metapianycist:

what some people think “you don’t need dysphoria to be trans” means: anyone can choose to be trans and trans people can just choose to be cis.

what “you don’t need dysphoria to be trans” actually means: trans experiences are extremely varied and trans people define dysphoria in multiple valid ways. there are multiple valid ways to be trans other than the “true transsexual” narrative popularized by cis people. distress about your birth assigned gender or sex characteristics is one way to be trans. discovering that you suddenly feel more authentic when living as a new gender, after no discernable distress that you’d call dysphoria, is another. if your gender is different from the one you were assigned at birth, you can call yourself trans.