: cardiovascular risk associated with testosterone, vaginal atrophy and sexual side effects, changes to mood (some for the better, some worse), not liking how hormones change your body. then there’s the financial aspect. in the USA at least, this costs money—money for doctor’s visits, money for the hormones themselves, money for the supplies to administer them. there’s risk in any surgery—risk of death or serious complication, loss of function and sensation, improper healing, chronic pain. and of course, the monetary cost associated with surgery. removing the uterus can have lifelong consequences—early onset dimentia, lifelong need for synthetic hormones, osteoporosis.

5) there is no “actually trans.” there’s no meaningful distinction between “true trans” people and others. trans people transition and identify as trans. their dysphoria isn’t any different than mine was. there’s no method for parsing “real dysphoria” from something else. transness is an ideology. i liken it to religion. there are no “real christians” and fake christians, there are only people who believe and those who don’t. that’s the salient difference between myself (detransitioner) and trans people—belief. and if something requires me to believe in it to be real...well that’s a good indication it probably isn’t.

good luck out there. these are heavy questions and weighty struggles. there’s no harm in focusing on other aspects of your life when you’re having trouble answering Big Gender Questions. rooting for you.

meadow whispers

instagram

When Adrienne Rich said “our minds and bodies are inseparable in this life, and when we allow our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger”