Is it normal i don't understand gender dysphoria?

That's because you are likely the same gender as your sex.

Without meaning to offend anyone, I once heard that to put it simply and not so complicated, it's a female brain in male body or a male brain in a female body.

So naturally, that causes a conflict because the brain feels the opposite to what biological sex the body is.

Sex and gender are two very different things and some people just happen to be born without them matching. But thankfully, with the wonder of science and whatnot, they can feel as they wish to. :)

(Of course, some people feel they do not fit the gender binary or some feel they are both gender roles but for the sake of this post, I'm keeping it basic. Also hope this wasn't offensive, I didn't mean to be.)

Gender neutrality also exists. I would guess that you, like I, feel no particular association with either gender. Despite technically being genderqueer, neutrality is a privileged position on the issue of gender identity; just as a bisexual person may not readily understand what the big deal is about sexuality and an ambidextrous person may not get what lefties are always complaining about, you need to understand the limits of your own perspective and try not to quickly judge others who are different.

You've never done anything because of your gender identity? You almost certainly have, but you wouldn't necessarily realise it.

Even something as dull as sitting in a chair is governed by gender. Men almost universally sit with their legs apart or crossed with the ankle near/on the opposite know. Women almost universally sit in a more scrunched up position, like with their legs crossed at the thighs and feet pushed back, or with knees and ankles close together.

A more blatant example is clothes. There are "male clothes", "female clothes" and some "ungendered clothes". This is dictated by society. If you are a woman who wears female clothes (or a man who wears male clothes), you are doing gender identity because your gender is impacting your decisions.

You may say that it is your individual decision to do these things, but I would say that you are performing your gender identity whether you realise you are doing it or not. All behaviour is impacted by society whether you notice it or not.

It's not just how you feel. One key element that people forget to explain is how you are treated. Women and men are usually treated differently and held to a different standard. If you are, say, a man who has the mentality of a woman (you feel like a woman), it's not just that you look in the mirror as a female and see a man - broad shoulders, narrow hips and facial hair - everybody who speaks to you and deals with you also sees a man and they treat you like a man! So not only do you feel like you're in the wrong skin, but nobody else can even tell that the physical appearance they see is not who you are!

Imagine switching bodies with someone from a completely different walk of life and nobody knowing that it's you in there, not them. So they treat you like that person and there's no way to convince them that you're not that person without seeming like a total dingbat. Makes sense?

Yep. I completely feel the same way. I don't understand the concept of "gender roles" either. In fact, I disagree completely with the very concept of "gender" as distinct from biological sex.

In my hometown, it was just like, some people have boobs, some people have beards. Boobs-people and beards-people wear clothes that are technically different, but only because the groups really do tend to have different body shapes; though in both cases, it's still mostly just jeans and t-shirts, not all that different stylistically at all. Different cuts of cloth for different body shapes is just practical, not a sign of some sort of overarching all-encompassing "gender roles."

Yes, occasionally, you'd meet a woman who prefers to wear dresses, and yes, men didn't wear dresses; but other than the occasional, adults all dressed pretty much the same. Sure, we all spoke the difference between the sexes every day; we knew the stereotypes but we also knew the exceptions to the stereotypes, and didn't really think ourselves all that limited by the notion that tendencies exist. There were differences to be sure, between men and women in my hometown but they were reasonably subtle, with plenty of overlap, especially in the real functional activities that people of those "genders" participated in. Both were equally likely to drive trucks versus compact cars; girls were a little less likely to hunt and guys were a lot less likely to sew, but both could meet each other in the 4-H woodshop, and both could check the oil in their vehicle if need be.

By high school, of course, things would get a bit more hairy and gender-distinct; clothing styles would change to reflect more closely the range of fashion afforded to women by the media and the comparatively limited collection afforded by media to men. There were still some girls who kept up the usual jeans-and-t-shirt style of before, but they were then stereotyped as nerds. Clearly, by that time, we'd all been acclimated to the culture of media stereotypes surrounding the difference between guys and gals. But I always felt like that was something impressed upon us from the outside world; and most of us didn't take it too overly seriously anyway. We were mostly all country kids at heart.

The only way I can really see "gender" roles as being endemically distinct in my hometown is that whenever the cross country team would get shirtless before a run, it would definitely be unacceptable for a girl not to wear both a sports bra to cover their boobs and a pair of shorts to cover the groin. Guys only needed the shorts. Girls had one more area to cover than guys; but then again, if a girl got hit in the boobs, that area would be as sensitive as a guy's groin, in addition to the girl's groin being an understandably private region. If covering twice for a girl and once for a boy constituted a genuine "gender role," at least it was something based somehow in a real difference between the two groups; and I don't remember anybody minding terribly, though who knows? I might be mistaken.

In any case, my personal theory as to the reason why people can think they're the wrong "gender" (whatever *that* means) is that they learn about the division too quickly. Babies have no personalized conception of "gender;" we learn our distinction in early childhood. I think in sexually-disparate societies, like on the East Coast where I'm currently living, some kids misinterpret how important the distinction is between male and female. A boy might come to feel that because they mentally identify more strongly with their mother than with their father, that they then have to look like the mother in body as well as in mind in order to fit in with their clearly-distinct role they see in society. A girl who wants to be assertive like her father, if the distinction in appearance between father and mother is made too obvious, may come to think that she is supposed to actually have the same organs as her father, in order to be among others the person who she feels like she is mentally.

All I know is that as a guy, I've never felt an affinity for what I can at least recognize as the normal male "gender role." I still think the term is invalid. Really, the male "gender role" is just the male stereotype, no different than racial and religious stereotypes, with "gender" confusion paralleling racial self-hate. (But so be it: if you have to make me use your vocabulary, I will.) I feel very blessed that I was raised in a society where a man can enjoy cooking and gardening without being considered "feminine," where a girl can be the strongest hitter on the local little league baseball team without being called "boyish." (To be clear, though, I also enjoy weightlifting and don't look even slightly feminine, which may have helped stave off jokes about me as girly.)

In the end, I don't think "gender" exists. I'm a man because I have a penis. If I had a vagina, I would be a woman, and I would still be every bit as shy and self-deprecating as I am now, only it would look more stereotypical because I would have a less testosterone-fueled body type. I would still have weightlifted with a few of the other girls at my high school. I would probably still have first learned to swear from a girl in my grade. If your body parts are a different assortment from the usual, then we can talk about what "gender" you are; but in all cases, it's still a matter for science.

The thing is, for all our arbitrary conservatism and colloquial manners, my little rural hometown was progressive in the old traditional sense, the sense where it was made of real, practical, down-to-earth people, not these unclear modern "gender" things all worried about confusing themselves. As far as I'm concerned, I've lived the future I want for my kids; and that's the way it should be.

this was posted a while ago, but I thought the best way to explain gender dysphoria would literally be to explain the feeling. It's not like you want to be the opposite, you are the opposite gender, scientifically your brain is in the wrong body, so it's not just a feeling it's a condition. It's like this person people believe you are isn't real and you want to throw up when people use the wrong pronouns, like you can feel your skin tightening around you.

The best description of it I've ever heard is imagine if you woke up one day and you were in a strangers body, your voice didn't match your own your face shape was different and your body wasn't the one you'd gone to bed in last night. So you go to scream and out of your mouth comes a choice you don't recognise. Your family run into your room and ask you what is wrong, but they don't use your name they use someone else's name and you stay like that forever.

Perhaps it's easy enough to say you'd be comfortable as the other gender, but that because your sex and gender match. You have never experienced dysphoria so you might not understand how it feels. But scientifically it is the feeling of having a male mind in a female body or the other way round

I don't think gender dysphoria really *can* be understood in full, unless you experience it yourself. I understand where you're coming from, but it isn't about being dissatisfied with your gender, wishing to be the opposite gender, or wishing to act in a more stereotypically male or female way . . . it's more like looking down at your own body and not recognising it. It's like waking up one day and realising that body parts you've always had, that you *know* should be there, are gone and replaced by ones you don't recognise.

Most people don't realise how much gender affects everyday interactions. There's a certain dynamic among men, for example, that completely changes when a woman enters the room -- and a different dynamic for women, that changes when a man is present. Imagine, for example, that you are male and you have a group of male buddies that you hang out with after work every day. Then one day you walk in and suddenly, they start treating you completely differently -- they won't talk about certain things when you're around, they tread carefully around certain subjects, they act protective when another guy tries to talk to you . . . you can tell they still *like* you, and they aren't trying to hurt you, but everything is suddenly very *different*. You aren't really 'one of the guys' anymore, and it hurts.

That's kind of what being transgender is like every day. Your own social group excludes you, even when they mean well, and the social group that you get shunted into doesn't feel right. Everyone treats you strangely, it's confusing as hell, and on top of it all you can't even recognise the figure in the mirror. It's not like looking in the mirror and seeing an ugly person, and wishing you were beautiful -- it's like looking in the mirror and literally being confused at what you're seeing.

As for me so called "genders" are mostly about prejudice and social stereotypes. During the different history periods there were quite various definitions of "real man" and "real woman".

For example, female clothes, like skirts and high heels were worn by men in the past(You can Google it). And you can say the same about stereotipical male and female behavior models. Acording to 19 centure standarts most of nowdays women behave like a men.

I think their is two mindsets. One is more straight forward and realistic while other are more touchy feely, lovey dovey and romanticized mind set.

I think that girls who tend to be more straight forward tend to not fit in with women so feel they should be a man. Men who are more touchy feely might sometimes feel like they should be a female since they do not fit in with any men.

This mind set also dictates how you dress. Most women dress for fashion not comfort and so w omens clothes is not very practical. If a female wants to wear practical clothes she is probably going to prefer mens clothes. Enjoy mens activity's. Which will have society label them as either gay, butch or tomboy depending on how far they go into mens activities.

If men do it they will be considered a nancy boy, gay or a cissy depending on how far into it they go.