Human beings are complicated black boxes much of the time, even to ourselves, and diagnosis -- even self-diagnosis -- is complicated and hard, especially with the stigma that attaches to a "disorder" Many people don't recognize dysphoria as dysphoria until after the facthttps://twitter.com/diannaeanderson/status/1377683071332327424 …
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(Sorry, "tanha" is desire and "chanda" is "intention", a "plan to act" It starts with something being wrong, a "pain point", then a desire for a different situation than the one you have, then a plan of action or an agenda to make that happen)
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I'm going on this weird tangent because if you really think about it and dig down into it all forms of wanting to change things are the same They all involve some kind of "pain" even if it's not dramatic or violent pain "Dysphoria" is simply a synonym, in the end, of "dukkha"
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At some level it's not really about what people say or how they act but what they do A great poet who's in touch with their emotions could wax lyrical about how it feels to touch a hot stove and convince you in great detail how agonizing the feeling of metal burning flesh is
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But not everyone is Some people just say "Ow! Shit! That's hot!", very uncreatively and unoriginally, just "regurgitating cliches" Some people might not say anything at all -- some are ashamed to admit touching the stove hurt, some might genuinely believe it didn't hurt
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But you know what? Their arm jerked back from the stove just the same Indeed, their lower sympathetic nervous system makes their arm jerk back *before* the brain can consciously register the sensation we call "pain"
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To greatly oversimplify some cognitive science here, the conscious experience comes *after* the desire or impulse The body *already* knows to jerk back from hot stoves before telling the prefrontal cortex about it The pain is really to remind you not to do it again
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But ultimately, like, it doesn't matter We work really hard to try to quantify physical pain, which is still a self-reported experience ("How bad does this feel on a scale of 1-10?" and other silliness) But whatever they say about it, their behavior indicates the stove is hot
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This is why it's so fucking frustrating that the Trans Discourse still revolves around "We need to distinguish between people with 'genuine dysphoria' from people who just want to transition" WANTING TO TRANSITION IS THE DEFINITION OF DYSPHORIA IT'S THE SAME THING
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The existence of the desire IS ITSELF A "SIGN OF DISTRESS" If you don't want to be a girl anymore and you do want to be a boy, that's what dysphoria is, ultimately That's the actual core definition
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This shit of wanting to actually see the crying and the snot and the vomit and the blood and the shaking and the sobbing and the pain is just voyeuristic sadism Shut the fuck up and write the prescription you fucking sick piece of shit
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The people who are really into gatekeeping will try to pick this apart "You don't mean *every* form of 'wanting' transition is dysphoria do you? What if you just want to transition to join the 19th-century Army? What if you're being paid to do it by an eccentric billionaire?"
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And the answer, of course, is that people who traffic in abstract hypothetical generalizing thought experiments deserve a concrete actual specific physical fist in the mouth
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The serious definition of dysphoria is as simple as the definition of desire Do you feel there's something wrong in your life, whether you can put a name to it, that transition can fix Do you see that as a better life you desire and will you make a plan of action to achieve it
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If something made you go to the office and ask for hormones in the first place then that "something", however big or small it is, however many "social factors" went into it, is by definition dysphoria The test is in wanting it enough to do it, there don't need to be more tests
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To continue this metaphor, I guess, one thing about touching a hot stove is if you really do just *brush* the stove and jerk back immediately you indeed don't feel much pain at all Someone who is allowed to freely avoid negative stimuli generally doesn't feel much pain
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You know, just like comfortable well-fed people have a *drive* to eat food and drink water but they don't really know what "hunger" and "thirst" are Not really, only kinda sorta, in fleeting moments before the microwave is done with their nachos
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The main reason you feel actual *pain* is when you brush against the hot stove, you *try* to pull your hand back, *and someone holds your hand there and won't let you move it*
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Just like the Buddhist concepts of dukkha/tanha/chanda in and of themselves are benign A life of getting hungry, making sandwiches and then eating them isn't a bad life at all, it doesn't contain any of what we think of as "negative emotions"
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All that ugly dark stuff? That actually constitutes "suffering"? The rage, the resentment, the fear, the betrayal, the grief? That's what happens when the fridge is empty
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There is a very real sense in which dysphoria to some degree might be inevitable (to the extent that transness is biological, a "born in the wrong body" narrative) but to a huge extent is social The problem isn't with the person, the problem is with society
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It's with the parents or the teachers or the doctors or the Jesse Singals who really want to know "Okay, is the stove hot, or did you just kinda move your hand for the sake of moving it?" and then hold your hand in place and watch your face to see if you cry
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I don't believe that it's plausible Jesse Thorn's daughter has NEVER experienced what some chud like Singal thinks of as "real dysphoria", but I believe it probably only happened after she entered school and had to deal with a transphobic society
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And I believe that on the off chance she really didn't "experience dysphoria" in the sense Singal means -- she's never felt that overpowering sense of wrongness like your hand being stuck on a hot stove and not being allowed to lift it -- then that's to be fucking celebrated
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Holy shit, a set of parents whose trans kid *never* truly felt dysphoric because as soon as she said "I'm a girl" she was listened to and believed? Someone jerked their hand back from the stove so fast it didn't even leave a scar? That's a goddamn Christmas miracle
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And some fucking creep, some fucking sadist like Dusty Springroll here, thinking he's a hero for holding your hand on the stove "until you know for sure if it's really hot"
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Maybe if you keep your hand there long enough you'll learn the bullshit twisted Tough Guy version of Buddhism where you find out that heat and cold are "illusions" and pain can be ignored and be a tough strong hardened adult (with a maimed hand), like Paul Atreides in Dune
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Fuck him Fuck everyone who thinks like him Fuck everyone in this whole benighted world who has a way to make life easy and chooses to make it hard
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End of conversation
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