The idea that a gendered "mismatch" between your body & your personality, interests, expression & sexuality is automatically distressing & must always be ego-dystonic is a foundational assumption of trans medicine & the concept of gender dysphoria. It's also anti-gay & incorrect.

Positive spiritual interpretations of classic homosexual behavior & existence rely precisely on this "mismatch" or "incongruity": i.e. "X soul in Y body". Early "inverts" often thought themselves special or existentially blessed w/a unique fount of creativity.

During debates about the depathologization of homosexuality during the 1960s and 1970s, some psychiatrists realized they had only seen & studied bi/gay people distressed about their homosexuality, & failed to engage w/the broader population who was not.

That a large population of "happy homosexuals" existed outside of the reach of therapy offices was a crucial insight leading to studies on a broader gay population, revealing that they suffered no more dysfunction than the straight population.

There have been recent attempts to depathologize "gender dysphoria", recognizing that transgender people do not consider their own gender nonconformity inherently pathological or a kind of disease. Correct, & this is why they rightly refuse therapy for their "condition".

But the problem in these movements to remove gender dysphoria from diagnosis manuals is that it replaces this term with "gender incongruence"- that what is "wrong" & distressing for trans ppl is the mind, its desires, & will do not "align with" the body.

In fighting against this, we rightly note that there's no coherent nor anti-sexist way to understand how a person's beliefs, desires, behavior might be "incongruent" with their sexed body. But this rings hollow to the many ppl do quite literally feel this way.

I think another tack is needed. Realistically as a lesbian in a world where my sexed body is defined by purposes serving a reproductive goal- that it has myriad functions around sex w/men, both protective & leading to pregnancy- my mind IS unavoidably at odds w/my body.

What if I reframed this "at odds with" as providing me with a special opportunity? What is it like to like being a misfit or a monster of a woman, who uses her female body "improperly"? What if I believe it's rational to disregard my female-sexed functions?

The constructs of both "gender dysphoria" and "gender incongruence" are dead ends. Both assume a man or woman at odds with their sex is a kind of ruin & that wholeness is the same as thru & thru compliance w/others' gender proscriptions.

I've come to enjoy my body in ways I didn't think possible. I still hate my femaleness in others, & I can't convince myself I'm wrong to do so. What if we didn't see this state as a prescription for transition, but just as existentially normal & even satisfying for some?

What if psychiatry took seriously that there were "happy dysphorics", "happy incongruents", that medical meddling in our affairs was not welcome nor necessary? What if trans history took seriously the group of ppl who lived meaningfully before medical transition was possible?