Trident, your initial question was alright, though the psychological is often physical in the sense it’s not caused by experience but rather is baked in (which you recognize). And if we’re talking about solely about the latter, the question that follows yours is what difference it makes? That’s a sincere question for you.
What difference does any question make? I’m curious. I’m beyond curious.
You’ve got to understand where I’m coming from. I’m looking at this from a couple of angles and different world views.
I grew up in a really strong and strict conservative household. Admitting my SSA was a non-starter. Instead I buried it as best I could and managed to screw up a few lives by the wayside. So I’ve got that want to know what’s up with all this. I’m part of a group who get together online to trade pain and share hope. We’re all from different backgrounds. Some of us have SSA. Some of us have dysphoria. Some of us have different leanings all together. But where we’ve got a basic understanding is that we all struggle with our identities in context of our religious views. Most of us are from Christian backgrounds. Most of us grew up our whole lives being told God looked down on what we wanted to do with our bodies. Most of us had families who had a range of different views from what we have. So a lot of us are still closeted. A lot of us only share with each other what we’re really feeling. We’ve made a safe place to be honest with at least someone else on the planet.
Many of us want to live a normal life. As much as possible. I mean we want to understand what makes us what we are. We’re trying to join together the idea we have of recognizing our identities without having to give away family, friends, or our religious beliefs.
Now of course that’s a conflict. Of course there’s a lot of disagreement with that whole line. Because some of us say this is a physical problem? While others insist it’s all in our heads. One of our main members is a doctor who’s convinced his SSA is caused by his environment. Another is an author who is convinced her dysphoria’s a physical extension of what she really is. Full stop.
So sometimes the arguments go back and forth? But what’s true about most of us is that given the choice? We’d take a pill to drop this leaning. Most of us are strong enough in that camp. But that doesn’t mean we’re placing that want on anyone else. I mean most of us also have a lot of Side A friends and we’re cool with how they roll in their own way.
But sometimes the question’s meaningful for a different reason. I’ll give just a quick example.
I’ve got a friend with gender dysphoria who leans on me to give advice. He wanted to know if he should tell his family? Or just suck it up and try to bury it deep inside. I told him to tell them. I told him not to live that lie. I told him he needed their understanding and not to live that life I had to live.
I was basically pretending to be someone I wasn’t for so long that it led to some pretty bad happenings. Some stuff I don’t want to get into. Some stuff that got me to a really bad place. So I didn’t want that to happen.
But then this guy wants to know what I thought of the operation. Now here I was mixed because it seemed like such a 1-way trip. I mean what if he changes his mind later? He was only 18 at the time of first asking (now almost 20). I told him to wait. I told him to take my example. I told him to try a Side B life for a bit and see what happens.
I told him he could always go through with it later. Like maybe 10 years from now?
Look. This guy isn’t really like the OP. He’s not as well thought out. He’s got Asperger’s along with other things. So he has almost zero contacts he can share his world with. He’s got a very odd POV on other things too. So I saw this thread and I thought I’d ask that question. There’s nothing wrong with asking it. I wanted to know if it was felt to be physical instead of psychological. I wanted to know what sort of research the OP must’ve done when first getting into it. Because if physical? Then I’m handing out the right advice to go ahead and get the operation at some point. If psychological? Well I’m not sure. Does it bring this guy forward to get his operation at all? Or will he just go down some other way instead? I mean is the dysphoria of today just going to turn into a new type of “not-feeling-right” about his new body instead?
I’m already well aware of the suicide rate with the transgender group. I’m already well aware that a lot of them are in a tricky place from the conflict they live. I don’t want to go and suggest my friend get counseling vs get an operation only to find I’ve taken the wrong leap? But at the same time I don’t want to just telling him to wait and see. Wait and see. As if that’s helping his torment any more than anything else. Because what might be a fix for me might not be a fix for him.
So I brought in my pal with the other problem as a way to widen the circle. Because on the one hand? I’m ok with telling my one friend to accept what is. To go ahead with what needs to happen. But on the other hand? I’m conflicted because I’d never tell the other friend the same thing. Clearly I’d tell him to keep his cool and fight it. So it just seems a bit of a mix for me right now.
Your last question is essentially whether flame would take a pill, were it available, to make the dysphoria go away. Any given person may have a different answer and it’s complicated by the internal sense of identity one has had and the idea that a pill would destroy that, rather than fix something.
Unsurprisingly your examples get in the way. I get what you’re saying but they don’t really support what you’re getting at.
Well now I think you’ve got the whole view. All 5000 words.