Dear Anita

Thank you for being insightful and helping me work on maintaining a positive well-being. Sometimes when people tell me how to present masculinity I feel like I’m being placed into stereotypes of masculinity and I don’t like that. I want to be happy being myself and presenting my gender identity in a way that feels right for me and when people give me ideas on how to be more masculine, I feel conflicted. On one hand, I feel grateful that they are acknowledging that I want to present masculine and helping me, but on the other hand I feel like they are silently judging me and my inner critic starts to think maybe I’m not masculine enough which is why they are giving advice. The chest binder helps hide my chest and the season being winter I can put layers on that hide the bumps that the chest binder sometimes doesn’t cover. I feel intense dysphoria over my chest and especially in the summer months it fills me with a sense of overwhelming emotional pain because I don’t have as many layers to cover up my body and I feel more exposed. Also wearing a chest binder limits the body’s movement, so you can’t bend your body as freely as you want sometimes. But it’s better than the intense dysphoria that makes me what to destroy the parts of me that seem feminine and don’t belong. I think that’s why I became anorexic because I wanted to have a flatter chest and look more masculine.  Gender dysphoria in of itself is a strong sense of discomfort with your body. Some people experience gender dysphoria because their body is going through changes as they mature and it’s not uncommon to feel insecure about oneself during this time. However sometimes gender dysphoria lasts longer than the the times of adolescence and goes into young adulthood. These individuals that have gender dysphoria still feel uncomfortable with their bodies. Along with the feelings of insecurities with their bodies, they may wish to change parts of themselves to lessen the insecurity because it has persisted for a while. Over time as the feelings seem to persist and may become overwhelming people may question their gender identity. When a person begins to have intense dysphoria that makes them question their gender identity and makes them wonder if there are parts of them that don’t belong then they will start trying to figure out how to present themselves in a way that lessens the gender dysphoria. During this time, individuals may play with their gender and also work on various ways to express different gender identities and they may find that a specific gender identity feels more right for them. As they explore ways trying to understand their gender dysphoria, they begin to discover that there are gender identities that make them feel more comfortable about themselves. People are born with a biological sex of female or male. Females produce eggs and males produce sperm and females can reproduce. That is biological sex. Biological sex is what a person is born as, while gender is the sense of being female or male. Scientists like to label things using a binomial classification system to make things easier to classify. Many of our species have two names on the biological hierarchy, each species has a “genus” and “species” classification to make it easier to figure out what species they are. Likewise, our human classification is “Homo Sapiens” which means “wise human.” Biological sciences like to classify things into two groups because it makes it easier to identify the species which is why we have female and male for humans to distinguish between the biological sex of humans. Biological sex is different  from gender identity. A person may be classified with a biological sex as female because they have the physical features of a female and can reproduce, but their gender identity  is how they feel in their minds. Scientists classify a person’s sex as female or male based on their biological nature and that is part of the binary binomial classification system because there are two classifications: male and female based on biological appearance. Yet, scientists have discovered that some people have gender identities that don’t match their biological sex. Some people may be classified as female when they are born based on their biological nature, but their minds may have a gender identity that is male. When gender identity doesn’t match the biological sex, scientists call the person transgender. Gender is not a binary thing, but society makes it seem like it is binary because we often confuse gender with biological sex. Gender is a sense of being male, female, both or neither. The reason why gender seems so binary is that  people tend to view the people they are attracted to in terms of male and female. People have an innate desire to connect with others and form relationships and having a binary classification system with male and female makes it easier for people to figure out who they are sexually attracted to. Natural selection allows species that are better adapted to their environment to survive longer and reproduce. Since biological females can reproduce and males need a partner to reproduce with, nature has caused the designation of the attraction between males and females. Since most of our population is heterosexual and people are attracted to the opposite sex because of reproductive success natural selection has favored the idea of males and females. Since sexual attraction and the perpetration of our species is important for people, this is why the biological designation of male and female exist. The two biological sexes Male and female allow scientists to understand how humans are different from one another and allows them to classify them according biological nature based on reproductive ability. However, gender identity is influenced by society and also an individual’s sense of who they are. Society causes people question their gender lots of times. Sometimes society will label a behavior as male or female and it causes people to question their inner nature whether if they act this way does it make them seem more masculine or feminine. Some people will question themselves because they may be biologically female, but their behavior seems to be male and that makes them wonder about their gender identity. Gender is a societal constraint and it causes people to question who they are. The societal expectations of gender change based on different environments and views. Many people learn the expectations society has for their gender based on what others see as their physical appearance or what is present as the characteristics of biological sex. If a person is born female, society expects the person to have gender aspects of female. But the gender of people changes as they work on finding themselves and begin to not think that the biological appearance of who they are how they should act. People play with gender a lot as they try to find a way to present themselves that makes them feel comfortable which is why gender is not binary but a spectrum . As people mature, they may experience gender  dysphoria because their bodies are changing and they may feel insecure about themselves. The gender dysphoria is common and usually fades with emerging adulthood. But in some cases, the gender dysphoria does not go away and becomes intensified as a person matures. The person struggling with gender dysphoria starts to question their gender identity and begins to explore ways to lessen the discomfort. As they explore their gender, they may find that they are more comfortable with another gender. When a person feels like the gender that they are more comfortable with presenting differs from their biological sex and they want to express themselves as that gender, these people are called transgender. Many transgender people have intense gender dysphoria that lasts long and doesn’t fade away. The dysphoria is often more overwhelming tha than a person who has some gender dysphoria over their body. The transgender person feels an overwhelming sense of gender dysphoria that makes them feel like they are in the wrong body. Some people who experience gender dysphoria feel  discomfort over their bodies, but over time  they learn to accept it and most people often just feel insecure about a part of their bodies. For transgender people, the gender dysphoria causes to feel more than just mere discomfort over their bodies, instead they feel like there are parts of their body that don’t belong to them. The reason they feel this way is because there are parts of their body that they feel don’t correspond to  their gender identity. Many transgender people suffer from intense dysphoria because they want their bodies to match the gender identity they feel on the inside.  The reason why many transgender people seek hormones and gender affirming surgery is to help them feel happier with their bodies. Hormones have their side effects such as mood changes, appetite changes, possible cancer risk but transgender people seek hormones to help them with their mental well-being. Surgery  requires  recovery time, but if it helps make life more meaningful than it’s important for transgender people to  get the surgery. Most transgender people are aware of the risks of hormones and surgery, but they feel it is necessary for their mental health to go through the procedures. I have talked to a doctor about taking testosterone hormones and the risks seem scary, but what’s  more depressing is that I feel so dysphoric in my body and the physical changes testosterone will wrought in my  body will make me feel more masculine and improve my quality of life.