“Kuyper & Wijsen (2013). Gender identities and gender dysphoria in the Netherlands.” – Article summary

The prevalence of gender dysphoria is estimated by looking at health care services. However, individuals may be hesitant to seek medical care for gender dysphoria due to stigmatization. Furthermore, healthcare makes use of a dichotomous view of gender while people may be ambivalent about gender and do not desire treatment. This means that the prevalence of adult gender dysphoria may be underestimated.

Parent reports of child behaviour are used to assess the prevalence of gender dysphoria in children. This may lead to an overestimation of the prevalence of gender dysphoria as parents mostly look at cognitive and behavioural aspects and not at affective aspects of gender dysphoria.

Individuals with an ambivalent gender identity were more often men (1), more often had a lower education (2), were more often from a non-Western background (3) and were more often bisexual or homosexual (4). The sexuality aspect could be explained by the fact that people with a different sexuality from homosexuality are more often in scenes where binary gender identities are less common. This leads them to internalize the gender identity less, making it less incongruent.

Men want to transition more often than women. A dislike of one’s body is not always accompanied by a desire for medical treatment to transition. The low percentage of women disliking their body and desiring treatment could be explained by the fact that masculine women are more accepted in society than feminine men. This allows natal women to change their behaviour and gender more accordingly.

A diagnosis of gender dysphoria does not implicate the need for transition treatment and gender dysphoria should be viewed in a more dimensional way (i.e. different degrees of gender dysphoria).