Gender Euphoria: A Big Queer Middle Finger to Shame

QUEER WORD
GENDER EUPHORIA

What it means:

the positive emotional response - ranging from a quiet sense of comfort to full-blown, can’t-stop-smiling joy - that arises when your gender identity and your lived experience feel aligned and affirmed.

These moments of euphoria can be internal, like feeling at home in your body or presentation, or external, like being seen and recognised by others through the correct name, pronouns, or gendered language.

Let’s use it in a sentence:

Tabby felt an unexpected wave of immense gender euphoria when she got into a road rage incident and the other driver yelled, ‘you can’t drive for shit, lady!’

A little bit of history:

Gender Euphoria is joy.

Gender Euphoria is power.

Gender Euphoria is a defiant middle finger to the notion that there is something ‘wrong’ with transgender people.

One of the things I love the most about the queer community is our ability to take something painful and completely flip it on its head.

And, so, where clinical literature has historically focused on the distress of gender misalignment, gender euphoria does the exact opposite. It instead shines a light on the joy, the magic, and the wonder of those moments when the world finally sees you as you truly are.

But, where did this term come from?

To answer that, let’s linger in the doom-and-gloom for a minute longer and take a whistle-stop tour through the history of how trans experiences have been medicalised.

Now, obviously, trans people have existed for as long as our concept of gender itself - interpreted and expressed differently by different cultures and times. But in a Western medical context, early conversations typically conflated gender identity with sexual orientation and framed both as forms of ‘deviance’.

That started to shift in the 1960s when figures like German-American endocrinologist Harry Benjamin began separating these ideas. He introduced the term ‘transsexualism’ as a medical concept, advocating for hormonal and surgical interventions as part of medical care.

Revolutionary? Yes.

Problematic? Hmmm…. also yes.

Benjamin idea of the ‘true transexual’ came with a rigid checklist: pursue genital surgery, maintain a heterosexual relationship, and fit neatly into a binary gender role.

If you didn’t tick those boxes? You were likely excluded from care.

His model entrenched gatekeeping practices that still frustratingly linger today, leaving out many trans people, especially those who are non-op, non-binary, or simply don’t fit a tidy narrative.

Reframing the Diagnosis

Things shifted slightly in the early 1970s when psychiatrist Norman M. Fisk coined the term gender dysphoria while working at Stanford University Medical Center. Recognising the limitations of existing frameworks, Fisk conceptualised dysphoria as a spectrum of gender-related distress, directly challenging Benjamin's rigid ‘true transsexual’ typology.

Fast forward a couple of decades (I told you this was a whistle-stop tour!) to 2013, and gender identity disorder was officially replaced by gender dysphoria in the DSM-5 (that’s The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

That change was largely down to a growing recognition that that final word - disorder - was both hugely stigmatising and unnecessary, as calling someone’s identity a disorder suggests there’s something inherently broken about them.

The shift to gender dysphoria was meant to reframe the issue - not the identity itself, but the emotional distress someone might feel when they’re not supported in living as their true self.

Still, even this framing has its problems. It’s a deficit-based approach, not an asset-based one. It’s like looking at the glass as half-empty when it’s actually overflowing with queer brilliance and big trans feelings. (I’m really butchering my metaphors today - apologies).

Introducing: Gender Euphoria

This is where the jubilant, celebratory, radiant idea of gender euphoria steps in.

Rather than focussing on pain or discomfort it revels in the joy and power of being fully, beautifully yourself.

Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a relatively new term. It definitely has that zeitgeisty-am-I-using-this-correctly type energy (you know the ones where everyone else seems to know exactly what it means, and you’re left smiling and nodding, playing catch-up?).

But actually, our earliest known record of the phrase comes from all the way back in the mid-1970s.

It might not have been shouted from rooftops just yet, but it was there - quietly simmering away after being shared in zines, advocacy groups, peer-support circles, whispered conversations, and the margins of academic texts.

It lived deep within the bones of people who just got it - in all its messy, magical, deeply personal truth.

And then? Well, you probably know what happened next.

The good people of the internet happened.

Suddenly, stories of gender euphoria were everywhere - on TikTok, on Instagram, and on other platforms I’m now apparently too out-of-touch to keep track of.

Which is a good time to segue in to….

So What Does Gender Euphoria Actually Look Like?

This is where it gets beautiful.

Gender euphoria might look like:

• Hearing your voice in a recording and not wincing

• Realising you no longer rehearse your name before saying it out loud

• Being referred to offhandedly by a stranger - and they get it right

• Trying on a piece of clothing you didn’t think you could pull off, and realising you look bloody hot

• Not noticing your body for a whole afternoon, because you’re too busy living your life

And it's not just a nice little pick-me-up in the middle of the day.

When trans people are affirmed - either through community, healthcare, relationships, or just being able to express themselves - it builds resilience, boosts confidence, and fosters a deeper sense of belonging.

In fact, research shows that experiencing gender euphoria is associated with lower levels of psychological distress and suicidal ideation.

Measuring Joy

Now, all of this is lovely, of course - but clinicians still need something to measure, to track, to offer support for trans people, yes? Surely we need gender dysphoria as a diagnostic category, right?

Well… maybe not.

Recently, a team of researchers in Melbourne developed something pretty exciting: the Gender Euphoria Scale, a diagnostic tool designed to measure a trans person’s sense of affirmation in their gender identity.

Created by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Melbourne, and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the scale features 26 questions, grouped into three core themes: social affirmation, self-affirmation, and community connection.

The hope? That clinicians can shift their focus.

So, instead of merely seeking to reduce dysphoria, they can work on increasing euphoria. On helping trans people tap into the joy of their identities, not just manage the pain of being denied them.

Joy as Protest

So, while it might feel like the entire world is hardening in its attitude toward trans folk, here’s a message for my trans siblings:

Your joy is resistance.

Your euphoria is revolutionary.

Keep finding those moments. Hold them tight. Share them when you can.

Now, more than ever, it’s vital to seek - and hold on to - your gender euphoria.