@BlazerCaravan Nice to see you posting again. You sound fired up! Hope all is well. I have an acquaintance that is transitioning and also posted their "coming out" describing their gender dysphoria shortly before you posted your life news in this forum. She seems very happy now. I find your thoughts on gender dysphoria interesting because while I have questions about it in processing what's going on in my acquaintance's head, I don't feel that we are good enough of friends to ask questions. Instead I just try to respect her life decisions and apologize when I catch myself using the wrong pronoun. Thank you for coming here to post your thoughts.
(this is a horrible metaphor because I just ate lunch) Imagine a sandwich.
One slice of bread is your Biological Sex Expression, things like you genitals, secondary sex characteristics like facial hair, breasts, etc.
The filling represents your mental and emotional state: messy and gooey, or maybe neatly sliced and square.
One slice of bread is your Gender Identity, the way you feel inside, the way you actually identify.
Now, for 95% of people, both slices of bread are exactly the same. They're from the same loaf, adjacent slices. The filling is neatly inside both slices. If you looked from the top down at your plate, you might not even realize it was a sandwich. It'd look like a single piece of bread.
For 5% of people, the two slices of bread aren't the same. They're different sizes, from different loaves. They don't match. And when they don't match, the Biological Sex Expression slice is always larger, and the Gender Identity slice is always a bit smaller. Maybe it's round too. Who knows.
Now, if the top slice of the sandwich is the Biological Sex Expression, from the top down it might still look like a single slice of bread, because the other slice is hidden... but the filling is going to drip onto the plate if it's gooey (if it's neat and orderly, maybe it doesn't... some folks have it all figured out). This is a closeted trans person, or one who doesn't realize they're trans yet. But that dripping? That's what gender dysphoria is. The discomfort of knowing your slices don't match, of knowing that you're a sandwich and not a single slice of bread...
...but more than that, you realize everyone's a fucking sandwich and they think they're all single slices of bread. It's infuriating but so impossible to explain because nobody looks at anyone except from the top down, as if there was no depth to the picture.
The act of coming out involves flipping the sandwich over, expressing your Gender Identity outwardly. But that Biological slice can still be seen, and so can some of the filling. Coming out exposes the difference. People can't look top down and see a single slice anymore. Often what they see is a big mess, a big slice and a little slice, and a bunch of exposed filling.
What an awful sandwich! Why did they even bother flipping the sandwich over if it looks like THAT?! My god who would eat that?!
But the filling isn't dripping on the plate anymore. That expression keeps the emotions in check.
Hormones, surgery, all of that... it's all about slicing that Biological slice to make it fit the gender slice. And some folks, if they get treatment early enough, can cut that biological slice to match perfectly. And hey, what a beautiful slice of bread. They can't even see the sandwich. Some folks will never know there's two slices of bread there.
Most of the time, the slices don't match that well, but if you dress up right and don't talk, you can make that top slice a bit bigger than the bottom slice so that if people just glance they don't see a sandwich.
People need to realize everyone is a sandwich first. Then they need to feel lucky as fuck their slices match. Then they need to support folks who have different slices. Then, you can get into accepting sandwiches that aren't neatly made, so that we don't have to hack away at the bottom slice to make it match the top slice. Because even a messy sandwich can be delicious.
