Dysphoria and lack thereof
I haven't yelled about gender in a little while, so here you go:
Dysphoria is not a requirement for being trans.
You may be scratching your head, thinking, But how would someone know they're trans if they don't experience dysphoria? You might have been told that "transtrenders" are just faking it, that they make the "real trans people" look ridiculous. You are possibly very angry right now, because you believe that cis people are faking being trans and are taking resources away from those who are actually trans and therefore need the resources. I hear you. Please keep reading.
First, some definitions:
Gender dysphoria: a distressed state arising from discrepancy between a person's gender identity and the sex the person was assigned at birth
Gender euphoria: generally thought of as the "opposite" of dysphoria
Transgender: an adjective describing someone who identifies as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth
Whether or not someone experiences distress, they can experience a discrepancy between their assigned gender and the gender they identify as.
So how do they know? It's possible to experience gender euphoria without ever having experienced gender dysphoria. Maybe you feel meh about yourself until one day you try presenting in a different way, and something clicks. You feel great! Way better than usual! And by process of elimination or some other method or just by trusting your gut, you know it's gender related. (This doesn't always have to mean that you're trans, but the point is that it can mean that.)
Or maybe you don't fully know, and you've always felt slightly off-kilter but not so much that you'd categorize it as "distress" or "dysphoria," so you keep experimenting with labels until you find one that feels good to say. You keep trying new sets of pronouns until you smile when someone refers to you using a certain pronoun. You keep overhauling your wardrobe until you feel most comfortable and confident in your physical self.
A lot of trans people tend to think of dysphoria and euphoria as a spectrum with two ends: another binary. I'm guilty of this as well. What if we started thinking about dysphoria as if it's just as nuanced and complex as gender itself? Thinking of gender as a spectrum is a great place to start, but in fact, gender is not linear, and neither are dysphoria and euphoria.
To address the argument that some of us are faking being trans: I'm sure that there are people who do that. Humanity is neither uniformly good nor uniformly evil. I am also sure that the percentage of people who fake being trans to gain access to resources not intended for them is extremely low compared to the number of trans people who don't experience dysphoria and are not faking. And our fight is not with people who may or may not be faking identities to gain access to resources, but rather with corporations and rich people who hoard resources, thus creating scarcity where it doesn't need to exist. Whoever thinks it's ethical to keep more money for themselves than they need to live, support their family, pay off debt, save up for retirement etc. needs a serious reality check.
What exactly do you lose by trusting someone when they speak about their identity and their lived experience? How arrogant do you have to be to believe that you know more about someone else than they do? And another thing: identity is fluid. Maybe someone identifies as trans for five years and then decides, you know what, I'm actually cis. That doesn't mean they were faking being trans.
It can be difficult to take someone seriously when they say, "I'm [x obscure gender] and I don't have dysphoria and I don't want gender affirming surgery or hormones." I understand that. But finding it difficult to take them seriously is not a valid excuse for calling their identity fake or made-up. Finding it difficult to take them seriously is not a good excuse for telling them that they make the trans community look ridiculous. Finding it difficult to take them seriously doesn't make it okay to dehumanize them.
If you have difficulty taking someone seriously, ask them questions. If they're anything like me, they're happy to talk about their gender and how they experience it. Ask them questions and take time to process their answers, because they're asking you to shift your worldview fairly radically, just as they have.