Trans Megathread for the Week of 10⁄28 to 11⁄3)
Trans Megathread for the Week of 10⁄28 to 11⁄3)
K (189?–?) Soviet pioneer. From Kazan, Tartarstan, USSR, K was diagnosed as a ‘transvestite’ in 1937.
She was given permission by the People’s Court to wear female clothing, her identity papers were changed to her female name, and her name was removed from the military recruitment rolls.
She was featured in a 1957 gynaecology textbook.
M.G. Serdiukov. Sudebnaia ginekologiia I sudebnoi akusherstvo. Moscow: Meditsina 1957: 47-8.
Dan Healey. Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001: fig 24.
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Is there a difference between gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia?
Is gender dysphoria like a subset of dysmorphia?
If a cis woman worries that she looks too masculine or a cis man frets about balding, do these count as gender dysphoria or dysmorphia?
What is the appropriate amount of worrying about one's appearance before it gets pathologized? Lol
Terminal encounter has put it really well, but for me in my personal life i tend to think of it as: dysmorphia is when I cant see my body for what it is, dysphoria is when I can.
Like i get obsessive about my shoulders and ribcage. Yeah theyre on the larger side, but not abnormal for women. I often cant see this, and think my shoulders are massive, so i categorize it as dysmorphia.
I also get obsessive about my leg hair, but i dont see my legs as more hairy than they are. The issue there is that I see them for what they are and I dont like it, whereas my shoulders i see as larger than they are and dont like that.
Idk if thats helpful, its not a medical way to think about it, but its how i think about it in my life
dysmorphia is when I cant see my body for what it is, dysphoria is when I can.
This is actually a super helpful framework for me. Thank you
This
Like a lot of mental health, you're not gonna find a clear delineation one side of which we say "this person has dysmorphia" and the other we say "this person doesn't."
Dysmorphia is obsessive and people with it ruminate on their self-percieved flaws. It can also have a delusional aspect, like with people with disordered eating (like anorexia) thinking they look too overweight while their BMI slips to under 15, then 12, then... not compatable with life. There's also people who think their muscles aren't big enough, typically men, and you can see the results of that between injections and using gear. Some people go as far as to have limbs amputated to align their self perception with outward body. I had a patient who bit his own finger off (intense, he should probably have a used a knife, whatever) because he felt he could not worship God properly with it - these needs are intense and felt very sincerely by the people with dysmorphia.
Gender dysphoria is much more specific to transgender people in the literature and isn't pathologized the same way anymkre (well, except that it's possible to cure by just doing HRT or surgery or merely socially transitioning etc). Sometimes gender studies theorists point out that plenty of cis people get gender affirming medical attention to attend to some kind of need, and yeah why not call it cis gender dysphoria. It fits but we like to keep our transes and cises more separated for billing code reasons lol
The "appropriate" amount is typically only as much as it doesn't affect your day to day life, your activities of daily living or instrumental activities of daily living. People with body dysmorphia are capable of doing quite a bit of harm to themselves to ease their anxiety and discomfort around their self perception, it's not just moaning about going bald or flying to Turkey for a hair transplant (remember the guy who bit his finger off).
What is Good Health and a subset being what is Good Mental Health are social constructs and are open questions despite medicines empirical trappings. Good Health is generally that you're able to accomplish the things you want to accomplish, plenty of room there for people with disability but also opens up questions of receiving adequate resources (poverty or the brit diagnosis of JSL, just shit life)
(well, except that it's possible to cure by just doing HRT or surgery or merely socially transitioning etc)
Interesting. Can dysmorphia not be cured through surgery?
No, there is nothing to actually fix and its more like OCD obsession than gender dysphoria. They tend to over correct (e.g. the anorexia example or the muscle dysmorphia with injections) and don't see what has changed. Even when they try to "correct" with cosmetic surgery, it doesn't work and they sometimes go back and get more and it never fixes the "issue". You can see a lot of botched examples if you're curious, more than one surgeon is happy to do whatever with no qualms about ethics so long as the patient has the money. Some people with dysmorphia will pick at their skin and create these crazy intense open sores and they'll keep picking, this isn't something you fix with a surgery (well, debridement and packing is but fixing the picking isn't a surgery)
It's not a mindset that is likely to make sense because it is disordered thinking and, presumably, not something you have. I can kind of see it, I have OCD but mine is about checking.
That's a good distinction. Thank you.
Sometimes when my dysphoria is bad, I have a distorted view of myself, but taking steps to feminize does actually help.
Personally I think my gender dysphoria and body dsyohoria are interconnected but separate