Hi, everyone
My name is Ashley Wylde and welcome to my channel Ashley's
Wildlife this week on the gender resources playlist. I am going to talk about my
Experiences as a non-binary person with dysphoria
Now this is an interesting topic because the first time that I really
Understood that dysphoria was a part of my life was around a year ago
When I came up with the gender tag project while I was researching for the project I came across this little paragraph of information
On a website called "non-binary.org" some non-binary people experience bodily dysphoria
relating to certain primary or secondary sexual characteristics the act of obscuring removing or
replacing the sexual characteristics in order to reduce Gender Dysphoria
May result in physical androgyny without the individual having set out to specifically obtain an androgynous
Presentation it was this paragraph of information that helped me get a more clear understanding
Of what dysphoria actually means for an individual prior to that
I had thought that dysphoria meant you want your breasts removed
you want your penis removed
you want a penis constructed
you want all of these very specific physical characteristics to be changed
and while transitioning, and physically and medically transitioning are oftentimes
consequences of Dysphoria the two things are separate and they're not necessarily linked and
Because they weren't linked for me because my dysphoria doesn't have a direct link with surgical intervention
I thought it wasn't real dysphoria
And that's kind of why I'm making this video so I can really only speak from my own perspective
But as a non-binary person as someone who identifies as neither
Man nor a woman I have kind of a hard time figuring out how it is that I can show up
authentically when it comes to Gender. I feel upset
when characteristics about my body
are feminized or considered to be feminine
and I also feel upset when I'm gendered in a way that indicates
somebody believes that I am a man and that's
pretty sticky because it means that there are a few situations in which I feel truly comfortable
There are two big things that I feel dysphoric about:
the first is my breasts, and I know that other people
Pick up on this because I get asked a lot
Whether or not I bind my chest
And I think it's an interesting question because the answer is that I don't
I choose not to bind my chest the reason that the question is interesting to me though is because I wear sports bras
Which are really tight and because my chest is small they compress my chest enough for me to feel comfortable with it
I won't even put on a cupped bra
Not even like as a joke or like to be funny like I it makes me so uncomfortable
to see my chest presented in this like sort of
Sexualized and feminized way that I actually can't and so
I don't bind but I
Also think I don't bind because I don't have to in order to feel like my chest is manageable if my breasts were any
Larger than they are I suspect that I would bind because they make me uncomfortable
And I don't necessarily want them to be removed
I don't necessarily want them gone
but they're a part of my body that I accept privately in which I
Feel shouldn't really be part of my public interactions with other people
the second thing that I get dysphoric about is
my
period. And it took me probably until about a month or so ago to really figure out that what I was experiencing
during my period was dysphoria.
If you've ever had a period you might know that sometimes
It's all tied up with emotional feelings like your emotions can be really heightened by the hormones that are released
While you're menstruating and for me that's especially true
I am very emotional while I'm on my period which means that the dysphoria that I feel about
physically having a body which menstruates is
amplified tenfold by the hormones and the emotions that they generate so even if I didn't have all these emotions
I would still feel like "hey, you know what having a period makes me kind of feel weird
It makes me feel separate from my body makes me feel like my body is doing something that I don't necessarily
feel like is a part of me as a person and that's odd, and I don't know how to feel about it"
That's dysphoria
Then you add all the hormones and all the emotions that go along with my period
And it just becomes this thing where I just what I really do is
I withdraw because I don't know how to make sense in my mind of the fact that this thing is happening that feels
So foreign for me, and then on top of that my emotional response is way more
Vibrant and loud
Internally than it would ever otherwise be so for the week out of the month that I'm on my period it's it's kind of bleak I
Just feel like I get into a headspace where I don't feel comfortable with myself
I don't feel sure about a lot of things
And I just constantly
Every single time wish that it wouldn't happen wish that it wasn't happening and not because it's inconvenient
but because it doesn't feel like
It belongs to me and I guess maybe that's the best way that I can explain dysphoria for me
Deciding whether or not to transition which I mentioned sometimes is and sometimes isn't linked with dysphoria is a big topic
And I feel it deserves its own video
So I'll save questions about that for another time
But I wanted to take this opportunity to answer some questions that you all have asked me about
dysphoria and to give you my perspective through my lens to the best of my ability. If your experience with dysphoria is the same or
Especially if it's different make a comment, or make a video and share it with me
And I would love to share it with others because a huge problem with the way that transgender people are understood in our
Society is that they're underrepresented, so if you have a story tell it thank you all for watching and I'll see you later. Bye. Bye