In the past, transgender people were often diagnosed with a gender identity disorder.
The dysphoria definition emphasizes the distress caused by the mismatch between assigned gender and experienced gender. The dysphoria part refers to a sense of discontent or unhappiness with your biological gender and the gender roles you're expected to conform to in society.
Your body parts may indicate that you're male or female, but you feel strongly that you're the opposite. Gender dysphoria can happen when there's a mismatch between the gender you were assigned at birth and your own experiences of gender. When you and others accept your experienced and expressed gender, you can feel comfortable in your skin. And it's the gender that society associates with the types of behavior that you feel natural doing. It's aligned with the gender roles that feel right to you. Your experienced or expressed gender is the gender you feel inside. They probably dressed you in the typical clothes for that gender, encouraged you to behave as that gender, and discouraged you from participating in the usual activities of the other gender. They treated you as that gender as you grew up. Or maybe your parents made that determination themselves. Perhaps a doctor or midwife looked at you and told your parents whether you were a boy or girl.
Your assigned gender is the gender you were proclaimed to be at birth. Expressed And Experienced Genderīefore looking at the definition of gender dysphoria, it helps if you know what assigned and experienced gender is. Here's a look at gender dysphoria treatment and how it can help.Īssigned Gender Vs.