Why Gender Dysphoria, Rather Than Gender Identity, Explains Transition
And why it matters.
In recent years, there has been an intense debate over the ‘validity’, or lack thereof, of gender identity as a concept. On multiple occasions, I have argued for the validity of gender identity, based on my own life experiences as a trans woman. What I also did, but did not emphasize at the time, was that I basically demystified the concept of gender identity by doing that.
What I said was that I identified as female because I shared the interests and preferences of girls growing up, and I’m still much closer to women than men socially. In other words, me identifying as female is simply a result of me identifying with those who share social and lifestyle preferences with myself, over a long time. It is no different than identifying as a Canadian, a conservative, or a supporter of a certain football team. People make these subjective identifications all the time, it is how we make sense of the world around us.
However, what I also see now is that this, in and of itself, doesn’t actually explain my gender transition. Indeed, some feminine gay men also say they identify with women or femininity, at least to some extent, and for similar reasons. Yet they don’t feel the need to undergo gender transition. To complicate things further, there are a substantial number of trans women who report that they didn’t actually ‘identify as women’ at the beginning of their transition. They only ‘wanted to be female’. The reason they didn’t ‘identify as women’ was because they didn’t know what it was like to be a woman until they started ‘becoming one’ socially. These trans women typically don’t report having had a feminine childhood, or even a feminine young adulthood, therefore they don’t have the reasons for identifying as female like I do. Therefore, it is just natural that they don’t actually ‘identify as a woman’. This further proves that gender identity is no different from other types of subjective identity.
What all this shows is that firstly, identifying as the ‘biologically opposite’ gender isn’t the actual cause of gender transition, and secondly, such identification is also not always present in those who pursue transition. So what makes gender transition necessary? If you survey any group of trans people, and ask why they transitioned, the vast majority will tell you it’s because they have gender dysphoria, and they transitioned to relieve gender dysphoria. This means that gender dysphoria, rather than gender identity, explains gender transition. While it is certainly more common for those who have gender dysphoria to identify as the ‘biologically opposite’ gender, simply as a result of having the interests and behavioral instincts of that gender, it is the dysphoria itself, and not this identification, that explains the need for gender transition.
While gender identity is social, gender dysphoria is mainly a physical discomfort with one’s body. This is why I say that trans people don’t reinforce gender stereotypes by transitioning. I transitioned to relieve physical dysphoria, not because I wanted to wear dresses occasionally and have ‘feminine’ music tastes, and felt that I needed to change my body to fit society’s stereotypes. I think that the conflation of gender identity with gender dysphoria is what has given rise to the misunderstanding that trans people transition to fulfill gender stereotypes, or that if gender stereotypes ceased to exist, trans people wouldn’t need to medically transition anymore. These misunderstandings in turn underpin a certain kind of skepticism towards gender transition. This could mean that clarifying the difference between gender identity (social) and gender dysphoria (physical), and that it is the latter that makes transition necessary, could be helpful in resolving some of this skepticism. Trans rights reform proposals based on the need to accommodate gender dysphoria would also be more likely to succeed than philosophical arguments about whether identifying as a woman makes one a woman, because gender dysphoria objectively exists, but identity and philosophy are ultimately subjective.
So why does gender dysphoria exist, and why is it often, but not always, associated with gender non-conforming behavior (and hence identity)? Nobody knows the answer for sure. It’s just like nobody knows for sure why some people are gay, and why gayness is similarly associated with gender non-conformity in some cases. But one thing is for sure: the existence of gender dysphoria, and that it is not a delusional psychotic disorder, has been proven by clinical medicine. And, in many cases, gender transition can alleviate the pain, where nothing else can. Which is why it would be cruel to prevent such transitions in consenting adults (which is a stated goal of some extreme anti-trans activists).
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com on April 10, 2023.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who recently published her autobiography The TaraElla Story, in which she described the events that inspired her writing.
She is also the author of the Moral Libertarian Horizon books, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
