  With the emergence of short video-sharing platforms, engagement with social
media sites devoted to opinion and knowledge dissemination has rapidly
increased. Among the short video 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 that 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 that there are wide
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.
