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Is gender dysphoria thus caused by the body craving testosterone or estrogen hormones, when it doesn’t have?

kelseyfrog
That's one way to think of it, but the root of it (imho) is a mismatch between ones internal sense of inalienable gender identity and the embodiment of that identity physically - think clothing, bodily form, social perception, etc.

It might be difficult to imagine how those two things are separable if one has lived their whole life with them in congruence. If perhaps, you close your eyes and concentrate on your being, there is a part of you that feels that your sense of manness of womanness is part of who you are? What would you do if you retained that sense, and woke up in the body of the opposite sex and were expected to behave in congruence with that contrary to your internal sense of self? It can be a bit like that.

deadbabe OP
I think that is the best way to think about it. Because if not, then gender dysphoria sounds mostly like it’s just about fashion.

I wouldn’t want to wake up and be a man, but not for any reasons that are biological. I work in a male dominated field, and most of my interactions are with men, I like the things I can do and get away with, where a man would not have the same experience. The male experience sounds lonely, tough, and a lot of your success seems to just depend on chance and grit. My life has some bad parts, but it’s softer and more comfortable. Would I have dysphoria as a man? I don’t know, to me it sounds like it’d be something closer to envy, but maybe that’s just dysphoria by another name. Maybe that’s the root cause of why so many men lash out at women.

DoctorOW
I haven't studied gender dysphoria but I've been diagnosed with it. In my experience, it's an incongruence between your idea of yourself and your perceptible form. In some ways it could be argued your body is "craving" it but not in the same way it may crave a specific nutrient. Instead, you're sort of surprised and often upset by the way that you are.
tasuki
Would you say it is similar to how some people with no legs want to have legs? Or fat people who want to be skinny?
DoctorOW
I guess it's kind of similar to how people without legs feel. I've heard that people without legs sometimes have "phantom legs". While they're consciously aware they're missing legs, their brain is still wired to have them. Similarly, my brain is wired for a female body.

Every trans person's experience is different, I know that the "wrong body" terminology doesn't apply to everyone.

deadbabe OP
What about more like a poor person wishing they were rich?
deadbabe OP
How do you cope?
DoctorOW
Honestly I truly believe that I will reach a point where my body feels like mine. The changes with HRT do a whole hell of a lot to minimize dysphoria in my experience. I also live with, work with, and am friends with people who genuinely see me as the way I see myself, as a woman. You can tell from the way people interact with you, how they see you. Being perceived as a woman fits with my perception of myself.
tasuki
> Honestly I truly believe that I will reach a point where my body feels like mine.

There are two ways to achieve that: changing the body, and changing the mind.

(I'm not claiming one to be easier than the other, but I've noticed most people have a strong preference for changing their body rather than changing their mind)

DoctorOW
I believe you have to do both. On the rest of my comment I tried to convey that in addition to changing my body, my female mindset is a key part of expressing my gender identity.
a_shovel
This is something I've been thinking too (though it seems clear to me it's only one factor out of many). I've heard at least two anecdotes from trans women I follow on social media that led me to this theory. One was prescribed estrogen doses too infrequently, and the other had lost access to medication, and they both started feeling like total crap when they went off estrogen, without any associated perceptible changes to their bodies.

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