Gender dysphoria is a rare experience in society as a whole, affecting about 0.4 per cent of the population, which can make it hard to explain to the… - Shon Faye
" "Gender dysphoria is a rare experience in society as a whole, affecting about 0.4 per cent of the population, which can make it hard to explain to the vast majority of people, who have not experienced it. To get around this, we often rely on metaphors. The clumsy phrase ‘born in the wrong body’ has become the favoured soundbite in popular media. Clumsy because – and this must be stressed – many trans people do not think this describes dysphoria at all well. To my mind, the trans writer expresses it more accurately: ‘Dysphoria,’ she says, ‘can feel like heartbreak.’ Heartbreak, its incapacitating grief and the sense of absence and loss which activate the same parts of the brain as physical pain, can be so all-consuming it interferes with your everyday life. So, too, dysphoria. For me, at least, this is a much richer way of describing how many trans people experience distress with their bodies – indeed, how I felt until I medically transitioned.
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About Shon Faye
(born 27 March 1988) is an English writer, editor, journalist, and presenter, known for her commentary on LGBTQ+, women's, and mental health issues. She hosts the podcast Call Me Mother and is the author of the 2021 book .
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Trans healthcare, then, is part of a wider political struggle for bodily autonomy that women, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people and ethnic minorities have all been fighting – a struggle that intensified during the decade of austerity that was the 2010s. This political struggle has primarily focused on trans adults, growing societal awareness of whom has allowed for more robust advocacy and rebuttal of the myths about medical transition. Even transphobes and reactionaries in the media and in politics, uneasy and disapproving though they remain, have come to begrudgingly tolerate adult medical transition as a matter of personal autonomy. After all, as trans people have successfully argued, adults are entitled to do whatever they want with their own bodies.
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Whichever way you look at it, the debate among cisgender feminists about whether or not trans women are to be included in both the definition of woman and the feminist movement still primarily envisions feminism as a project owned by cis women. In this vision, trans people are positioned either negatively, as impostors, or positively, as welcome guests. The case for inclusivity can often rest on whether it is ‘kind’ or ‘good’ or ‘right’ to welcome trans women as sisters, rather than any serious consideration of why their inclusion might be politically necessary for liberation from patriarchy. Rarely in mainstream debates over trans people and feminism do we consider the fatal flaw in any feminist movement that purports to be dismantling the patriarchy while disregarding the implications of trans people’s existence. Their existence complicates cis feminism, and such complexity can only be erased by seeing the struggle as primarily about cis women fighting oppression by cis men. The reality, I would argue, is this: not only do trans people need feminism, but feminism also needs trans people.
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