comment: >
  
  
  Why would you want to switch sexes when you felt no discomfort/unease in your body in the first place?
  
  A. Not all trans people transition or need or want to. 
  B. No trans people change their sex. They merely change their body to conform with their self-image. 
  C. People change their bodies all the time without dysphoria simply because they want to.
  Most importantly, treatment is done to address dysphoria, so if someone has fully transitioned, they may no longer experience dysphoria. That doesn't mean they aren't trans anymore. It means the treatment was effective.
  What medical evidence informs this belief? Can you cite studies or consensus reports?
context: Stripped to the studs you seem to be saying that being trans means running away from your old gender, and that— in terms of identity signifier— running to the new gender can be seen as incidental: a byproduct of running from the birth gender.  
  The seems odd to me.  Whether someone's transitioning because they're running from something that feels wrong or towards something that feels more correct seems like it shouldn't much matter.    
  It seems to me that you're not taking people seriously.  You dismiss people who say they experience euphoria and not dysphoria, claiming they're just lying to themselves, or repressed.  That might be true, but doesn't it seem more likely to you that people simply have a different internal emotional experience than you?  How often do you see people online dismissing the experience of others because they find it illegible based on their experience: {"Why don't you just choose to stop being depressed?"}.  How often do cis people tell you that your trans identity isn't real because they had a phase as a tomboy.  It's good practice to take people at their word {within reason}, and to understand that people's experiences can vary quite a lot from our own.    
  RE: knowing euphoria without dysphoria.  This again, seems odd to me.  Surely, you'd know what loving touch felt like even if you'd never been beat. You can find yourself suddenly happy without having first been miserable.  You can discover a new flavor you like more than anything without suddenly realizing that all your gustatory experiences before that were rank torture.  I have a hard time addressing this point because I find the notion fairly confusing, but it feels important to address it, because this seems to be near the heart of things for you.      
  
  It is also medically proven that those who are transgender and experience dysphoria have brain waves that align with the gender they identify as rather than their gender at birth.
  
  Also, just as a point of interest, this actually isn't true in any meaningful way.  Source: phd in neuroscience and keenly interested in that kind of thing.  The science behind such studies is very shoddy, or have lots of qualifiers that mean it doesn't say what people think it does. >
  
  (To your last point) Really? I never knew that. When I did research on it, it was backed up by various studies and proclaimed to be true by experts in that field.
  And yes, I do admit in my post that it could be due to my lack of outside experience. Because I experience dysphoria, I cannot understand someone who doesn't. I could very well be trying to rationalize it in a way that makes sense to me and I recognize that, which is why I am here.
  I guess the core point no one has explained to me is this: why would someone begin the transition process, should they not experience dysphoria? Does it just seem appealing? I truly do not understand it, and I am trying my best to. >
  
  Seems like central here is what it means to be trans.  What is the transition process?  When does it begin?  Is it social transition?  HRT?  Exploring gender non-conformity?  What counts and what doesnt?  It's a tough question to answer because I don't think the term is well-defined.  
  But someone might, say, engage in some gender non-conformity, realize something about it feels fulfilling or authentic, and gradually feel into that sense of authenticity or beauty only to realize they're some degree or another of trans.  Basically, fuck around and find out.   
  I also know some nonbinary people who started down that path only to realize that HRT disagreed with them in some way or another, so they desisted and expressed their queerness in less medical ways. >
  
  Someone can be GNC without being transgender. In the same sense, someone can be transgender without medically transitioning, though I believe that would help alleviate the long-term dysphoria. The transition process typically starts social for experimentation (pronouns, sometimes social expression for personal reasons which is where I will say I definitely agree with the points in your second to last paragraph) and usually becomes medical (HRT and surgery), though, as mentioned, not everyone does it in this order or does it at all given specific sets of circumstances.
  Trans-ness is really hard to define, but that's why I define it as someone who experiences a disconnect between physical sex and their mind. Transitioning is a choice that may help that dysphoria go away, but it is not the "forced" choice.
  This is how I define it, atleast. Or in my mind, that is how it works and typically how it goes for trans folk. My question centers around medically transitioning more than social to start with — why would someone begin the medical transition process if they did not feel dysphoria in the first place? Or, going deeper, why would they question their gender if they had no reason to in the first place? >
  
  The issue with dysphoria as an approach is that it tends towards a weird kinda medical/psychological approach. It's often defined in a narrow fashion that exclusively refers to body dysphoria, and the structure as a whole lends itself to gatekeeping. Just think about the way the term is positioned, through the lens of diagnosis and such. Whatever our imagined ideal for the term, this is the way the term often operates. Your approach to the term even includes this, talking about medical professionals. 
  You can excise these issues, sure, but the outcome is invariably that your claim, that dysphoria is a prerequisite to being trans, becomes circular. Say we remove the medical aspect. No need for a gatekeeper. We expand past body dysphoria to include any sort of feeling that preferences one set of gendered stuff over another. We include euphoria as well, because the state pre-euphoria can be defined as dysphoria in contrast to that state. Moreover, we recognize that an understanding of "dysphoria" is individual to the person. What are we left with?
  Well, at the end of the day, not all that much. Tell me, what does our definition of "dysphoria" mean besides, "Any set of mental states or characteristics that incline one towards being trans,"? At which point, yeah, if you have nothing to incline you towards being trans, then you're probably not trans. But that doesn't actually say much. It's literally just saying, "Behavior has causes." Or, "Identity has causes." Y'know, depending on how you're approaching it. You could equally say you need ice cream dysphoria to want ice cream. Or that you need religion dysphoria to be Christian. Or, hell, that you need gender dysphoria to be cisgender. After all, they need some cause to not be trans.
  You can take it all back the other direction, try to add caveats to what counts or does not count as dysphoria, but at that point I become skeptical of your core claim, that gender dysphoria is a requirement to be trans. Broadly, either the term is meaningless, and the claim about it is true, or it has some real meaning, and I do not think the claim about it is true. >
  
  This was a very interesting approach, and it has made me think about some things. Especially the points in the second to last paragraph, it was really interesting and I'm thankful for the perspective.
  My goal with this post definitely wasn't to "gatekeep" trans-ness, or to determine who should/shouldn't transition. I am mostly trying to understand the reason of why someone would transition if they didn't experience dysphoria in the first place without feeling discomfort or some form of disliking their natural body.
  I typically define dysphoria as the lack of correlation in terms of physical appearance. Meaning when their biological sex doesn't correlate with the gender they closely resonate to/react with. I suppose this does fall under your category of gatekeeping, but I simply can't understand any reasons why someone would begin the transition process if they weren't completely sure that their body didn't fit their mind. >
  
  Okay, so yeah, I disagree. Body dysphoria is a big one, but social dysphoria, the way you are understood by society, can be a pretty big deal as well. I've heard mental dysphoria can also be pertinent, especially because hormones impact your brain stuff. And those are just the big chunky categories. One could plausibly imagine other reasons someone might pursue transition of one form or another. Someone can also be trans without pursuing transition, and they may have still more reasons for considering themself trans. >
  
  
  A lot of modern day "mainstream" beliefs argue that you don't need gender dysphoria to be trans because of the concept of gender euphoria [...] I believe this is a pretty good claim, however I disagree with it because of this philosophical belief: in order to know that something is good, you must recognize when something is bad. [...] I believe that trans people who feel neutral at first in their AGAB are hiding under layers of internal transphobia, and only are able to celebrate gender euphoria because they now realize that what they felt before was gender dysphoria
  
  So, correct me if I'm misinterpreting, but it seems like you're arguing that if someone really is much happier after transitioning, that implies that they were experiencing gender dysphoria before they transitioned; they just for whatever reason failed to recognize that fact at the time.
  I think that misses the point of what people mean when they talk about trans people who don't experience gender dysphoria. If you define gender dysphoria as "not being as happy as you could be because of incongruence between your gender identity and AGAB", then by definition every trans person experiences gender dysphoria. But that's not what people usually mean when they talk about gender dysphoria.
  Usually, gender dysphoria refers to feeling distress and a sense of "wrongness" about the aspects of your body and behavior that align with a gender you do not identify with. If someone is merely passively dissatisfied with those aspects of themself, that does not rise to the level of what most people would call gender dysphoria. I'm a trans woman myself and while I have experienced plenty of dysphoria, there are certain things that are common dysphoria triggers for other trans women that don't bother me.
  For example, I don't experience genital dysphoria. I sometimes feel it might be nicer if I had a vagina, but I never feel distress about having a penis, nor do I ever feel like my penis shouldn't be part of my body. I accept it as part of me and could even say it's a feature I like about my body. And what's particularly interesting is, I used to feel genital dysphoria, used to want bottom surgery, but after a year or so on HRT and being out to everyone in my life, it just stopped and I decided not to pursue bottom surgery. I don't think that can be explained by internalized transphobia--it's just that this stuff is kind of weird and messy and personal, and not everyone's experience will map on to a linear 1:1:1 between identity, dysphoria, and desire to transition.
  My point being, I find it easy to imagine someone who knows they'd be happier if they were to transition, but doesn't feel any actual gender dysphoria, not because they're in denial or repressing it, but just because enough else is going right in their life that their gender situation doesn't cause them distress. No different from how a single person might have a happy enough life that they don't feel a strong need to seek a partner out of loneliness, but still recognize they'd be happier with a partner.
  It's also worth pointing out that even if literally no trans people like that existed, it would still be a useful fiction to say that they did. I'm a counselor who works primarily with trans people early on in their transition, and you might be surprised how extremely common it is for people to invalidate themselves and delay transitioning because of insecurity about a lack of dysphoria. It's not even that these people don't have dysphoria, but that they're telling themselves "My dysphoria doesn't make me constantly miserable, so I'm not really trans". Very often, it ends up becoming a downright toxic belief, where their misery over not allowing themselves to identify as trans becomes something they can finally identify as gender dysphoria, but now they feel they must constantly stay that miserable to be allowed to identify as trans, so there is no relief from the revelation and they may even unconsciously sabotage their own happiness to exacerbate the dysphoria.
  If we make it known and agreed upon that dysphoria is not required to be trans, then this behavior that causes so many people so much agony would simply disappear. They would not have the belief that being trans requires being miserable, and thus they could transition a lot sooner and with a lot less pain. Even if every single trans person in the world still felt some dysphoria anyway, it seems really harmful for literally no benefit to go around saying that that dysphoria is what makes them trans and they wouldn't be trans without it. >
  
  Wait what, does this mean that men with a sexual fetish of being women are getting permission to change their legal identities to be women? Surely there's some restrictions on this that would exclude these guys? >
  
  
  Wait what, does this mean that men with a sexual fetish of being women are being allowed to change their legal identities to be women?
  
  Even if doctors don't yet consider it a 'valid' reason, you can still claim to have gender dysphoria if you want to transition I guess.
  
  Surely there's some restrictions on this?
  
  Why should there be? Their body, their choice. >
  
  
  Why should there be? Their body, their choice.
  
  Yes that part is fine, they can do whatever with their bodies, but if it's a fetish then how can they really be transgender? 
  I don't see why these guys should be considered women and allowed to go into women's locker rooms etc. if it's a sexual thing for them. >
  
  
  Yes that part is fine, they can do whatever with their bodies, but if it's a fetish then how can they really be transgender? 
  
  Here's the part of OP I'm replying to:
  I believe that you need gender dysphoria to be transgender because of the lack of reason to transition otherwise. Why would you want to switch sexes when you felt no discomfort/unease in your body in the first place?
  It's the central question of the CMV. People with autogynephilia would want to switch sexes despite not having dysphoria.
  
  I don't see why these guys should be considered women and allowed to go into women's locker rooms etc. if it's a sexual thing for them.
  
  It's an entirely internalized feeling about being a woman within a sexual context. It doesn't put other people at risk. >
  
  Do you have any evidence that there are any people with autogynephilia who want to transition but do not have gender dysphoria? >
  
  This source does not assert that Anne Lawrence did not experience gender dysphoria. Why do you believe that is the case? >
  
  Lawrence's work cited at the bottom of the article - specifically the first citation - draws a distinction between transitioning for dysphoric reasons and transitioning for sexual reasons. Given that she defines herself by the latter, I don't see why we shouldn't take her word for it. >
  
  Can you quote the section from the text which you interpret as Lawrence asserting that she did not experience gender dysphoria? No such thing is readily apparent from searching the text. >
  
  That's kind of the thing I'm wondering. How someone can be trans without experiencing dysphoria. >
  
  Non-binary people are by definition, transgender. And plenty of NB folks don’t have gender dysphoria and just simply don’t like to be put into a box. But regardless, sex and gender are different things, wanting to change ones own gender doesn’t necessarily mean you are uncomfortable with your physiology. It just means you’d like to change how you’re perceived by others in a purely social sense. While there’s a lot of overlap, they’re not necessarily the same thing >
  
  I tried talking about this stuff with people irl and got threatened to be thrown down a set of stairs >
  
  
  I believe that you need gender dysphoria to be transgender because of the lack of reason to transition otherwise.
  
  I agree here. Gender dysmorphia is a pre-requisite for gender affirming treatment. But I think it's a bit more confusing, at least it is to me.
  Gender identity is an autonomous evaluation. I feel like a man, or I feel like a woman. I think your question is aiming more towards: if I want to feel like something else, I need to feel uncomfortable with what I am first. That, I do not agree with. I think there are plenty of valid reasons one may choose to identify as a different gender than their sex that don't rely on the exclusivity of necessarily feeling uncomfortable to start. 
  However, with that said, I also think that collectively we jumped the shark on gender. I think gender transition inherently ignores the idea that the subject simply can't know what they are transitioning to. We like to call it female to male, or male to female, etc., but is it? I was born a male, and live as a man. I've never identified myself as one because I've never had to. But I know what collectively we all determined to be a 'man' because... I check all those boxes. I have a penis, I was raised as a person with a penis - meaning I was raised as a boy. I partook in the events and activities of boys. I experienced puberty as a boy. I felt heterosexual feelings as a boy.
  Those are all experiences that tie directly to that societal construct of 'man.' And me living this lifetime of experiences has brought me to one basic truth: I have absolutely no idea what it's like to be a woman. I could act like I do - but I don't. I don't have that biology. I wasn't raised as a girl. I didn't go through the lifetime of events that girls do that shape their worlds just as mine was shaped for me.
  So if I didn't feel like a man - how can I say I feel like a woman when... I don't even know what that is? 
  This is not an attempt to downplay dysmorphia, the trans population, or identity in any way. I think it's very healthy to have open and rational conversations about these topics. Because for someone like me, I have no desire for anyone to have anything but the best for them. I just don't understand this - and if I don't understand, I'm afraid of finding myself like OP, worried that my thinking is discriminatory. >
  
  Going further along your train of thought... you have no idea what it feels like to be a woman, and you also have no idea what it feels like to be another man, even one who checks all those same boxes for societal markers. I mean, those will give you some commonalities, but you won't have that other man's brain, and there's really no way I know of to know for sure if you're both processing your experiences as men the same way or feeling the same way about them, even if they outwardly look the same. For all we know, every single one of us experiences our gender in a way that's unique to us.
  Which is why, as a cis person who is not a doctor, scientist, researcher, or any kind of expert on anything, my default position is to just believe people when they tell me who they are and not overthink it. Because I can't possibly know how it feels to be them, and I sure can't know better than them how it feels to be them. >
  
  I just wanted to say that this was such a good point and very well-said. I feel like any cis person could benefit from hearing this perspective. I'm a long-time ally of the LGBTQ+ community and it still gave me food for thought. Thanks for this! >
  
  The easiest rebuttal to your view is that it's simply not your place or my place to gatekeep other peoples' feelings about their own gender. People have a right to self-determination, and that right needs to be respected. Neither of us are qualified as medical doctors or psychiatrists to say what the appropriate standards of diagnosis and care should be. >
  
  But this clearly isn't universal (hence attack helicopter meme), so you have to justify why self identification ought apply to gender identities (and what gender would even mean, since it's pretty hard to have a word that both has meaning yet doesn't map onto anything in reality). >
  
  Sure it is. The attack helicopter meme is people engaged in bad faith. They aren't asking us to sincerely believe that they identify as an attack helicopter. >
  
  Implying that somebody who sincerely identified as an attack helicopter would actually be one? >
  
  Sure, so long as they're fine with us housing them on a helipad, loading them with missiles, and feeding them gasoline. If they aren't content actually being treated like an attack helicopter, then they don't identify as one. >
  
  So the utility in an identity is in how you're treated/want to be treated? So a cis woman would cease to be a woman if people didn't treat her like a woman or if she preferred being treated in the way that men are commonly treated? >
  
  If they preferred to be treated in every way like a man does then, by definition, they are trans, yes. They would be using he/him pronouns and such. >
  
  Do many men prefer to be treated in every way that men stereotypically are, and is this a necessary condition of being a man? I certainly don't, but maybe I've just discovered that I'm not a man at all, then. >
  
  If you don't want to be treated how men are stereotypically treated, then say something. What's the issue? >
  
  So, to clarify. You defined trans to strictly be defined by your preferred treatment. What does this treatment look like for a man or a woman? >
  
  What about gender fluid? I don't completely understand it, but if a person feels like their gender is different at different times, as opposed to feeling "neither" or "between" genders, it seems to me that it's possible that they don't feel distressed at their assigned gender (at least some of the time.)
  This view seems to amount to saying people can't or I guess shouldn't be able to change their gender without experiencing dysphoria. 
  Other than making sure people are not making harmful choices, I don't really see what that accomplishes. You can't really stop someone from choosing to identify as a different gender, for whatever reason. All you can do is deny their gender preference, or interrogate them to try to find out if they have a good reason. I don't think that will lead to a positive outcome. >
  
  I think gender dysphoria is different for everyone. I believe someone can identify with nonbinary, given that they feel some semblance of dysphoria. I admit, I also do not understand gender fluidity, as I don't quite get how this feeling can be fluid.
  And yes, I completely agree with that last bit. I've said this before, but I'm not using this post as a way of harassing or disregarding others who identify as trans/choose to transition without dysphoria. I'm just trying to see if there are any major flaws in this belief, and also answer my questions on why someone would start this transition process without it. >
  
  This is the best comment in this thread. >
  
  Suppose that a trans person transitions, and after transition they are able to pass, and they no longer experience any gender dysphoria. Is this person no longer trans? If they are still trans, then this is an instance of a trans person without gender dysphoria. >
  
  First of all. Trans is not an actual ontological  category. It a man "transitions" into a woman. He is still a man, only with a severely mutilated body and the same mental illness. >
  
  "Trans" isn't an ontological category (and doesn't claim to be, at least in the sense of Husserl). A person is trans if their actual gender identity does not correspond to the one assigned to them at birth. The gender identity itself is the ontological category, not being trans in itself. A trans woman is ontologically a woman, just like any other woman: the only definitional difference between a trans woman and a cis woman is the gender they were assigned by society at birth. >
  
  A transwoman is a man who thinks he is a woman. You cannot be a woman just because you think of yourself as one. >
  
  This is not true, just by definition and basic semantics. A trans woman is a woman (a woman who is trans) just like an American woman (a woman who is American) or a young woman (a woman who is young) or a rich woman (a woman who is rich) is a woman. >
  
  What is a woman? >
  
  You...don't know what a woman is? >
  
  I'd love to hear your definition >
  
  To give you a useful definition, I need to know where you're coming from, and how it is that you don't know what the word "woman" means. Is English not your native language? If so, you might be better served by a translation from your native language (basically all languages include translations of the word "woman") than by a definition in English. >
  
  So you can’t define it? >
  
  Here's a question. If a person is diagnosed with gender dysphoria, then gets some form of treatment, be it surgical, hormonal, therapeutic, whatever their doctors suggest, and it works and their distress is alleviated, how would you describe that person? Do they still suffer from gender dysphoria? Are they still trans? It seems to me like most people would consider a trans person who has undergone successful treatment could be a trans person without dysphoria. Would you disagree with that?
  Edit: A few others are commenting with similar things, so I'll skip ahead to the part 2 of this. My guess is you're response might be along the lines of "sure, but that's obviously not what I meant". But if you acknowledge that this state is possible, and you acknowledge that there is a diversity of trans people for whom different types of treatment makes sense, including some treatment that is not surgical or medication based, it would make sense that some trans folks just naturally find themselves in positive / supportive environments that essentially preemptively alleviate any dysphoria without needing explicit treatment, and for this reason may never be diagnosable with dysphoria at all, but the reason for that may because they're just naturally exposed to the sorts of environments that alleviate any distress. These people then may or may not decide that further transitions or treatments may make them even happier still, but they're likely never going to get any kind of formal diagnosis, because they are not feeling sensations of distress. >
  
  Hi! I replied to this in another comment just now actually. I think I will do a quick edit to my post to address it. >
  
  One of the core requirements of this subreddit is that you substantially respond to comments posted by other users, per Rule E.   Simply referring users to a single response is not sufficient. >
  
  Sorry, u/brocheckitoutwtf – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 5: 
  
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  If a trans person at every stage of their life, from child to adult, was affirmed and given the prompt and effective treatments they desire, they might go through their entire life without ever feeling gender related distress.
  Does that mean they're not trans?