Dear Prudence,
I’m a queer woman in her mid-30s married to a guy, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve been, to varying degrees, gender dysphoric. I’ve gone from being a kid who refused to be called a girl to an adult who has learned to role-play femininity but still very rarely feels it. I grew up with a mother who believed that displays of femininity (and emotions in general) were signs of weakness and should be crushed—crying over emotional things was met with derision; crushes were dismissed as “stupid hormones”; acting “like a girl” was an insult. However, I now work in a male-dominated industry and am often the only woman in a room, meaning I spend a lot of time being a feminist voice raised against a sea of middle-aged men. My issue is that I often don’t know how much of what feels like gender dysphoria—being uncomfortable in my female skin, compulsively wearing painfully tight sports bras to flatten my breasts, weightlifting to give myself a more powerful physique, etc.—is actually dysphoria, and how much is just internalized misogyny. Am I uncomfortable feeling like a woman because that’s how I’m wired? Or am I uncomfortable because society has done such a good job from day one of convincing me that female is the worst thing a human can be? How do you even sort that out?
—Gender Dysphoria, or Just Hating My Gender?