Gender Dysphoria for All

My theory of identity and gender rests on two major pillars.

First, that every human possesses a core set of knowledge about their motivations and desires: our Origin of Identity. Each of us is born with an innate sense of what we like and dislike, and how we will respond to certain stimuli.

A tongue-in-cheek method of demonstrating the Origin of Identity is to ask you to consider your favorite vegetable. Whatever the answer, nobody can assert you're wrong. Only you possess that knowledge. The Origin of Identity indicates information we know, but we don't know why we know it. It is beyond questioning.

The second pillar of my theory of identity is that every human requires safety within their social environment, which causes them to mediate their motivations and desires against social norms. We know what we like, but our social environment may not value what we like.

The negotiation we perform within the social environment is not always successful. When the social environment rejects our attempt at expression, we may feel pain, depending on how important the expression is to our Origin of Identity.

This experience is common to every human existing within a social environment. It is the human experience. It is how we learn about social norms and how we keep the memory fresh in our minds.

The pain we experience has a name - gender dysphoria - and every human experiences it. But my theory of identity is not unique in considering gender dysphoria a common human experience.

Every major theory of gender put forward today necessarily results in the same conclusion.

Experiencing gender dysphoria

The DSM-5 criteria for gender dysphoria leads with "incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics." Most media representation today focuses on sex characteristics - primary or secondary - as the transgender experience.

But DSM-5 also includes "a strong desire to be treated as the other gender" as well as "a strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender." Both criteria apply equally to cognitive or behavioral aspects of identity, not just physicality.

When a woman is passed over for a promotion in favor of a man, she may well experience a strong desire to be treated as the other gender. When a man is chastised for emotions or empathy, he may well experience a strong conviction he has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender.

Both experiences indicate gender dysphoria, and the discomfort results from valuing cognition or behavior the social environment does not - at least, not in that context. We attempt to express ourselves in a way the social environment rejects, and that hurts.

But the pain is not necessarily due to incongruence in who we know we are and how we perceive our body. The pain is due to our desire to express identity as we know we are, but failing to fulfill the expectations of the social environment.

When the mediation between our Origin of Identity and social norms fails - as every human will experience - it is the individual who suffers, not the social environment in which they live.

The social environment

Humans - except in rare cases - group together in order to pool knowledge, labor, and resources. In response to the fragility of the human body, we appear to have evolved to favor sharing the hardship of life with others.

Any group of humans that pools knowledge and resources establishes a social environment. The group shares a set of beliefs in how knowledge and resources are utilized, which establishes common motivations and desires, acceptable patterns of behavior, and roles for members to play.

But motivations, behavior, and roles depend on our location, the time, or those around us. We experience different social environments for work, at home, among friends, and during recreation. There is no limit to the number of social environments a human may experience.

At base, the purpose of a social environment is to perpetuate its existence. Motivations, behavior, and roles exhibit within the social environment as social norms to be enforced on and by its members.

Social norms are what the majority of members value - what a majority of members consider "normal" - that is, common and frequent within the social environment. That said, social majorities change. New members enter, old members die, or resources become scarce.

Observing fluidity in social norms led directly to Judith Butler's theory that gender is a social construct.

Social constructs

To be clear, I disagree with Judith Butler's theory of gender purely as a social construct. Human identity is more than what any social environment can impress upon us. Each of us possesses a choice in whether we agree with the social environment, and we are members of many social environments at once.

Further, the fluidity in social norms that gave rise to Butler's theory also affirms every human must experience gender dysphoria. All of us live within a social environment, and majority beliefs are the origin of social norms.

But only a majority values any one social norm. Social norms are not natural laws - no human is bound by them.

By definition, a social norm may not express what all members of the social environment value. Those of us who unwillingly conform to social norms - and those of us who willingly rebel against them - will experience discomfort for doing so.

No social norm is universal. No social environment enjoys complete control over its members. We either reject the social environment or are rejected by the social environment, and the result is gender dysphoria.

That every human experiences gender dysphoria through Butler's theory is not its primary downfall. It is only one. Social constructionism itself is not at fault, and we find further evidence in the conservative anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

Bioessentialism

Bioessentialism - the conservative anti-LGBTQ rhetoric - implies sex is identical to gender, which is identical to sexuality. That is, our genetics determine sex unequivocally, and sex determines gender, which drives sexuality, which sets our identity for life with no hope of modification.

But genetics is anything but unequivocal. Every human has a different genotype - the unique combination of your mother's and your father's genetics expressed in you. This is the mechanism of sexual reproduction, and even combinations from the same mother and the same father will not result in the same child every time.

The pseudorandom combination of genetics through sexual reproduction is also the mechanism of evolution. Without randomness in sexual reproduction, human frailty would have rendered humans extinct millennia ago.

Science charted out the human genome decades ago. We know (more or less) what genes affect some of human biology. Our knowledge isn't perfect, and no human expresses exactly the reference genome - the foundation of bioessentialism.

Our failure to experience the model of being human implies no human experiences gender the same way. Instead, each of us experiences a pseudorandom combination of gender. When even sex is difficult to quantify, understanding gender from genetics becomes impossible.

But the human genome includes between 20000 and 30000 genes, which only represents about 10% of the entire set of DNA in every human. Obfuscating gender in every human is statistically unavoidable under those conditions, and each of us will fail to live up to bioessentialist principles in at least one characteristic.

When we fail to live up to expectations around gender, the result is gender dysphoria.

Misunderstanding gender dysphoria

When gender dysphoria is a necessary activity in perpetuating social norms, why is gender dysphoria characterized as a pathology in DSM-5? Why are transgender people assumed to be sick, with legislation enacted to regulate expression of gender?

The issue begins with misunderstanding biology's clear definitions of sex and gender. The definition of sex is a species-level abstraction of reproductive capability. The definition of gender is an individual-level implementation within a social environment. Biology defines these terms; they are not open to interpretation.

But Western society focuses on boxes into which to place humans. Despite clear definitions, we are saddled with widespread misunderstanding of terms, which leads to misunderstanding the process of developing gender identity.

Our disagreements on sex, gender, and their expression are the result of disintegration between biology and psychology - between our experience of physicality and our experience of mind.

We misuse these terms in common conversation because they serve as shortcuts, despite scientific inaccuracy. But misuse of a term - no matter how common - is still wrong. Legislating misused terms won't make the redefinition true.

What we need to mitigate common misunderstanding is to embrace gender dysphoria as an aspect of the human experience that draws us all together.

Embracing gender dysphoria

Western society is so confused by scientific terms, we cannot move forward as a species. We need a theory of identity that reintegrates biology and psychology.

We need to recognize the human experience encompasses both nature and nurture: we are both "born this way" and affected by the social environment around us.

Gender dysphoria is not a pathology. Gender dysphoria is a tool for a social environment to reinforce social norms to keep them clear in our heads.

But when we accept gender dysphoria as a common, frequent - dare I say "normal?" - part of human development, we see every human must struggle with it.

Then the words "cisgender" and "transgender" lose their meaning. Sex and gender were never related, and our expression of gender is just that - our expression, not a natural law.

By embracing gender dysphoria as a normal part of human development, we begin to improve the human condition - not just the condition of those in power.