Tag Archives: Dysphoria & Dysmorphia

This includes gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, muscle dysmorphia and BDD.

See also Anxiety, Eating disorders, Psychiatric hospitalisation, and Weight loss & gain,

Most Ardently: A Pride & Prejudice Remix by Gabe Cole Novoa

London, 1812 . Oliver Bennet feels trapped—not just by the endless corsets, petticoats, and skirts he’s forced to wear on a daily basis, but also by society’s expectations. The world, and the vast majority of his family and friends, think Oliver is a girl named Elizabeth. He is therefore expected to mingle at balls wearing a pretty dress, entertain suitors regardless of his interest in them, and ultimately become someone’s wife. But Oliver can’t bear the thought of such a fate. He finds solace in the few times he can sneak out of his family’s home and explore the city rightfully dressed as a young gentleman. It’s during one such excursion… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Period-typical transphobia, homophobia & sexism
  • Misgendering & deadnaming
  • Gender dysphoria & body dysmorphia
  • Forced outing

Something Spectacular by Alexis Hall

Peggy Delancey’s not at all ready to move on from her former flame, Arabella Tarleton. But Belle has her own plans for a love match, and she needs Peggy’s help to make those plans a reality. Still hung up on her feelings and unable to deny Belle what she wants, Peggy reluctantly agrees to help her woo the famous and flamboyant opera singer Orfeo.

She certainly doesn’t expect to find common ground with a celebrated soprano, but when Peggy and Orfeo meet, a whole new flame is ignited that she can’t ignore… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Aromisia
  • Homomisia
  • Misgendering
  • Abusive relationship
  • Religious trauma
  • Dysphoria
  • Castration mentioned

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Body dysmorphia
  • Rape
  • Graphic self-harm including burning and cutting
  • Dismemberment of hands and fingers, eye trauma, and mutilation like cutting out tongues
  • Murder
  • Torture including whipping, skinning and mentions of foot binding and boiling someone alive
  • Drowning

Pageboy by Elliot Page

Pageboy is a ground-breaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic homomisia & slurs
  • Lesbomisia & slurs
  • Transmisia, deadnaming & misgendering
  • Coming out themes including outing
  • Sexual assault
  • Adult-minor relationship & grooming
  • Emotional child abuse
  • Eating disorder including food restriction
  • Body dysphoria discussed
  • Social anxiety & panic attacks
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal ideation
  • Emesis
  • Top surgery
  • Stalking

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Dysphoria
  • Coming out themes
  • Misgendering
  • Emesis
  • Graphic blood depiction

Not Your Villain by CB Lee

Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee

Bells Broussard thought he had it made when his superpowers manifested early. Being a shapeshifter is awesome. He can change his hair whenever he wants, and if putting on a binder for the day is too much, he’s got it covered. But that was before he became the country’s most-wanted villain. After discovering a massive cover-up by the Heroes’ League of Heroes, Bells and his friends Jess, Emma, and Abby set off on a secret mission to find the Resistance. Meanwhile, power-hungry former hero Captain Orion is on the loose with a dangerous serum that renders… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Gender dysphoria
  • Blood depiction
  • Needles mentioned
  • Hormone Replacement Therapy
  • Medical experimentation
  • Explosion
  • Physical assault
  • Fire
  • Kidnapping
  • Imprisonment
  • Disappearance of a loved one

Ana on the Edge by AJ Sass

Ana on the Edge by A.J. Sass

Twelve-year-old Ana-Marie Jin, the reigning US Juvenile figure skating champion, is not a frilly dress kind of kid. So, when Ana learns that next season’s program will be princess themed, doubt forms fast. Still, Ana tries to focus on training and putting together a stellar routine worthy of national success. Once Ana meets Hayden, a transgender boy new to the rink, thoughts about the princess program and gender identity begin to take center stage. And when Hayden mistakes Ana for a boy, Ana doesn’t correct him and finds comfort in this boyish identity… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Grap

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Transmisia
  • Misgendering & deadnaming
  • Coming out themes (multiple)
  • Dysphoria
  • Parental abandonment
  • Bullying

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

Redefining Realness by Janet Mock

In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Those 2300 words were life-altering for the People.com editor, turning her into an influential and outspoken public figure and a desperately needed voice for an often voiceless community. In these pages, she offers a bold and inspiring perspective on being young, multicultural, economically challenged, and transgender in America. Welcomed into the world as her parents’ firstborn son, Mock decided early on that she would be… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Homomisia
  • Transmisia
  • Racism
  • Gender dysphoria
  • Paedophilia & child sexual abuse
  • Sex work
  • Cheating
  • Child abuse & neglect
  • Self-harm
  • Alcoholism
  • Substance addiction
  • Emesis
  • Gun violence

Names for the Dawn by CL Beaumont

Names for the Dawn by C.L. Beaumont

Seasoned Park Ranger Will Avery has found his home in the Denali wilderness, cherishing his solitary routines for the decade leading up to 1991. The trade-off that no one knows of his identity as a transgender man feels worth it for the comforting assurance he finds in the towering glaciers. Until Will discovers an unexpected passenger in his truck—the visiting wolf biologist everyone in the Park is ecstatic to meet—Nikhil Rajawat. Nikhil doesn’t return his new colleagues’ fervour. He’s dreamt of Denali for one reason: the pinnacle of his research, and it isn’t anyone’s business that this is the last year he’ll get to chase the wolves. He… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Homomisia discussed
  • Transmisia recounted*
  • Familial estrangement & disownment*
  • Physical child abuse recounted*
  • Anxiety & panic attacks
  • Insomnia
  • Nightmare
  • Parent with alcoholism recounted
  • Recovery from substance addiction including an off-page relapse
  • Suicidal ideation recounted
  • Alcohol consumption
  • Pregnancy & childbirth mentioned (sc)
  • Weight loss mentioned
  • Gender dysphoria & body dysmorphia
  • Scars from top surgery mentioned
  • Gun violence*
  • Bullying
  • Animal death, including a wolf cub & death of a pet dog

*Context : When the protagonist came out to his father, his father shot a gun at the barn near him. He has wondered for years if it was intentional or an accident. As a child, the protagonist’s mother physically abused him and burnt him with cigarettes.

Girl Haven by Lilah Sturges and Meaghan Carter

Girl Haven by Lilah Sturges and illustrated by Meaghan Carter

Three years ago, Ash’s mom, Kristin, left home and never came back. Now, Ash lives in the house where Kristin grew up. All of her things are there. Her old room, her old clothes, and the shed, where she spent her childhood creating a fantasy world called Koretris. Ash knows all about Koretris: how it’s a haven for girls, with no men or boys allowed, and filled with fanciful landscapes and creatures. When Ash’s friends decide to try going to Koretris, using one of Kristin’s spellbooks, Ash doesn’t think anything will happen. But the spell works, and Ash discovers that the world Kristin created is actually a real place, with real inherent… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings

  • Sexism
  • Gender dysphoria