#i wrote a fraught piece with this for e-cryptid's zine also lol

[kittyit]

hey, i hope im coming to the right person with this but i really need some advice. i'm a teenage lesbian, and ever since i was about 9-10 years old i've been struggling on and off with gender dysphoria. some days i feel fine but some days (like today) i just really wish i were born male. i dont know what's wrong with me but it totally sucks and ruins my mood. nobody would ever be able to tell that i have gender identity issues. i dress and act pretty effeminately (1/3)

but on the inside i wish i sometimes were a boy. transitioning is totally out of the question, but even if i could, i still wouldnt want to. i know a lot of kids wonder what it’d be like to be the opposite sex, but this has been a long term thing that has caused me a lot of stress. it’s a really confusing and frustrating feeling. i have no way to relieve the dysphoria other than to wait until i feel better about myself another day. when i was younger i used to identify as ftm, but later decided i was just a cis lesbian because i didn’t feel like the trans label fit me. im sorry if im bothering you in any way but i saw a lot of your posts about detransition and dysphoria and i was wondering if you had any advice for me

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i’m actually really glad you sent this to me! not bothering me at ALL! i’m a femme with dysphoria and i’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about. having gender/sex dysphoria is not a uniquely lesbian experience but there’s absolutely a significant overlap - and butches get the worst of it, with the feelings they’re having reinforced by the reactions of the world to their butch existence.

i feel the major root of my dysphoria is something like this: when you’re a lesbian, you love women. lesbian love is usually not shown to you, or if it is, it’s in a way that doesn’t recognize how real and vital it is. when i was a little girl, all the messages i had to receive about love where about what men could/should/wanted to do/provide for women. the only way for a woman to be happy was for her to be wanted and taken care of by men in a myriad of ways.

so there was that overwhelming social message, saturating basically all media, advertising, just everywhere! men will openly say the same things too and try to enforce them as best as possible. same sex attraction is porn or a joke to most of them, even very young.in addition, there can also be a messages like that from other women. i had a lot of feelings for straight & bi identified girls when i was a girl who wanted something that i couldn’t give to them. often these feelings were accompanied by romantic, sexual, or intense emotional entanglement. regularly they were accompanied by the statement “i wish you were a boy.” i felt it in my heart too, because i felt like, wow, if i was a boy, she could love me back. i could actually make her happy.

the horrible feeling of not being able to fulfill other women or have a normal, healthy, happy relationship is very, very tangled up in my dysphoria. the more i’ve been able to embrace (instead of accept or ignore) being a lesbian, and the more i’ve been around lesbians who are unapologetic (or fighting to be) about being a lesbian, the more my dysphoria fades.

when love between women is positioned as not-real, not-enough, a joke, women who love women will also feel not-real, not-enough, and like jokes.

so i hope this was at least a little relevant to you! i really want to hear from more femme / feminine lesbians who have dysphoria. there as many ways to feel like a failed female / failed woman as there as female people alive and the more we talk about what we’ve gone/are going through the more we can help each other and ourselves.