Gender Euphoria

by Laura Kate Dale

Beyond that, even, the media plays a part in that framing of the trans narrative. If you want people to feel sympathy for the trans community, explain we’re escaping dysphoria. If you want to demonise the community, tell people our dysphoria is a delusion and shouldn’t be indulged. It can be spun differently depending on who’s trying to spin it, which makes it a powerful aspect of the way trans stories are so often portrayed.

When I said earlier that gender dysphoria isn’t a required part of being trans, I meant it. When I say that, sometimes people ask me how someone would know they were trans, if not for feeling uncomfortable with their body and the way they were born. And to that, I say the answer is simple. If you try presenting yourself as something other than your birth-assigned gender, and it makes you feel euphoric, that’s just as valid a reason to claim your identity as escaping dysphoria. Gender euphoria is an equally valid reason to decide who you are.

Things stayed normal until around October, when it became clear that Bolsonaro had the better chances to be the next president of Brazil. We had nationwide protests against him, where the chant ‘Ele Não’ (‘Not Him’) started to appear. His fanatical followers became even more unbearable, to the point that many friendships were lost and many family reunions became more unfriendly than they usually were. Listening to people calling for ‘gay genocide’ became common, and people cheered their beloved fascist’s name while they stabbed a transgender woman to death in São Paulo, while they assaulted a public worker in Recife, a young woman in Porto Alegre, a student in Curitiba. Every day we would hear about someone suffering at the hands of his supporters. After the election, you could feel the tension around us.

What’s more is that intersex variations are extremely common. Every time I mention that I’m intersex to someone who only has peripheral intersex knowledge, I’m met with comments like, ‘Wow, that’s so rare! One in a million!’ But the actual statistic? About one in fifty. That’s 2 per cent of the population – which is the same percentage of the population as redheads, people with green eyes, and twins respectively.

Before my first trips to the gender identity clinic, I was warned by fellow trans people that, if I wanted to get prescribed hormones and move through the gatekeeping hoops, I had better turn up to every appointment in my most feminine-coded outfit possible. Fellow trans women had been accused in the past of not really wanting to transition, because for safety or comfort they attended appointments in jeans and a hoodie, with short hair. Cis women are allowed to dress that way and are not seen as less valid as women – it’s a core tenet of modern feminism – but if you turn up to a trans healthcare appointment that way, you’re clearly not woman enough to get medical help.

What is interesting to me as I get older is the double standards parents and guardians set for the children in their care. For example, ‘Don’t give into peer pressure,’ and, ‘Be yourself.’ Both important life lessons we are taught, yet the moulds and expectations we put on to a child’s AGAB (assigned gender at birth) is one big mess of expectations and pressures. I hope any children I eventually help raise (hello – if you’re reading this) will know that they can call me out on double standards and be themselves, growing their hair as they wish and expressing themselves in a way that feels right for them.

The long and short of it is that I looked at and studied and thought about gender and gender roles so much and for so long that they lost all meaning to me. In exactly the same way that if you say a word too many times in a row, it ceases sounding like a real word at all. It’s called semantic satiation and it ruined my perception of gender for ever. I’ve examined every piece from tone of voice to gait to language patterns and I can’t work out how to reconfigure the elements into ‘male’ and ‘female’ any more. They all fit in to every box, and I get genuinely confused when a cis person tries to assume I know how they think gender works, because it just no longer makes sense to me. I blew my gender fuse.