My new post at Genspect looks at how members of online trans communities grapple with the evidence that transition isn’t helping:
There are those clashing statements again: “I feel better than I ever have in my whole life” and “Dysphoria is destroying me, even as I medically transition.” Both of these statements cannot be true (if your life was already at rock bottom before transition, there would be nothing for dysphoria to ‘destroy’). Since the first statement goes unsupported by any evidence whereas the second statement is followed up by an avalanche of painful specifics, I’m going to go with statement two: “Dysphoria is destroying me.” The poster expresses extreme self-disgust and self-doubt. She recognizes on some level that what she wants out of transition is “wholly unattainable.” She’s tired of “forcing [herself] to look in the mirror and tell [herself] this is what a real man looks like.”
“I feel better than I ever have in my whole life” is the frame members of online trans communities put around the most serious and wracking doubts. After a while, it starts to sound an awful lot like “He’s the love of my life but I wish I’d never met him.”
Again, the responses invite the obvious question of why transition so consistently makes dysphoria worse:
T is the key that opens the gate holding back the flood, but you need to go through that gate to get to your destination.
I was in a similar boat to you, not horribly dysphoric. I didn’t like my voice, that was about it. Before I realized I was trans, I actually had dysphoria about not looking feminine enough. Once I started T, though – which has been incredible for both my mental and physical health – it was like every bad feeling I didn’t know I had came rushing to the front. I want everything to be better right now. But, it can’t be. We can’t speedrun transition. I have to wait until surgeries are obtainable for me and then I have to wait for them to heal. I have to wait for the T to move my fat around. I have to wait to see any progress from working out.
It’s like. Once you start your medical steps, you realize all the things you could have but are just out of your reach. But they’re not out of your reach! Not permanently, anyway. The T is the little light of hope that is suddenly illuminating the fact that there are other things you want but you don’t have yet. Unfortunately it’s not a quick process to get those other things. But eventually, you’ll get there.
Read that again: “Once I started T, though – which has been incredible for both my mental and physical health – it was like every bad feeling I didn’t know I had came rushing to the front.”
"T is the key that opens the gate holding back the flood, but you need to go through that gate to get to your destination". I am very baffled by this allegory: If there are floodwaters behind the gate, aren't you going to drown once you open it? (Which seems pretty accurate but hardly a selling point for transitioning).
"Before I realized I was trans, I actually had dysphoria about not looking feminine enough." Huh? My read on that statement is she had unrealistic, Hollywood ideas about what it means to be feminine and she couldn't perform this act, so do the male act instead.