Centering Gender Euphoria in advance

The concept of gender dysphoria, typically understood as a pathological experienced mismatch between one’s “inner gender identity” and one’s body, has been central to defining and “diagnosing” transness. Gender euphoria, which I define as joy, excitement, or pleasure in one’s gendered embodiment (including the social reception and emplacement of one’s gendered body), is an important notion in trans communities, but it has received little attention from academics, health care systems, or mainstream culture. Beginning from the reality and central importance of euphoria allows us to better understand everyone’s gendered experience and embodiment, and to avoid the substantial conceptual and ethical harms inflicted by a mental health model of trans identity that centers dysphoria. Organizing our understanding of trans identity, desires, and experiences around trans joy is conceptually clarifying; helps ground better medical and legal policy; and is more accurate than when we organize it around trans tragedy and pathology, even while we retain our realism about the fact that trans tragedy and dysphoric suffering are real and important.