#if anyone wants a laugh i mixed up kai shappley with a character from american horror story

[detransdamnation]

it was absolutely worth the wait. I went over your answer over and over, at least 5 good times and i feel like i take something new out of it each time around. I will probably write something longer soon to touch up on some things (as long as you dont mind of course) In the tags you mentioned being willing to give your opinion on other potential factors and well i know its a bit of an open question but you got my attention spark there and i wonder now what other factors you would name besides the ones we brought up up there?

(Also the part where you explained that specific feeling of wanting to start over, have something you can call your own after being mistreated-having control over something. This was just…huge.) also x2 i wish you didnt hate the things you write so intensely but at the same time i understand. Just know its nowhere near what your head tells you it is. You are one of the most raw and at the same time coherent and brilliant people talking on those matters, in my opinion. Cheers☁️

Gender roles—and hatred of, or discomfort with, those who do not conform to them—is a massive factor in most cases of dysphoria. Directly intertwined with that, as well, is social influence. What is essential to remember when we speak on the latter aspect is that it is not something particularly unique to dysphoria, nor does acknowledging it make someone’s dysphoric distress any less real; it simply exposes the—perhaps uncomfortable—fact that we are who we surround ourselves with and can (and do) make unconscious decisions about ourselves and who we are based off of what others around us are doing, feeling, or expressing.

The fact of the matter is, gender, like any other social construct, requires participants in order to exist, and through participating in this construct, we influence others to do the same. This starts young and could be (in fact, largely is) as covert as, for example, raising a daughter “like a girl” or a son “like a boy”—“unless they tell me they are otherwise.” This is something that I have actually heard multiple parents say word-for-word when faced with the prospect of having a transgender child. I specifically bring it up here because it is typically said under the impression that this approach does dysphoric young people well—but although their hearts may come from the right place, they also miss the mark entirely.

By treating people differently according to their sex at all, we reinforce these gender roles and stereotypes that harm us in the first place. We continue to place a certain gendered value on all of these things that should be neutral—behaviours, clothing, toys—and instill in these children that, if they happen to fall outside of those boxes, they are atypical. Despite my own family actually voicing that it didn’t matter what I liked so long as I was happy, I still never sought out my “nonconforming” desires until after I had told them I was transgender because they, themselves, did not take that initiative to expose me to anything outside of what was “normal” for children of my sex. The truth was, the thought of my existing as anything outside of that made them uncomfortable, and moreover, made other people uncomfortable, which they never challenged—and even though I wasn’t able to voice any of this as a child, I did pick up on it. Everything outside of this box was like “The Forbidden Fruit” and it was very clear to me that, if I reached for it as the sex that I am, I would stand out. I would be “different.” I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to be me.

The sentiment itself also insinuates that the parent would raise the child differently only if they came out as trans, which implies that they would only allow this hypothetical child to be themselves if they took on an identity that was more palatable to them. It is an eerie echo to how so many trans children’s stories start out—Jazz Jennings, Josie Romero, Kai Shappley—and it shows a great lack of insight on as to why children would even express the desire to be another gender in the first place. If the only thing standing between a “wrong” and a “right” is our sexes, of course we will come to despise them. Of course we will decide that we are another gender. We have internalized that this is the only way that we can be accepted as ourselves. We become influenced into transgender identity because we see no way to peacefully exist as “cis.” It should go without saying that this does absolutely nothing for children who are predisposed to dysphoria.

Which leads me to the last point I will make in this post. Something I know influenced my own dysphoria was certain personality traits. For example, one of my most pervasive personality traits throughout my life has been self-consciousness. To add insult to injury, I was also a fairly “early bloomer” as a child, puberty-wise, and developed relatively fast on top of that. So, you can imagine how detrimental it was for an already hypersensitive child to be given even more reason to “stand out.” I started to spend a lot of time just looking at myself and my body and how I presented very quickly became a constant underlying monologue. I wasn’t even dysphoric at this point, just painfully self-conscious—but that set the perfect stage for my dysphoria to develop because I was already uncomfortable with myself in the general sense. I just needed something specific to latch on to.

Although only a personal experience, if even a small fraction of dysphoric people could relate to it, it would track with what has already been established in many other mental illnesses. Self-esteem is a huge factor in anxiety disorders: Someone who is confident and self-assured is probably going to be a lot less likely to develop an anxiety disorder than someone who is meek and dependent on others’ reassurance. Perfectionism could be a factor in obsessive-compulsive disorders: A child who needs things to be “just right” will logically be more likely to become clinically obsessive over that as opposed to a child who only cares about getting things done. Similarly, I think that a barrage of traits could be a factor in dysphoria and whether or not our brains go through with its development depends on both the environment we grow up in, as well as just how these traits develop when faced with an onslaught of pubertal hormones (so, a matter of luck).

This about covers most of the rest of my thoughts, albeit condensed as much as I reasonably could. It is difficult (not to mention time-consuming) to lay out the whole crux of my thoughts and beliefs with every single detail and nuance in a blog post, so this definitely doesn’t encapsulate absolutely everything I could say. I’d certainly be okay with you sending in something long. I’ve enjoyed hearing from you, Anon, and I cannot describe how happy I am to know that you enjoy my writing. Thank you for listening. I give you my cheers in turn.