Why Are They So Often Sad?#

Because in many parts of China, transgender women face a lack of acceptance. When a child comes out to her parents, the response is often deeply hurtful. While family support plays a critical role, there is another weight that presses on them every single day—gender dysphoria.

So what is gender dysphoria? It can take many forms: distress over one’s voice, bone structure, facial features, body shape, or genitals. These experiences can lead to a profound sense of hopelessness. But many of these things can actually be addressed.

How Can Gender Dysphoria Be Eased?#

It’s a question that’s both simple and complex. Take appearance, for example. Some dysphoria can be relieved through posture training, makeup, or choosing the right clothing. Sometimes, just looking beautiful even once can give a girl hope to keep going. That moment can be life-changing—because she begins to believe in herself.

Sadly, bone structure is one of the few things that cannot be changed. And yet, many parents dismiss this entirely, saying things like: “You’re a strong young man. Isn’t it great to have body hair, to be tall and broad? How else will you get a wife someday?”

In China’s more traditional, less developed regions, such ideas are still common. But that final sentence—“How else will you get a wife?”—can be the most devastating of all. It’s a forceful attempt to push her into a life as a man, into a marriage that betrays her very sense of self.

The Deep Pain of a “Big Frame”#

Dysphoria around having a large or masculine frame is one of the most painful. Because it is permanent, it becomes an easy excuse for parents to invalidate their child’s identity. But doing so will never turn her into a man. She was never trying to “become” another gender—she has always been the girl she knows herself to be.

Her suffering is like that of a woman being told she has no uterus, while being forced to carry something inside her that doesn’t belong. When hope fades, the result can be crushing depression, leading to self-harm or even suicide.

Living in this kind of emotional pressure cooker is like living on borrowed time. It doesn’t just affect her mood—it can accelerate the aging of the brain itself. A girl who is twenty might neurologically resemble someone who is forty.

Somatization is also common. In moments of deep sadness, she might shake uncontrollably, struggle to breathe, feel dizzy or faint. In extreme cases, this can escalate to dissociation, hallucinations, and eventually even psychosis.

One Sentence to Remember#

Hormone therapy may be irreversible—but so is the pain that a child endures. She only gets one life. Just one chance to live it.

To the girl reading this: Never forget—you were born to experience life, not to shape yourself into someone else’s idea of who you should be. Your life belongs to you, and you alone. The people around you? They’re just passing through.

May every dream you carry become reality—may they be the light that powers your soul and the joy that keeps you going.