Navigating Dysphoria: My Journey with Internalized Transphobia
The process started with mac ‘n cheese.
Astrid is Marigold Health’s guest writer of the month. They lend their story graciously.
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Tuesday nights on Salem State’s Central Campus as a building manager were always quiet, and this cold January evening was no different. The usual labor of rearranging tables and chairs for the next day’s events was limited to a single setup, but this shift’s labor was heavier than any furniture I would ever be asked to move. The labor at hand was of immense consequence — one of those things that had the earth-shattering potential to turn your life upside down the instant you admitted to yourself, not everything was as it seemed.
Gender
It was a topic I had always shied away from in conversation. I considered myself an avid feminist and navigated my way through Brockton High School alongside a sort of posse of trans friends (of which I was of course the adopted cis friend). But as my fingers shook over the office computer’s keys, I drew in a ragged breath of pure anxiety.
My fingers found their way through the motion of that single sentence of such consequence — that very admission that things were not as I told myself they had been for the past two decades.
“How do you know you’re non-binary?”
I of course knew the answer to this question and the very fact I was Googling it told me I knew exactly where I stood on the issue. Regardless, I still craved that sweet, sweet external validation the internet was so good at dishing out. This single act served as an act of rebellion against the gender binary — the view of gender as a male/female one-side-or-the-other societal divide. This divide, as academic Ashley Tauchert lays out, governs our identities, roles, and above all, who maintains power. That very keystroke was a first step on the road to discovering I was trans and thus rejecting the masculine expectations forced on me at birth (Tauchert, 2002).
My efforts, while extensive, yielded dissatisfactory results. The vast majority of narratives, resources, and YouTube personalities out there were, in fact, binary trans people — those who identify with the opposite binary gender of the one they were assigned at birth. While these stories were somewhat useful, they didn’t provide that firm reassurance I was looking for. So, I sighed and got up — there was another round of the building to be done.
The walk back to the main office on North Campus was long and frigid — a bone-rattling northern wind had picked up. As I shivered alongside Loring Ave., I was left with the word…
Dysphoria.
Specifically, gender dysphoria. No matter the source — Youtuber, LGBTQIA+ rights group, newspaper personality, or columnist, that word always came up. But what was it? Of course, I could read the internet definitions: a deep-seated disgust with physical traits in relation to gender identity. But I didn’t feel that at all. I had never really liked my body growing up (and still didn’t, as a whole, for that matter), but I was okay with it. My feelings stemmed, in reality, from poor body image. Nothing like this dysphoria jazz everyone was on about.
If I were really like these people, wouldn’t I feel it too? Maybe I would get away with never feeling it…
…Or maybe not.
Coming Out
A week had passed, and in the absence of the sort of divine revelation I was expecting, I had decided it was time to come out after another nail-biter shift. I was non-binary and my roommate, a trans woman herself, would be the first person to hear. I figured she would have a more human perspective than the talking heads whose wisdom I had already sought.
The process started with mac ‘n cheese — something both my roommate and I were a fan of. After the offer, I sat down and drew a breath.
“There’s something I want to talk about…”
There was nothing I ever wanted to talk about — at least nothing that produced such a blatant tic as bouncing my knee like it was a sewing machine needle. The look on my roommate's face was one of dread. She definitely thought I was terminally ill or something.
“Well…uh. I uh…well…like I…”
Have a rare 1-in-a-gazillion illness that’ll kill me in a month…I could see the looming dread building on her face.
“I…I’ve done some thinking and uh…I really don’t think I’m a guy — not that I’m a woman, well I’m not that either…”
A wave of relief washed over her face.
“Oh, you’re non-binary, right?”
She understood!
I nodded and she sighed with a smile.
“Well, welcome to the trans club. I’m not gonna lie, it’ll be tough. Dysphoria can be a real bitch.” She paused. “I’m happy for you though, and I’m here for you.”
Dysphoria.
There was that word again. It seemed, in the opinion of my roommate, that its prevalence warranted an introduction in my very first moments out of the closet. The optimistic sentiment I had held for the previous week felt shaken. If being dysphoric was such an apparent part of being trans, as had been indicated, then would I hold out much longer?
Dysphoria Day
It was Thursday afternoon, and per usual, I was waiting around for the Salem chapter of Sunrise’s weekly meeting to start. I was the apartment’s cook and tonight “yeetloaf” was on the menu — a dirt-cheap vegan alternative to meatloaf utilizing our seemingly endless supply of lentils. I had always loved to cook and bake, and the time spent with my mother in the kitchen was one of the few memories of my formative years I have left. The feeling of nurturing and supporting my roommates had been something I took great pride in as well.
I stood over the stove and stroked my chin — a habit of boredom I had picked up a number of years ago. On my chin was a beard. It had been a prized possession of mine. Its current state was precisely 10 millimeters — no more, no less. Meticulously maintained, despite the chaos I endured that fall. However, at that moment, it hit.
Dysphoria.
I had no reason to suspect it, but I knew. It was that voice in the back of my head that told me the sudden jolt of nausea and paralyzing anxiety was gender dysphoria.
It was as if a bomb had gone off as I ran to our bathroom. Even in the dingy light, it was as if I could see every distinct hair on my face — each one burning my eyes.
This was not how I was supposed to look. This wasn’t me. Non-binary people didn’t have beards, right?
My shaky hand shot for the trimmer and it was gone. What was left in the wake of my first brush with gender dysphoria was not euphoria, but rather that uneasy hangover anxiety often leaves. As I hung over the sink trying to catch my breath, I counted every masculine feature I possessed. My mind went over and over the inevitable descent in dysphoria, I’d have for each one. When? Where? How will I fix it? I was left with a jarring thought:
“I’m not cut out for this…”
Homecoming
A month later, the world was on the brink of falling apart. This was not a metaphor for my gender identity but to the arrival of the coronavirus in America. I was on my way back to Brockton for a much longer stay than the usual sleepy mid-semester Spring Break.
I was not out to my family yet, as I had decided to save the gut-wrenching process for an in-person sit-down. In preparation, I had scrubbed the polish from my nails, removed the non-binary flag pin from my bag, and took down the pride flag in my room in the event of a forced move out. Despite the fact that I come from an accepting household, the anxiety of coming home was paralyzing. It would take time to find the right words and build the courage to come out, and the meantime would be filled with that well-known feeling.
Dysphoria.
My first encounter came in the cavernous terminal of Boston’s South Station, where I was to meet my father after his day at work.
“Hey, Simon! It’s good to see you, man!”
The words, spoken with endearing intent, felt like daggers to my gut. That same shaking, queasy feeling fell over me as I hugged him. It wasn’t that the use of such a gendered term was harmful on its own. The term ‘man’ (and its companions ‘dude’ and ‘bruh) have all but been stripped of their gendering and become commonplace in conversation — especially in my own generation. Despite Gen Z’s men, women, and non-binary people co-opting the term, its usage reminded me once again that the shell I occupied didn’t match who I was. And at that moment, as a campus worker making a dollar above minimum and not out to my parents, it felt like it never would.
This was going along stent at home.
It was indeed a long five months before I returned to Salem, but my time at home gave me time to really understand the true nature of dysphoria. While I would not say I necessarily had support from my peers, my pronouns (they/them/theirs, at the time) were respected and I was largely left alone to express myself however I saw fit. But even then, I still experienced dysphoria.
I think back to my first brush with the feeling — from my beard. I held this sentiment at the time that non-binary people were not supposed to have beards. This was maintained in spite of me seeing numerous non-binary people on various forums with beards. Not just people assigned female at birth (AFAB) showing off their testosterone pill prizes, but AMABs like myself living their lives with facial hair. I had even praised these people in the comments and thought of them as a sort of internet comradery siblings.
But what I felt that evening was fear. I had this understanding of non-binaryness as pure androgyny — an understanding that harms the self-image of those in the identity group. In feeling so, I sought to eliminate the confusion cis people feel about non-binary folk to gain acceptance. By making it clear that I was something different than the nuanced mix of masculine, feminine, and androgynous everyone else is, I was playing up to power. While I could be happy for others expressing their own personal brand of non-binary, the pressure to remove my facial hair, paint my nails, clip my hair back all sought to strip me of my masculinity, and show androgyny to the world in exchange for its acceptance.
I found it returned at home as I settled into my high school wardrobe of baggy jeans, oversized work jackets, and combat boots. These once prized pieces of my wardrobe felt like lead on my skin weighing me down. But a critical revelation later in the summer made me see the flaw in dysphoria’s reason:
None of these choices had a gender.
Men, women, and non-binary people alike make wardrobe choices similar to the garb I had left behind when I moved to Salem. And, more importantly, doesn’t the gender of the owner determine the gender of the object? To answer my previous self, a beard on a non-binary person makes that beard, in particular, non-binary — despite any masculine connotation.
The difference between what is and what is connotated is especially important to me now in my own journey as a trans woman. The cissexist notions of what a woman is might be internalized, but I can see it for what it is now. And while this clarity is not a cure-all to dysphoria, it is a guide through it. Though the sweatshirt I wear now may have been designed for a man, it is being worn by a woman. And just as I was given the name Simon, I know;
I am Astrid.
Tauchert, A. (2002). Fuzzy Gender: Between female embodiment and intersex. Journal of Gender Studies, 11(1), 29–38. Retrieved September 18, 2020.
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