“Looking in the mirror, on the days I’m brave enough to do it, can shatter my exquisitely constructed sense of myself.”
gardenstar.tumblr.com / Via Jay Atlas Alexander
The emotional and physical discomfort associated with gender dysphoria can be nearly impossible to describe to someone who has never experienced it. This particular type of dysphoria is often defined as a condition where an individual experiences discomfort or distress because their gender identity doesn't match the gender they were assigned at birth. But what does gender dysphoria really feel like? What does it look like?
We asked people to illustrate their dysphoria in whatever form they preferred. Here are some of the art submissions we received:
"For me, my assigned gender has always been a box I was put into without my permission."
"I'm not particularly good at drawing, so I included an example of some of the needlework I do. I find it much easier to get across what I want using threads.
"For me, my assigned gender has always been a box I was put into without my permission. It's restricting, and suffocating, and for most of my life it completely obscured who I was, like a cloud of pink that hides my inner colors from the world. It often feels like I'll never really be able to break out of the box, so instead I do my best to change its colors and make the box a place I can survive in.
"Some days are better than others, and I'm getting better and better at pushing the pink back, but it's always trying to reclaim lost ground. It's still all some people will ever be able to see when they look at me."
—Cael
Cael
"There are a lot of things my body does really well — it's just that it had the wrong set of building blocks when it was developing its look."
"'Being trapped in the wrong body' was never a phrase that really stuck with me because I think that sets my body in the wrong light. There are a lot of things my body does really well — it's just that it had the wrong set of building blocks when it was developing its look.
"I sympathize with my body because not only me, but everyone around me, keeps drilling on it because of a few little mistakes it has made — even if it tries really hard to correct those mistakes. Let's just all give my body a break. Don't act like every single one of you doesn't have something about your body you don't like. Mine just happens to be a little more contradictory to what I am."
—Felix