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HRT is a treatment to make your physical appearance more closely match your gender identity.
In my opinion, if we lived in a society where gender identities DID NOT have a rigidly defined appearance, there would be less gender dysphoria.
In my opinion, if we lived in a society where gender identities DID NOT have a rigidly defined appearance, there would be less gender dysphoria.
Similarly in a society where we DID NOT have gendered clothing, names, hair styles, makeup choices, underwear, expectations of hygiene and shaving, again I believe there would be less of an issue with gender dysphoria and desires to perform a gender as defined by 'the norm'.
An example of this is we tend to default to seeing tits and fat thighs as feminine. But why do we still need this conception of femininity today? It only really reinforces gender roles. It makes people ask 'why do I feel like a woman but not have fat deposits here and here?'.
I'm a nonbinary person and my desire for expression fluctuates with my mood. The problem though is the dysphoria all stems from these traditional ideas of what mas and fem are. When I feel feminine I think about boobies and when I feel masc I think about muscles. It's pointless.
Neither of these two conceptions of gender come from me, it's all embedded in society and culture and the main problem is I am burdened by them to the point I hate my own body. It is not my problem, it is a problem of outside forces. I believe in destroying those forces.
So, when I make a post saying that HRT is a short term solution to a massively entrenched problem and is like putting a band aid over a severed limb, please be aware I have put many hours of thought into this and do not say it lightly or with intention to offend.
Bringing one's own body in line with a collective cultural idea of gender is, again in my opinion, like succumbing to gender expectations. In an ideal world, none of us would be forced to do this by the anxiety caused by these expectations, we would be able to live as we choose.
Gender expectations are this mass delusion inflicted on us by capital and the puritanical echelon of society, and they inhabit us like a disease and inflict on us these endless feelings of inferiority when compared with the sacred idol of 'Ideal manhood' or 'ideal womanhood'.
Gender expectations teach us to feel like our bodies are broken or malformed or mutated in some way so we seek corrective surgeries to try and alleviate the pain of living in a world where there are 'beautiful conforming people' and 'lumpen misshapen people'.
When it all comes down to it we live in a world where I can walk down the street and most of the people I see make me think "Why Don't I Look Like That?" and this is the true problem of gender expectations and why I have dysphoria thankyou and goodnight.
Footnote: Check out Lacan's Mirror Stage and how it relates to the formation of the ego, the formation of body image, then cross reference this with gendered societal pressure, and you'll understand where I'm coming from slightly better hopefully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage
Also honestly I wouldn't take anything written here as a command, just another gender take. I don't have a problem with people on HRT, or people considering it. Mainly I'm trying to talk about how a rigidly gendered society triggers gender-based discomfort for the people in it.
Also another obvious one; I don't think you need to be diagnosed with dysphoria to be trans, mainly because getting a diagnosis is very difficult, and not every trans person is the same.
