Dysphoria is the disconnect between a person’s gender and sex. Gender is determined by one’s neurosex. When the neurosex doesn’t match up with a person’s biological sex, it causes distress and discomfort. This is known as dysphoria, and it’s the single requirement to being trans, whether it’s minor or severe.
A trans person doesn’t have to go on hormones, have surgery, or conform to gender roles to be trans. This isn’t what transmeds stand for. We simply want cis people to stop latching onto the trans label when they’re not actually trans. They’re hurting both themselves and the trans community.
It’s okay to be cisgender, just like how it’s okay to be transgender. Being cisgender doesn’t make your struggles less valid just because you’re “privileged,” according to Tumblr.
Do you realise this presents two conflicting definitions of dysphoria?
- Dysphoria is the disconnect between one’s sex and gender,
- Dysphoria is distress and discomfort caused by the disconnect between one’s sex and gender.
Or, together, that dysphoria is caused by dysphoria. The second is the accurate one, as least psychological/psychiatric definitions of Gender Dysphoria (and by the word ‘dysphoria’ in a general sense).
The first isn’t dysphoria, but [being trans] itself—more generally a “disconnect” between one’s gender and one’s assigned gender and/or sex.
Requiring this “disconnect” to be trans isn’t incorrect, per se, but tautological, as it means that [being trans] is required to be trans. Requiring the second is simply incorrect, as dysohoria is something caused by being trans (i.e. it cannot possibly cause someone to be trans). Conflating these two definitions, however, can be used in bait-and-switch tactics to defend dysphoria-as-a-requirement.
