Clocking dysphoria
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.
I don’t see the correlation as your gay friend knows he is gay, knows he is male, and seems quite amused by his “unclockability”. It could perhaps perturb a woman who has invested a lot of herself in forming a relationship, but I suspect it would only bother a vanishingly small proportion of the male population.
I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, just an outside observer, but I honestly believe that gender dysphoria is and should be treated as a subset of body dysmorphic disorder. The symptoms and the posited causes are almost identical, especially the early onset, the history of abuse or neglect, and the influence of social media.
Only when seriously treated as a mental health issue will the gender dysphoric get the help they need to live as their authentic (born in the right body) selves.
I suspect the Rev is right; it might not even be a subset, but actually body dysmorphia that gets pushed into gender dysphoria by social media and therapy talking incessantly about gender dysphoria. It might be a misunderstanding of what is actually happening; I suspect at least the therapists have good intentions, and some corners of social media, but others are clearly exploiting the youngsters.
I’ve also seen a few cases of what are depressed individuals who google their symptoms and everything on the web tells them they are trans. Then they start therapy, they’ve already self-diagnosed, and they get the wrong treatment because they have the wrong diagnosis.
I have body dysmorphia. I’ve had it as long as I can remember. Therapy has done very little for me. I avoid mirrors, and there are other things that are problems for me, but I deal with it the best I can. Not feeling like the body you inhabit is the right body is a real thing, and it’s painful. It’s a sort of rootlessness, a feeling that you don’t belong even in your own skin. It feels terrifying to think you aren’t really you.
Once my therapist asked me if I wanted to be a man. I told him no, I wanted to be a woman the way I wanted to be. He just said, okay, we’ll work that direction then. Today’s therapists could learn a lot from him.