Overcoming ‘Gender Dysphoria’

Artwork by Nicole Jones.

The pairing of the words “gender” and “dysphoria” is an insidious and anti-feminist one. Gender, a hierarchical construct understood by feminists as oppressive, is inherently distressing. Women and girls, especially, are absolutely right to feel uncomfortable with gender. It has never been something that women should strive to feel at ease within. Perhaps this is why referrals for girls to the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) have increased by 5,337% in under a decade.

In 2013, the term “gender dysphoria” was added to the DSM-5, replacing “gender identity disorder” in the editions before. In this edition, the term “gender” all but replaces “sex”, which is said to be “assigned”. Similarly, in the ICD-11, the World Health Organisation (WHO) removed references to “disorder” and reclassified “gender incongruence” as relating to sexual health, rather than mental illness. Such revisions are in part due to pressure from lobby groups to de-medicalise transition and are part of a larger trend that has resulted in policy capture and a push for new legislation in many countries. Through subtle linguistic changes, over time, the reality of transition as relating to the body has been obscured and sanitised. Many are not told of the risks and are left without the appropriate follow up care. Some even realise after transition that it is impossible to actually change sex. Threshold changes have created an increasingly broad category in which many will find themselves and over-diagnosis and over-treatment can only be expected to follow. This is unsurprising, given the lucrative market surrounding transition. The unfortunate irony at the heart of the “de-medicalisation” of transgenderism is an increasingly medical approach in which non-conformity is deemed treatable through surgical and hormonal interventions.

When looking at these figures from the Tavistock, I feel relieved that my feminist consciousness gave me the ability to understand my body image issues before any doctor could make a referral. “Gender dysphoria” was not yet in the vocabulary of teenagers; however, the climate that preceded this “rise in acceptance” for transgender youth was a homophobic one. There were no “out” lesbians at my secondary school and only one transgender person, who, coincidentally, was the only openly same-sex attracted person we were aware of at the time…