I don’t think I had heard the phrase “gender euphoria” when I was 15, in 2007, and I certainly hadn’t applied it to myself. But my first conscious experience of this type of euphoria was at a queer-straight alliance meeting.
The author S. Bear Bergman was reading aloud from his then-new book Butch is a Noun, and during a passage about femmes, something clicked for me. I understood that there was a sacred lineage of butch-and-femme as a duality and a spectrum, and I understood that I was a femme myself. I understood that my femmeness was beautiful, and queer, and desirable (at least for some people). I felt the “aha!” of alignment between how I saw myself and how the world seemed to see me. I felt gender euphoria.
Trans friends of mine, like Billy Lore, would teach me more and more about this concept over the years that followed, including that cis people can feel it at all. In fact, cis people’s gender euphoria-versus-dysphoria (to the extent that we feel it) is seen as such a pressing and valid issue that it’s much easier for cis people to access treatments that may help bring their bodies into that euphoric alignment, such as when cis women are prescribed estrogen to address coarser facial hair they may notice after menopause, or when cis men are prescribed testosterone because their dwindling sex drive is making them feel “like less of a man.” It’s infuriating and unfair that many, many trans people can’t access these same treatments because their fight against dysphoria (and quest toward euphoria) is pathologized and politicized in a way that cis people’s usually is not, even though, for trans people, it’s much likelier to be a life-or-death issue. (Orgs like the ACLU are fighting for better trans healthcare access, among other things.)
I’m thinking about this lately, because my internal sense of my own gender has shifted somewhat in recent years. I’m still very much a cis woman and a queer femme – but lately, when I see old photos of myself in hyperfemme ‘50s-pinup drag or what-have-you, it feels like just that: drag. When I wear outfits that feel too delicately, sweetly feminine, I feel boxed in now, rather than right at home, the way I used to. I find myself counterbalancing femme outfits with a beanie, sneakers, or a boxy leather jacket.