“Is self-acceptance all that it’s cracked up to be?
I’ve been asked a question that bears a discussion of depth.
“Is self acceptance all that it’s cracked up to be? Do you have to beat yourself up if you can’t find it?”
This question about body acceptance was an anti dysphoria post, about “all you need is to accept your body” directed at trans persons.
So first, to those of you that are happily saying “I cured my dysphoria with just accepting my body” …. good for you. That’s great, for you. Now go stand in your corner and be silent while I speak.
For some of us, body acceptance is a crock of shit.
It’s complex and layered. For some of us, we may accept our identity, and embrace our spirit, our desires, our heart and feel as if we could certainly accept our wonderful body….but we crash landed in some other body and it does not fit. No matter how much we try to love it. Some of us can learn to love our body for what it gives us, mortal life but can not accept it when it gets in our way.
When we want to fuck and want to tear off our clothes and tear into our playmate with abandon, but we stop because that abandon is hampered by needing to gear up, or stripping away clothes that leave us unsafe before the eyes of self and other.
When we walk in the world and know that our skin, our movement, our voice make us unsafe, targeted by those who insist we be whomever they expect us to be by virtue of their own blindness and prejudice.
When we can not go home, because our bodies are both incongruent with our inner perception, and our outside skin has become incongruent with out families value judgements.
When we layer age, disability, weight, social perceptions of attractive which determine if we are spoken to with kindness and respect on top of the physical sensation of dysphoria.
When we stare in the mirror horrified at the skin we were given, which clashes so much with the image of our spirit.
These things, and many other subtle things slap “body acceptance” across its face, call it out as being a diluted version of conversion therapy, stand and insist we feel what we feel, and our feelings are powerful, loud and appropriate for who we are.
We fought hard against conversion therapy, screamed about its suicide rate, insisted it was harmful, recognized we had the power to change the rules that non consensually bound and gate kept us to death. Body acceptance? Enjoy it if you have it. Do not push it on others. It is shameful, distasteful and speaks to a great ignorance about how individual perceptual diversity is vast and wide.
Who am I?
I’m one of your elders. I’m a gender therapist. I’m an artist, a musician, a wandering philosopher, a trans person, an advocate and a voice in the darkness.
I’ve been there, done that. I am proud.
Good for you if you have found happiness in body acceptance.
Support those who need and desire a different path.”
BDS
#trans #dysmorphia #dysphoria #selfAcceptance #body
https://bigdaddysatans.wordpress.com/2025/05/19/is-self-acceptance-all-that-its-cracked-up-to-be/
