> If you didn't imbibe in your children that the only way to be a "man" is to be the jock on the football team, then maybe far less people would be suffering the dysphorias. Just like how exposure to Instagram causes body dysphoria in both young men and women.

From a queer perspective, I think this is what we really do want and support: raising children gender neutrally, free from role expectations that make them feel like specific kinds of toys or activities or clothes are or are not for them. Just letting people grow up to be whoever they are, etc. etc.

That being said, gender dysphoria especially does have biochemical component. Most men would feel horrible being on estrogen, most women would feel weird being on testosterone. That's true for both trans and cis people, not 100% of the time, but often. That's how they got Turing killed.

Instagram and unhealthy expectations is not really always dysphoria but rather dysmorphia. The difference really is more than a few letters. Dysmorphia is a disordered body image and obsession with flaws in yourself. Dysphoria is a persistent feeling of distress related to your physical gender characteristics and/or gendered social expectations.

Of course, where the lines blur is when people speak in memetic terms of male-to-Male transition: stuff like looksmaxxing, where dysmorphic body image stuff is mixed with toxic culture relating to the pursuit of high masculinity and acting tough in a certain way, to be more of a man, or something.

Sexuality is front and center is every human culture, and for that matter, every sexual species. The degree that non-hetero, non cisgender diversity gets accepted in human cultures depends on a lot of factors that is not easily put into categories like Western and non-Western. In general, experience with diversity of thought and opinions leads to more acceptance of that diversity. Cultures that have trended toward enforced conformity have also tended towards villifying non-conformity. This is something that can differ depending on security of 'hiearchy of needs' but in different direction depending on other factors that really make simple boxes the wrong way to make sense of these things.

I agree that hard gender-norms expectation cause gender dysphoria, which in large art explains greater anxiety and depression in gender diverse people's. It's a terrible thing, and causes a ton of hurt and death.

I helped analyze data from perhaps the first longitudinal study of long-term outcomes after wanting and receiving gender-affirming care [1]. Although preliminary in the scientific sense, it is an absolute travesty how it is getting demonized. The people I have interacted with who provide such care, despite how they get misrepresented, largely are very concerned providing such care only when appropriate and desired, and learning how to know before-hand which outcome is most likely. Gender diversity is real, and has real biological origins. Understanding and acting on that has negatively impacted my career via a canceled grant from the current administration's D EI policies, but I am still glad that I did, and hope to in the future.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40917741/

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