I was reading someone burbling about trans women menstruating and blah blah blah and a thought suddenly occurred to me (weirdly late, I think) – we’ve heard a lot about gender dysphoria, and especially a lot about men who have it, but what about other kinds of dysphoria? Specifically what about gay men who have to tell people they’re gay? You know what I mean? Gay men who appear straight – not necessarily football playerish, not necessarily muscular or domineering or anything else in particular, but just not clockable as gay.

(I don’t think it works the same way with lesbians. Lots are not clockable. Let me know if I’m wrong.)

I wonder if that can cause a form of dysphoria.

I had a co-worker like that years ago when I worked at the zoo – we worked with the elephants. We had some entertaining conversations about his non-clockability. It didn’t perturb him at all, but I wonder if it does others. If so I wonder how that relates to gender dysphoria and what it feels like. A mismatch between the outside and the inside.

It interests me because maybe if we had a better understanding of gender dysphoria we could figure out better ways to deal with it – ways that don’t trample all over women’s rights and safety and the like.