My experience has been similar to yours. It took me four decades to understand I am trans. And I had never noticed any dysphory.
Looking back, I actually can recognize things that must have been dysphory. When my puberty began, I was disgusted by the looks of where my body’s fats started accumulating, and even developed a form of eating disorder because of that! Now I can understand that while I had successfully repressed by urge to be female, my subconscious did know where the fat is supposed to be going.
But, I had heard so much shit in my childhood in the 1980’s that made it clear that almost all adults around me would shun me for showing any feminity, that I built a very durable wall to protect myself from feminity.
Yeah, you are describing your ways of having experienced dysphory. You just seem to have a very narrow understanding of what counts as dysphory!
But at the same time, I also want to say: A trans person is a trans person, dysphoric or not. An inner urge to live as something other than your assigned birth gender means you are trans. It does not matter what mechanics produce that inner urge. For some people, such as you and me, it is dysphory. For others it’s something else.
My experience has been similar to yours. It took me four decades to understand I am trans. And I had never noticed any dysphory.
Looking back, I actually can recognize things that must have been dysphory. When my puberty began, I was disgusted by the looks of where my body’s fats started accumulating, and even developed a form of eating disorder because of that! Now I can understand that while I had successfully repressed by urge to be female, my subconscious did know where the fat is supposed to be going.
But, I had heard so much shit in my childhood in the 1980’s that made it clear that almost all adults around me would shun me for showing any feminity, that I built a very durable wall to protect myself from feminity.
Yeah, you are describing your ways of having experienced dysphory. You just seem to have a very narrow understanding of what counts as dysphory!
But at the same time, I also want to say: A trans person is a trans person, dysphoric or not. An inner urge to live as something other than your assigned birth gender means you are trans. It does not matter what mechanics produce that inner urge. For some people, such as you and me, it is dysphory. For others it’s something else.