Careful with the baggage
The Guardian insults women yet again.
For many trans and non-binary people, top surgery – the process of removing breast tissue to get a flatter or masculinized chest – is not an elective procedure. It’s essential to them feeling at home in their bodies.
Wrong. Sorry. “Feeling at home in their bodies” is indeed elective. Removing breasts to feel at home in one’s body is like removing a leg to feel at home in one’s body. Both are elective because they are not physically necessary. Emotionally necessary is elective territory. If you had to triage patients waiting to have their breasts removed you wouldn’t (one hopes) put the “at home in my body” ones ahead of the breast cancer ones.
To put it another way, feeling at home in your body is a luxury, not a medical necessity.
Top surgery is a form of gender-affirming healthcare that can be used to treat dysphoria, the sense of deep unease one feels when their identity or appearance doesn’t match up with the gender they were assigned at birth.
Luxury. That right there is luxury.
The number of gender-affirming surgeries rose steeply in the US between 2016 and 2019.
Why? It couldn’t possibly be because it’s a fad, could it?
Despite the baggage that can come with one’s scars, they can also become symbols of pride and resilience.
Baggage? Scars and baggage? What kind of baggage? A duffel bag, a backpack, a 5-piece leather set?
But seriously, people really do need to learn the difference between necessary and elective.
I have never felt at home in my body; I manage to survive.
I notice that the article’s explanations are apparently meant for readers who are unaware of what “top surgeries” and “dysphoria” are, but that it doesn’t bother explaining what is meant by “gender.”
Resilience my ass. Cutting off your breasts because they remind you of your womanhood is about as “resilient and prideful” as undergoing FGM. It’s all about making sure women fit in with the cultural roles they’re assigned. Far too many people see it as pitiful to be a girl or woman who feels ill-at-ease with her prescribed social role; the better for all concerned that we just fix the misfits and then focus our attention elsewhere. Well, at least it’s better for those who want such a pesky issue to be pushed off their task list as swiftly as possible, or else we all might be forced to clean up the mess we’ve been collectively avoiding for so long. Society has treated women’s rights like a junk drawer: a place to dump its odds and ends. Crossdressing men? Oh, that’s a “women and gender studies” thing. Butch lesbians not getting treated fairly in society? The Internet is exacerbating teen girls’ body issues? Extreme porn online is fucking up young men’s minds? Throw all that stuff in the drawer with the Scotch tape, and the AAA batteries, and the half-used Barnes and Noble gift card with a $3.41 credit left on it, and the pesos from that vacation in Cancun from twenty years ago, and the remote for the old DVD player that desn’t even work anymore.
The drawer’s overflowing to the point that now it’s more like a closetful of junk ready to burst through the door. We can’t keep ignoring it forever. It’s eventually gonna come to us, even if we don’t go to it.
Pfft. Compression packing cubes.