I am Trans Enough

Source: Pixabay

I know I don’t fit perfectly into what people expect from a transgender guy. I’ve never had crippling dysphoria. I do occasionally enjoy painting my fingernails and dying my hair. I have no desire to get bottom surgery. Yet, these are all reasons for others to doubt my transness.

If there’s one thing I think we all should agree on, is that humans are complicated creatures. It’s practically impossible to lump any single person into a neat category or box. We’re all uniquely different in our own way. That’s what makes the world so interesting.

Yet, we’re constantly trying to shove people into boxes and make them conform to some stereotype, even if we don’t consciously mean to do so. Unintentional categorization is something we all do, and most people try to correct themselves when presented with facts. People can learn to expand their thinking, and I believe most are willing to. However, there is a small subset of the population that thinks there’s only one right way and they stubbornly cling to that viewpoint, regardless of any facts they are presented with.

My Dysphoria

I have long contended that I don’t have any dysphoria, although that’s not entirely true. The reason why I have said that in the past was because so many of my transgender brethren have severe, almost crippling dysphoria. It leads them to severe bouts of depression, anxiety, and in some cases suicidal ideation. It’s why for them, transitioning is literally a matter of life or death.

My dysphoria is far milder, which is why it’s taken me a lot longer to even recognize that I have it. Over all the decades that I’ve looked in the mirror at my body, I’ve mostly shrugged and gotten on with my day. I’ve never liked my body, especially after puberty, but it’s never caused me any great upset. I was always frustrated with how curvy and lumpy my body is.

When puberty hit, I could no longer wear clothes from the boy’s department like I had. They just didn’t fit my curvy, feminine shape. I tried dieting myself back to my previous shape, but no matter how much weight I lost, the curves persisted. So, I just accepted that was my new reality and learned how to find unisex styles of clothes in the girl’s department instead.