Investigating Gender Euphoria and Dysphoria on TikTok: Characterization and Comparison

TL;DR

This study analyzes TikTok content to understand how transgender and nonbinary individuals describe gender euphoria and dysphoria, revealing differences and similarities in online expressions across gender identities and experiences.

Contribution

It extends previous research by characterizing online discussions of gender euphoria and dysphoria on TikTok, highlighting differences in descriptions between genders and types of experiences.

Findings

Gender euphoria is described similarly across transfeminine and transmasculine groups.

Gender dysphoria descriptions are more gender-specific and differentiated.

Online language around gender experiences shows both commonalities and distinctions.

Abstract

With the emergence of short video-sharing platforms, engagement with social media sites devoted to opinion and knowledge dissemination has rapidly increased. Among these platforms, TikTok is one of the most popular globally and has become the platform of choice for transgender and nonbinary individuals, who have formed a large community to mobilize personal experience and exchange information. The knowledge produced in online spaces can influence the ways in which people understand and experience their own gender and transitions, as they hear about others and weigh experiential and medical knowledge against their own. This paper extends current research and past interview methods on gender euphoria and gender dysphoria to analyze what and how online communities on TikTok discuss these two types of gender experiences. Our findings indicate that gender euphoria and gender dysphoria are differently described in online TikTok spaces. These findings indicate similarities in the words used to describe gender dysphoria as well as gender euphoria in both the comments of videos and content creators' hashtags. Finally, our results show that gender euphoria is described in more similar terms between transfeminine and transmasculine experiences than gender dysphoria, which appears to be more differentiated by gendering experience and transition goals. We hope this paper can provide insights for future research on understanding transgender and nonbinary individuals in online communities.