Many of us remember the genderbread person from Tumblr days of yore and know that gender doesn’t equal sexuality. But what about when they come together and influence each other for the better?
That’s what Kiarah O’Kane — a first year PhD student in the clinical psychology program at UBC — is exploring in their research.
After getting involved in sex research after their undergrad, O’Kane realized that most sex research focused on cis people and lags behind in capturing gender-diverse experiences, despite more recent research attempting to be more inclusive. According to O’Kane, most studies that did focus on the sexual experiences of trans people tended to only look at the bad parts.
“A lot of the focus on the sexual experiences of trans folks that has been done so far is predominantly focused on negative aspects of their sexual experiences, or it's really medicalizing and really focused on gender dysphoria,” said O’Kane.
Rather than continuing this trend, O’Kane decided to take a different approach.
“As a non-binary person myself, I know that there's so many strengths within our community and so many positive aspects of our gender-related experiences.”
O’Kane’s research project focuses on the links between gender euphoria and sexual wellbeing in gender-diverse and cisgender individuals and couples.
A relatively new concept in the world of psychology, gender euphoria is the positive version of the more talked about gender dysphoria — a way of describing distress over a person’s assigned gender or sex.
Definitions for gender euphoria can vary. One study in the American Journal of Bioethics defined gender euphoria as “a distinct enjoyment or satisfaction caused by the correspondence between the person’s gender identity and gendered features associated with a gender other than the one assigned at birth.” Other research conceptualize it as a form of distress relief or trans resilience.
‘Firsts’ often come up as particularly impactful instances of experiencing gender euphoria, such as the first time being called by one’s preferred pronouns or first time wearing a packer.
Fourth-year engineering student Shai Gropper recalled her first time experiencing gender euphoria when her ‘egg cracked’ — a term used by the trans community to describe the moment when you first realize you are trans.
“I remember it first happening fall of 2019 where I was just on Snapchat and I was looking at different filters, and I had one which [gave me a] little bit of a smoky eye and a lip thing. I was like, ‘Damn, I kind of like this. This is crazy,’” she said. “That was the first real moment that I was able to recognize that there was something more than just a boy in me.”
For Gropper, gender euphoria is more than just wearing a dress or being called ‘she.’
“Gender euphoria for me can look like being on the bus and having another woman sit next to me [and] being like, ‘Oh, I look like a safe person for another woman to be next to.’”
“I have been out for over two years. I've been on hormones for over two years, and gender euphoria is less about the small things of getting recognized with my gender, and more about just feeling good as a woman at this point,” she said.
In terms of what’s affirming in the bedroom (or wherever folks choose to get it on), trans people — much like cis people — are not a monolith.
While some experience gender euphoria from certain stereotypically gendered acts, such as transmasculine people using a strap-on for the first time, this isn’t the be-all end-all.
“I'm a lesbian and I never really felt affirmed in my gender by men,” said Gropper. “[When I’m] hooking up with other trans people, other trans women, other cis women, there's a better understanding of the fact that we're both women.”
For Gropper, gender euphoria during sex isn’t necessarily about doing certain acts and can even come from doing “the stereotypical things that you would ‘expect’ from someone with a penis.”
“Shout out to not exclusively bottoming as a trans woman, because I know that there are some that do, because they'll get dysphoria from using their dick … and that I understand,” she said. “But personally, for me, I'm just like, ‘Let's go, awesome.’ I can give somebody else pleasure and get pleasure on my own and have it still be done in an affirming way for my gender.”
Since there is little academic research looking at gender euphoria in general including during sex, other sources such as zines and social media sites like Reddit are powerful resources for trans people to learn about sex and pleasure when more conventional ways of knowing often don't include resources for Queer people.
Fucking Trans Women, for example, is a zine created by Mira Bellwether to talk to other trans women about sex which features lessons about anatomy and sex toys as well as more personal writings.
Both O’Kane and Gropper pointed to fluidity as a strength in gender-diverse individuals.
“Gender-diverse people tend to be more flexible in general, and have maybe more expansive understandings of gender in the context of sexuality, which is a really good thing,” said O’Kane, highlighting this flexibility as something that researchers could focus on fostering in the future to improve people's sexual being.
“As much as I'm a trans woman, I'm also non-binary. And part of that non-binary-ness is a bit of gender fluidity. I'm not ever consistently one thing. The way that I like to describe it is to say that I contain multitudes. I'm never one specific thing, because nobody is ever one specific thing,” said Gropper.
By centring gender euphoria in their research, O’Kane hopes to uplift their community, particularly during current political climates where trans joy can in itself be an act of resistance.
“What excites me and what's really meaningful to me is to be able to really focus on and shed a lot of light on these experiences of trans and gender-diverse people that really aren't often spoken about or focused on in broader scientific literature, but also in public discourse.”
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