This was an answer over on Quora.

Why is it offensive when cis men say they are lesbians trapped in a man’s body?

For the same reasons it would annoy or offend my trans friends if I described myself as a straight woman trapped in a man’s body.

I’m gay. I don’t experience gender dysphoria.

I don’t know what that feels like. I will never, ever know what that feels like. It’s not mine to make casual, offhand remarks about. It’s a painful experience that isn’t mine, that I only ever know about through inference. I’ve had friends compare it to various things, but none of that really tells me what the experience is. It just sort of tells me what some of that experience is like.

But I can talk, all day long about swimming. That will never be the same thing as experiencing the act of swimming.

In much the same way that I can’t ever really get a straight person to understand homophobia, the lived daily reality of it in the way I experience it, I will never, ever understand gender dysphoria. Ever.

I can sympathize, but I will never be able to actually empathize.

I am not straight. I am not a woman. I am nothing trapped in some other body. I’m a cis man; I’m a gay man. I sympathize with my friends when they say that gender dysphoria is painful – painful enough to risk all of their relationships by coming out and transitioning. That I do know something about, because I’m queer. We can share that.

But that doesn’t mean I understand dysphoria, and it’s hurtful for me to treat it like a casual joke as if I do.

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