Dysphoria: My Beloved Darkness
Darkness is the quiet in which we can understand what was hard to hear in the noise of the light.
I ought to shun darkness. Walk in the light, hegemonic global religions lecture, a message that evolved into the modern religion of self-help. Any emotion other than happiness is to be abhorred, as we seek the grail of constant joy. We certainly shouldn’t listen to those other emotions, let them be, try and understand their place in our emotional eco-system. We certainly shouldn’t seek out the darkness.
A shift has taken place recently in the trans community, as a new movement has sprung up declaring that you don’t need to have dysphoria to be trans. The message is simple: some trans people have dysphoria, others don’t and that is ok. All are trans, all are valid. And you’ll not find any disagreement here. This is no exercise in gatekeeping.
One side note that piqued my interest was how many times — when you dig down into the different narratives — those who talk about dysphoria in their trans experience, and those who do not, often end up describing experiences that are extremely similar, and that the different narratives are born of different emphasis. Not always. There are some truly diverse stories about transness, and that can only add to the wealth of the great trans…
