gender dysphoria

[calimac]

Statistics on gender dysphoria in pre-teens and teens.

I wonder. Questions like this didn't exist when I was a child, but I wonder how my answer would have been taken when I was a pre-teen. I despised typical boy-like behavior, I hated being a boy and being forced to associate with other boys, I thought girls were much nicer people, I sometimes wished I was a girl, but only so that I wouldn't have to be put with the boys. And I never thought I actually was a girl. So is that gender dysphoria or not?

Comments

[cmcmck]

Probably not as that tends to have a degree of desperation to sort the body out.

I didn't think I was a girl- I KNEW I was.

But it probably suggests that you were a decent kid just as you are a decent adult. :o)

[conuly]

Sounds like the issue was the other boys, not your own body. So I'm going to go with "probably not, especially if you no longer feel this way".

But of course, there is a small but very real correlation between being trans and being autistic and... okay, honestly, I don't remember who all I know is autistic or not but I mostly assume "all of you, every one of you" so.

[sartorias]

Tentatively not? I say that as one who had approximately the same wish--fierce sometimes--that I could be a boy, because boys got all the freedom, and they didn't have to wear damn dresses on cold days, or worse, windy days, when you had to clutch it close so that the wind didn't flash your skirt up. sending the boys screaming about seeing your undies. I never wanted a penis (I bathed with my one year younger brother until I was eight or so, so I knew what one was) and I didn't want boy short hair. My trans friends, though with very different experiences from each other (surprise!) seem to say that that is more like social gender dysphoria.

[ethelmay]

Any time there are things that A Person Should Be Able to Do If They Like that are societally coded as being the province of only one sex, naturally people who have been arbitrarily told they don't get to do those things are sometimes going to be upset about that. I think that's a pretty separate issue, but that it's possible for it to get entangled with body dysphoria issues for some folks. I definitely said stuff about wanting to be a boy when I was a kid, but thinking about my motivations, it was very different from what I hear from trans and genderqueer friends. I also recall the process of growing breasts to be quite physically unpleasant, and wishing I didn't have to deal with them, but once they stopped hurting, I was fine with them. It was the pain I hated.

[cmcmck]

Oh Lord, I remember that process so well although I hit it a couple of years later than most girls due to being born with an intersex condition and needing to get it treated. When they got me onto oestrogen it was a relief, but the soreness of that process it not something you easily forget!

[voidampersand]

I think that was gender dystopia.