Gender dysphoria: How society fuels the pervading sense of disconnect that trans people may feel with their bodies

“The genitalia that you are born with, and the identity that comes along with it or is given to you, are further attached to the roles, responsibilities, and behaviours that society then associates with your clothes. So everything contributes to the dysphoria that one experiences. And it is also because we live in a society where gender is binary, where we see things in binary. And because of that binary, you are forced to fit into either of the two boxes,” she explained.

According to Dr Sachin Nagendrappa, assistant professor of psychiatry at St John’s Medical College Hospital, Bengaluru, research shows “an increased prevalence of body image issues in people with gender dysphoria.”

Miss Trans Queen is the first-ever pageant in India that has since 2016 celebrated the beauty of trans women, embarking on a journey to make them feel included under the definition of beauty. Speaking to The Indian Express, Nitasha Biswas who won the title of Miss Trans Queen India 2017, shared her experience with body dysphoria. She said, “I have experienced gender dysphoria from a very young age. I remember coming back from school and playing with mom’s sarees and jewels. I definitely knew and felt like I was a woman, but my surroundings did not approve of it. This made me disconnect from the world around me. I also remember not liking a few aspects of myself as it just did not make me feel like my soul fit my body.”

Nitasha decided to leave her home state Kolkata and arrived in Delhi to transition into the woman she innately identified as. While working at a fashion e-commerce company in Delhi, she finally started hormone replacement therapy, followed by sex reassignment surgery. “Each time I underwent a surgical process to complete the feeling of being a ‘woman’, I was hugged by a feeling of euphoria. I feel it is truly inexplicable,” Nitasha said.

Nitasha’s story is a tale of triumph against years of fighting against society’s prejudice and discrimination. However, the stories of a lot of young people continue to be written by how society views their choices. Queer people often seek help from mental health practitioners, but seldom do they find the comfort and acceptance that they need.

Sharing his experience with mental health practitioners, Oliver (name changed on request), a 20-year-old college student, said, “I have never consulted mental health professionals for body image issues or issues circling gender and sexuality. I had to go for “therapy” when my parents were unhappy with whom I identified as and that was a very harrowing experience. This marred my relationship with therapy in general and somehow I did not feel comfortable enough to ask for help regarding these things. I did not have supportive, queer-friendly therapists around me and I did not want someone making me feel worse about myself.”

The experiences of several queer people sound similar and, furthermore, amplify the need for inclusive mental healthcare services. Along with the constant unease and inability to fit into society, people who face gender dysphoria also go through a journey before they can feel a sense of belonging in the body they were born with.

Gender dysphoria is fuelled by society in more ways than we can imagine. Anjali defined ‘cis passing’ as a coping mechanism that trans people are forced to engage in to minimise the stigma and discrimination that they face. Explaining it, she said, “Cis passing is a term used for trans people who are misunderstood as a cis person. Trans people try as much as they can to look more cisgender so that they are less vulnerable to discrimination and abuse. So if I am a trans woman, and if I am cis passing, then I might not suffer transphobia directly.”

The need to conform to the gender binary is expressed in multiple ways by society; whether it is the need to wear a bodycon dress for a woman or the expectation that a baby boy would have a blue room. Inclusive healthcare comes from informed practitioners, who can see the issues of queer people in the light of the impact that these deep-rooted prejudices have on them. Sensitisation at the school level about accepting different gender and sexual orientations holds the potential to shape these informed practitioners in particular, and a supportive family for queer people in general.

It is important for children to understand their own bodies before they proceed to view themselves as a part of the complex social structure. Oliver, while reflecting on the importance of correct representation of queer people, said, “Gay men are not out to harass someone’s conventionally attractive son; lesbians are not a bad influence on women; and people with different gender identities do not identify themselves the way they do because they were deprived of parental love or any other such reason.”

“It is important to understand that misrepresenting queer people leads to a lot of damage that takes very long to fix. It is also important to have media that represents queer people appropriately and in a positive, ordinary light, so that growing children know the normalcy of such things and more importantly so that queer children find something to resonate and feel familiar with.”

“There are microaggressions that happen when people refuse to use a person’s chosen pronouns. So there are so many aspects that need correction because our society is full of gender. A day starts with gender and ends with gender. So the day we start dissociating ourselves from gender and the binary would be the day when we will move a step forward towards a society where people can be free as a person and away from those labels that we all are trying to put on ourselves. But that is a very ideal world to live in. We can just hope for that and move in that direction, one day at a time,” Anjali said.

Years of conditioning cannot be unlearned through a few reforms, but these reforms still stand fairly crucial for they would shape what the future would look like for queer people in India – whether it will be blindfolded by the greys of misinformation and prejudice or be painted in the seven colours of love and acceptance.

Ananya Sharma is an intern at The Indian Express