#i wish i was a cis woman that got a hysterectomy

[bengesko]

So you're getting a hysto...

As a trans masc person with Ehlers Danlos, much of the advice I got for preparation and recovering for a hysterectomy was not what I needed- much of the advice given was from your average cis woman.

While appreciated, (shoutout to the folks on /r/hysterectomy, they're an incredibly supportive and welcoming group!) I ended up learning as I went, and since I know some folks who are getting a hysto soon, I thought I'd write up my experience!

Note: I will be using some sparing medical terms for anatomy, but will try to avoid it as much as I can!

Note the second: I'm in the US, so I can't speak for how surgery/insurance works in Europe!

Referral Letter: Are you trans and want a hysto for gender dysphoria? Do you need letters from a therapist recommending you as a candidate for surgery?

Hit up the folks on The Galap. They're a network of therapists who have volunteered to do letters of referral for free. I was able to get both of mine- as well as an updated letter for my top surgery, at no cost, no hassle with insurance, etc.

Most, if not all of the therapists on this site will do online meetings, so even if the single therapist (like, say, in AL) is too far to drive, they'll still help you!

Preparing for your hysto:

Here's a list of things I gathered before my hysto (As well as things I wish I'd had.)

Reading/Sitting pillow. (Also known as husband pillows). I have this one- has pockets, and is super comfortable.

Bed/Lap Desk (I have this one- it has a cup holder, pen rests, and charging ports. It's also lightweight.)

Maternity Pillow- C shaped (J shape is nice, but C offers more hip support.)

Skid Free/Non-slip socks. (If you have hardwood floors at home)

Loose cotton shirts and underwear- cotton breathes better, helping your incisions heal.

Underwear liners. (You will have post op bleeding, and anything more than a liner is a concern, so liners instead of pads is the better route to go when monitoring post op bleeding.)

Heating pad (Self explanatory)

Shower Bench. You can't get your incisions wet for at least 48 hours, but sitting on a shower bench and letting hot water hit your back will really feel good without getting them wet!

Water bottle (preferably one that keeps your drink cold!)

Electrolyte drink mix- Gatorade, Liquid IV,

Squatty Potty- I don't have one, but everyone I've talked to have sworn by them. The less you strain, the better.

Your binder can be worn as a post op girdle if you have one that compresses your stomach as well as your chest. I have one from underworks and I wear it if I have to stand for more than ten minutes. Helps keep things stable!

Gas-X: If you're getting it laproscopically done, you'll have a gas bubble or two migrating around your abdominal/thoracic cavity. Sometimes you can massage it down or out of specific areas, but Gas-X helped me!

Azos/Pyridium- Ask if you're getting a cystoscopy with your hysto; they do them to make sure your bladder wasn't damaged during the procedure. This WILL cause pain during urination, and Azos will help.

Miralax- I am taking mine once a day to keep my bowels as strain-free as possible. Your doc will likely prescribe you colace- a stool softener, and miralax will help boost the effects.

Baby wipes/Tucks pads- Save your poor derriere some misery.

Anti-bacterial soap- for your pre and post op bathing.

Pre-Hysto prep:

Follow the instructions your doc gives you during your consult.

Add fiber and protein to your diet. Fiber will help clear your colon before surgery, and protein helps boost healing. I mostly ate salad made with spinach, celery, chicken, avocado and almonds.

This is important- if you take NSAIDs, Aspirin or any other blood thinning drugs, stop taking them at least three days before surgery. (Your doc will go over them beforehand.)

If you take any methamphetamine based/derived drugs, like Adderall, whether prescribed or recreational, stop taking them a week before surgery- it WILL react badly to anaesthesia.

Post Hysto:

When you come to, you will be sore, groggy and feel like you've been run over by a truck. The nurses will want you to urinate on your own, without assistance, before you're allowed to leave (If you're not being kept overnight- I was put under at 730, was sent home at 1250.)

Make sure you have someone giving you a ride home, and once you're home, get in bed and sleep.

You might feel great the first few hours after surgery. That's the general anaesthesia lingering in your system. Take advantage of the low pain and REST. Don't overdo it. (I went to winco for supplies, and I regret it. SO. Much. PAIN.)

Don't eat heavy meals/too much in one sitting the first week. Having a lot of food in your stomach can put weight on your surgery site, and cause you more pain. Lots of protein and fiber- the less straining, the better.

Do not be afraid if you don't have a bowel movement for more than 2 days- I didn't have one until three days after surgery, but thanks to a combination of my stool softeners, miralax and the fiber, there was no straining or pain!

I was also recommended Greek yogurt by my doc- it's high in protein, and the probiotics help the gut and help prevent yeast infections. I got a big tub of strawberry tillamook and have been eating out of it since I got home lol.

Popsicles! You're likely to be intubated during surgery, and popsicles will help ease your sore throat. I got some that were low sugar and made with yogurt.

Avoid carbonated drinks for the first few days- you'll have enough gas issues without adding to it. A few sips of ginger ale or sprite to ease post-anaesthesia nausea is good, though! (My surgeon gave me a scopolamine patch and I had no nausea at all.)

Set timers for your meds. This includes your painkillers, your stool softeners, and gas-x. Make notes of your dose and its effects.

Don't fight your fatigue. Tired? Sleep. You'll heal faster.

Don't be afraid to advocate for your medical needs. My doc only gave me 5mg of oxycodone and it simply wasn't enough to deal with the pain, so I requested more in order to double up, or a rx of tramadol. My pain is much more manageable now.

(Side note: I was given the green light to take THC gummies after surgery alongside my other meds!)

Walk. You need to get up and walk every few hours, be it to urinate, stretch your legs, etc- you don't want blood clots!

You will bleed after surgery- either from your urethra, or your new cuff (depending on what you keep/get removed, etc). I had everything but my ovaries removed, and I've been bleeding lightly since surgery.

And lastly- take it easy. Don't feel guilty about bed rest. You're about to have major surgery where organs are removed! Do not feel guilty about bed rest.

If you get a cystoscopy, you'll also have blood in your urine, and likely pass a few clots. Your doctor will tell you what to look for and when to contact them.

Don't. Lift. Shit. I lifted my walker and I hurt myself. If it's over ten pounds, get someone else to move it for you.

Find some books, podcasts, or a video game you can play in bed! Catch up on some art, binge some tv/movies, and let yourself heal.

Congrats on your hysto, it's a huge milestone, regardless of the reasons you're getting it!

[bread-and-roses-too]

When I was little I didn’t identify with women characters.  I was a tomboy, I liked to play outside and run around and be goofy.   I played just about equally with “boy’s” and “girl’s” toys.  I didn’t like to be called a “princess” or “queen”, I liked “prince” or “king” better.  When I started to develop a chest I hated it and used to wish I would get breast cancer so I could have it removed.

I grew up in a world that was relatively accepting of trans people.  My parents were Christian and conservative, but once I got a hold of the internet in late middle school I immediately became an ally and had very few doubts of the existence of trans people.  I was delighted to learn that I wouldn’t have to get cancer in order to get my breasts removed or reduced, and I was also happy to learn that hysterectomies were safe and pretty widely available, as I had no desire to have kids. 

When I was around 16 I started to question my gender.  I delved into nonbinary, genderfluid, even some mogai genders like 404gender.  But nothing felt right, so I settled back into my identity as a gnc cis woman and am very happy.

Why didn’t I stick with nonbinary?  Because I’m not trans.  I’m gnc, genderqueer, maybe even butch, but not trans.  I wasn’t born trans, no amount of pressure could change that.  If being trans was truly social-based or a “trend” as a lot of transphobes think, I wouldn’t identify as cis.  I would be predisposed to be “indoctrinated” by the “trans cult” because of my gender nonconforming nature and general acceptance towards trans people.  But I’m not, because being trans isn’t a fucking choice.  People are born trans. End of story.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

I don't think Hashem expects perfection from us. I think Hashem expects us to do our very best with what we've got and who we are. But it's literally impossible to fulfill a substantial number of mitzvot for anyone post-Temple, and there are plenty of mitzvot that each of us personally won't be in a position to fulfill. For example, I will not ever be in a position to practice taharat hamishpacha because I had a medically necessary hysterectomy at a young age. Even if I were trying to act as a cis woman and were married to a cis man, that would be physically impossible for reasons totally outside my control. That's not something I've ever been put in a position to feel bad about, but what about folks who cannot safely observe kashrut in totality, or need to use an electronic device on Shabbos for accessibility, or who cannot afford to live near enough to shul to walk? What about those of us who are asked implicitly or explicitly to choose between our longstanding, supportive non-Jewish partners and our Judaism? Or our gender or sexuality and our observance?

I wish there was a movement that focused on doing as much as you can with what you've got and who you are without the perfectionism. The pluralistic communities I see tend to lean away from observance and while they don't discourage it usually, don't actively encourage doing traditional mitzvot either. The halachic communities I've been part of frequently care about the people who can't observe certain things, but also don't condone that style of Jewish practice, either.

So where does that leave those of us who care about both? Who want to see people doing the most they possibly can without judgment on the things they can't?

[uncloseted]

tw: transphobia😭 hi I'm a radfem cisgirl (I hate using "cis" and "trans" words but here I need to for the sake of the story) I've got a friend from ny highschool (we're in college now) who's also a radfem and is always sharing great feminist stuff. Yesterday, she shared the comment of a girl saying "this fight for abortion (it is illegal in my country) is for men/people with vaginas too!" and mocked it. I preferred not to make up any opinions about her because of one single post. But today, she shared a picture of Miss Spain 2019 (a trans girl) who talked about her experience with sexism, and mocked her too. This time, it was obvious to me she was just being transphobic trash. She received lots of backlash and deleted the post, but instead made a new post complaining about people caring about transphobia but not about sexism (a very stupid post, if you ask me). This time, along with some comments from other girls respectfully telling her to stop being cruel and mocking towards trans women, she received a lot of support from other TERFS (although these TERFS said they hate being called TERFS just for being honest and brave lmmfao). They said that transwomen don't belong in radfem because they just suffer from discrimination, not oppression, and listed some reasons why: according to them, trans girls don't suffer: obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, feminicide, child marriage, genital femenine ablation, glass ceiling barriers, being implanted "maternal sense" while kids, getting their ears perfored while babies, among other stuff, and that differentiate ciswomen biological reality from trans women biological reality isn't transphobia. Other girls said they knew transwomen who were mean to them, using derogatory terms to refer to ciswomen and they were mean and cruel, using this argument to generalize about all transwomen smh.

I'm just so stoned that people could be so cruel to transwomen and set them aside from the feminist fight when they suffer from already being excluded from so many things. It sickens me that some people don't belive trans people exist and treat them that bad, specially trans girls. I wish I could debunk the info this TERFS are spreading because it's so dangerous and enables transphobics to keep harming transpeople and I find that unbearable, but I am not as informed as I should be to debute all their lies at once. Could you help me?

So starting with the question of transwomen in radfem spaces, I don’t think many (if any) transwomen would say that they experience the exact same type of discrimination that cis women do.  There’s often this idea that “trans people don’t believe in biology”, but that’s a bad faith argument.  Trans people understand biology very well, often more than their cis counterparts do, because it’s such a big part of their identity.

Yes, transwomen don’t suffer obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, child marriage, genital feminine ablation, etc. (I can’t even find any articles on the ear thing).  They do experience femicide, at way higher rates that cis women do. Transwomen are women, and they’re discriminated against in their own way; sometimes that’s because they’re women, and sometimes that’s because they’re trans.  Transwomen are largely supportive of fighting with cis women to rid the world of discrimination for all women, cis and trans alike.  

By contrast, TERFs seem to think that because transwomen sometimes suffer a different type of discrimination than cis women, they can’t be “real women”.  But that argument makes no sense to me.  The vast majority of affluent, white, straight, cis women will never suffer the violence that is apparently so central to the cis female experience.  They’re extremely unlikely to experience femicide, child marriage, genital mutilation... and yet they can acknowledge that those issues are feminist issues, even though they’re not universal to all women.  Why shouldn’t the discrimination that transwomen face also fall under that umbrella?  And if they can accept that women who have had hysterectomies, or women who have chromosomal differences, or women who are intersex, or women who present butch are all women, why shouldn’t transwomen also fall under the umbrella of womanhood?

Further, is that really all that womanhood is to TERFs?  Experiencing the trauma and discrimination that so often accompanies being a cis women?  I don’t think inclusion to a group should be predicated on the amount that one has suffered or how many “oppression points” they’ve amassed. And I don’t think being a woman should be predicated solely on biology, especially given that we never really know what kind of biology a person has just by looking at them.  What “being a woman” is is a metaphysical question that derails the discussion of trans feminism, and it’s a question that I don’t think a lot of TERFs actually have a good answer to.  It’s just an easy way to put the burden of proof on trans people and trans allies and waste our time (but if you’re interested, I do have an opinion on this. I just think it’s best saved for a different time).

In terms of trans people being oppressed, there’s all sorts of data to suggest that trans oppression is very real.  In the US, trans people were banned from serving in the military under the Trump administration, a decision that was only overturned a few days ago, and the Trump administration also reversed the Obama- era Title VII policy that protected trans employees from discrimination.  Trans people are overwhelmingly lacking legal protections- there are no federal non-discrimination laws that include gender identity, and in some states, debates over limiting the rights of trans people to use public bathrooms are ongoing.  

About 57% of trans people faced some type of rejection from their family upon coming out.  Around 29% of trans people live in poverty (compared to 11% in the general population and about 22% in the lesbian and gay populations), and that number is higher for trans people who are Black (39%), Latinx (48%), or Indigenous (35%).  27% of trans people have been fired, not hired, or denied a promotion due to their trans identity.  90% of trans people report facing discrimination in their own jobs.  Trans people face double the rate of unemployment that cis people do (about 14%) and about 44% are underemployed. This is despite the fact that a reported 71% of trans people have some level of post-secondary education- actually higher than the general population, which is about 61%.  It’s often cited that women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men, but that statistic doesn’t even exist for trans women.

54% of trans people have experienced intimate partner violence (compared to about 24.3% of cis women), 47% of trans people have been sexually assaulted (compared to about 18% of cis women), and about 10% are physically assaulted in a given year. 

About 22% of trans people and 32% of trans people of color in the US have no health insurance (compared to about 11% of cis women), and 55% of trans people who do have insurance report being denied coverage for at least one gender affirming surgery.  29% of trans adults have been refused healthcare by a doctor or provider because of their gender identity.  In one study, 50% of trans people said that they had to teach their medical providers about trans care.  Trans people are four times as likely than the average population to be infected by HIV.  41% have attempted suicide at one point in their lives, compared to 1.6% of the general population.  

20% of trans people have been evicted or denied housing due to their gender identity, and trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be homeless.  Only 1/5 of trans people report that they have been able to update all of their identification documents, and 41% have a driver’s license that does not match their gender identity.  22% of trans people report that they have been denied equal treatment by a government agency or official, 29% reported police harassment, and 12% reported having been denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials.

75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school because of their gender expression, 60% are forced to use a bathroom or locker room that does not match their gender, 50% were unable to use the name and pronouns that match their gender, and 70% of trans students say that they’ve avoided bathrooms because they feel unsafe.  78% of trans students report being harassed or assaulted at school.

And these are all statistics that focus on trans people at large.  The discrimination is worse for transwomen and especially transwomen of color.  All of that certainly sounds like systemic oppression to me.

Every person who chooses to be a TERF perpetuates this discrimination.  It’s just bigotry towards trans people, plain and simple.  And for what?  A reactionary fear that all transwomen are secretly sexual predators and all transmen are confused girls who don’t know better?  Unfortunately, men can be sexual predators just fine without having to jump through the convoluted hoops trans people go through to be recognized as their true gender identity, and transwomen are way more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be sexual predators.  There are no reported cases at all that transwomen are dressing up as men to assault women in bathrooms.  There aren’t even statistics on how frequently trans people are sexual predators. And transmen are just as capable of making informed, thoughtful decisions as cis women.  

TERFs shouldn’t be pitting themselves against trans people.  There’s just nothing to be gained from doing that.  They should be working alongside trans people to fight the patriarchy and the discrimination that cis and trans women both face, regardless of what that discrimination entails.

Last thought.  Not to be a stan or anything but if you’re interested in learning more about these issues, Contrapoints has a number of really good videos on the topic of TERFs (including one that just released today!). They delve a bit deeper into the actual questions that TERFs often bring up and provide some nuanced answers.

[mllemouse]

Tw Idk gender confusion???? I am throwing this here to the void bc I've been talking to myself literally all day and really very often for the last few weeks and maybe if I write it it will becomeore cohesive. On mobile, can't put in a jump so just be forewarned of a deluge.

Tw cancer and surgery and imagined gore!!!

Okay so. J tells me they're non-binary, that's very cool to me, but embarrassing after I told them I go by my first initial online bc I'm an easy Google, thinking they were a basic straight boy. (Also, the main reason I even liked them was bc in their profile they are beautiful and a lil feminine and I am just oblivious as fuck!!) I started going by an initial like 8-10 years ago and since have slowly been changing up my name where possible as I come across a new place it's stored.

Tbh I originally consciously chose an initial bc I just didn't want people immediately judging me as a woman. It infiltrated my personal life some, there are people who just call me L, my ex referred to me as L in all his notes, my mum addresses postcards and packages to me as L, and it's given me a lot of delight! The idea that people don't know my gender, or that they know and choose to continue using the initial has always left me just chuffed. I knew a couple other people that came out and switched to an initial as their name everywhere, but like didn't connect it to myself until J asked about it specifically bc they had a hunch I was also nb. (Honestly, my opening profile line is 'be the love child of Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand you wish to see in the world' and then the whole profile is me in my glasses and nerd clothes... It's uh, not a stretch now that I look at it.)

I quickly did some refreshing on definitions and language, which punted me straight back to middle school when I hit puberty and started feeling so! Deeply! Uncomfortable! In my body. I used to stand in front of my mirror in my undies and stare in horror at what was happening. I had been wearing a bra since grade 5 out of shame in the girl's changing room for gym, that was less of an issue (I literally threw out those bras when I went to college bc they just got ratty, not bc I grew out of them!), but I watched my hips develop and envisioned having them sawed back down so they could be narrow again. I also got my period in middle school and have loathed it ever since. I wished I was a boy but only for the ease of keeping my body; I didn't want to dress different or change my interests. I wasn't raised in away that dictated male or female activities/interests or even clothing -- except I hated that my brother was allowed to go topless in public whereas I could only do so in a backyard -- yet gender noncomformity, while always accepted, was just not that actively encouraged. Educators told us what to expect during puberty but never that we should tell someone if we were so distraught over it.

I didn't really get much in the way of boobs but I used a tensor bandage as a binder through middle and high school (not even knowing what that was, I just wanted to be flat and saw Gwyneth Paltrow do it in Shakespeare in Love!), I remember sneaking it into my bags for college, but I don't have specific memories of using it then. I was kind of happy with them at figure skating bc I ended up being like the only girl who didn't need a bra or padding in her dresses, my mum just sewed a triple layer of fabric in the front for warmth and I was good to go. I was deeply ashamed of my hips and thighs however, and we got in fights over my skirts all the time.

By the end of high school I was fantasizing about plastic surgery and a hysterectomy. At one point I wished cancer upon myself so I would have an excuse for a mastectomy and hysterectomy. My mum actually got cervical cancer and I was, I'm so sad to admit, slightly jealous.

I came to Tumblr and found the fitblr community quickly after quitting skating and dealing with mono, feeling a need to get back into something competitive. I quickly came to loathe not only my own but other women's bodies through the inspirational photos. I loved the men's bodies, and operated with a goal of getting my body fat low enough (like, aimed for a men's recommended percentage, my period could go to hell) while building muscle that I would maybe narrow my hips and shrink my breasts, while having visibly muscular abs and arms.

I'm not sure if it's a net positive thing that I crashed on my shoulder and haven't been able to fully return to the training I wanted to? After the crash I really tried to treat myself better. The body positive movement was telling me to vehemently love all of my body (nevermind it's almost solely geared towards able bodied cis women), and I tried. And I got distracted: moved away, fell in love, discovered I am probably autistic, made some significant life goals. So by the time I was settled here and feeling like I could experiment more, I channeled that entirely through clothing rather than change my body. First dictated by what's comfy (we don't do a synthetic fibre or picky knits on this body), then by how I wanted to present myself to the world: obv, Tilda Swinton in a suit. By this point I have forgotten middle school, high school, and college.

And basically, though I was somewhat consciously changing my name to an initial and intentionally dressing predominantly masculine (but like blazers and trousers and oxfords aren't... Gendered??) as a rejection of toxic patriarchy and capitalism, I ended up not even thinking it could be a gender thing until J did a double take on my name. I have thought about it occasionally over the years and honestly just never thought I was uncomfortable enough to even say I may be non-binary, let alone do anything about it. trans? I can't feel like I hold any ownership over the word. Which now seems... Insane. How did I rationalize wishing violence upon my body and putting it through truly damaging physical duress for nearly two decades in pursuit of obscuring the stuff that made me female. And don't get me wrong, I love a good dress, I tolerate skirts, sometimes I wear heels bc I like to be tall and feel powerful, and I like my face and my long hair, and sometimes I wear makeup because I think I look pretty even though it makes me want to claw my face off. (And have realised that a LOT of the way I have styled myself in the past was purely self objectification for men and not actually what I enjoyed.) I just... ???? Is that not trans enough? I still don't know!!

Anyway to end on a positive, shout-out to my mum who just doesn't give a fuck abt what I do, as she quickly changed her correspondence to me to exclusively my initial, and has always shopped in the men's section with me, and is currently making me a historically accurate 18th century men's outfit so I can really be the boyish chaos I want to see in the world. Tilda and Frances' love child indeed.

[lets-pretend-i-exist]

Some disparate thoughts on gender, anatomy and creative thinking.

Back in second year I took a creative writing class that effectively destroyed any kind of creative ego I had. We had to present our (in my case very personal) works to the entire tutorial class and simply accept all feedback. It was awful. The only compliments I ever got were admiration of a poem title — ‘Tentative, Reiterated’ — and benevolent silence. In the span of a deeply painful, demoralising semester, I went from thinking my amateur poetry could be something to feeling that it wasn’t even worth sharing.

However, the class did expose me to a lot of other amateur writing: most clichéd, some entirely terrible for various reasons, and a scant few works that really impressed themselves upon me.

One was a poem that, so far as I can remember, was loosely based on a young cis woman’s struggle to feel comfortable in femininity. It used the imagery of dolls and generational needlework, as the author had been taught to sew by her grandmother and volunteered making costumes for the drama society.

I distinctly remember a line in this poem about wishing — or simply imagining? — that the speaker was “smooth as a Ken doll”. It strikes me now that the female voice chose Ken, rather than Barbie (probably just a syllabic consideration), but at the time the entire image haunted me. Not in a negative way, just a cloying one. It stuck with me.

It felt distantly like someone had articulated a secret feeling I’d had but couldn’t truly formulate into thought. Like someone had openly, flagrantly described some seed of thought I’d swiftly and privately quashed.

I didn’t realise at the time how much it affected me, but I look back now and trace this as the start (?) of my moments of recognition. Moments of wondering or yearning or fantasising about a body that was still mine but not quite.

I yearned to cut off my hair. I struggled to reconcile the desire to have a hairless body (like a child’s? Like a doll’s?) and the disdain I had for hair removal. I dreaded periods and the havoc they wrecked on my mind. I thought about hysterectomies as more than just an escape from pain and inconvenience, more like a cure for some unnameable discomfort that lay far deeper. I thought about some future version of me either having a breast augmentation or a double mastectomy.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both

I watched a friend socially transition and felt admiration, while at the same time feeling like that courage was completely unattainable. This, even though I know it’s not courage: there comes a time when it’s not really a choice, it’s self-preservation.

But it still feels safer to live in this quiet limbo, to be followed everywhere by this alien feeling — by which I mean this familiar feeling of being an alien — yet never speak about it.

I have moments where I test the waters, gaze upon a black lake at midnight and dip in a toe to assess a few ripples. A haircut, a comment here, additional (optional) pronouns there. I can’t see far enough to feel I could land the jump securely.

I still think about binders. I think about what it would be like to be addressed differently. I think about my friends who dye their hair twice in a week or pierce their ears in the middle of the night. Who have their stomachs pumped and come to work the next day. I think about not quite recognising myself in the mirror, or in photographs, or in old poems.

And I wonder in my most twisted moments whether it’s all down to this fatal flaw of empathy, of an insatiable desire to feel and experience everything. If it’s that teenaged, naive wanting to be something shifting and enigmatic and unable to pin down. A stranger from a memory; a concept, smoke. If it’s just having absorbed too many images, too many stories, too many people for too long.

It’s safer in the dark, in the standing still and silent, in the not knowing — not quite.

[goatguy7399]

The Effects of Body Positivity on Trans Individuals: an Interview

I have heard people claim that trans people need to just “accept” their bodies for what they are and try to cure their dysphoria with body positivity. I spoke to my trans friend who grew up in a body positive household who still has dysphoria on what he thinks about this.

1. How body positive was your household/upbringing?

Very positive. I was always in sports or activities but we also ate very healthy and my parents didn't place any importance on my looks, but rather on my intelligence/school performance etc. My moms (my parents divorced and my mom married another woman) were sort of reverent of the voluptuous female figure and would criticize people who put women down for their looks.

Dieting was basically a taboo subject and if I mentioned dieting my mom would go on a rant of how I need to eat to grow and stay healthy.

I have never wanted to diet or be skinny.

2.What is your gender identity

I'm a man (FtM/trans man)

3. Did body positivity help you alleviate dysphoria or were you more dysphoric because of it? Or neither?

I guess body positivity helped me to grow normally and healthfully, but I was still dysphoric despite it. I think body positivity helped me to repress my dysphoria. That's not a good thing but on the other hand I wouldn't have wished for a body shaming upbringing.

Body positivity made me proud of what my body can DO rather than focusing on what my body looks like or what I want to look like.

On the other hand it hasn't made my dysphoria better and actually my dysphoria got worse over the years, even before I realized I was trans. For example the way my chest looks, is pretty weird to me, even though compared to most AFAB people I have a small chest. The way it FEELS is much worse. Like someone superglued two slimes to my chest. I have always had that gross cringing feeling when I touched my chest.

Also, bottom dysphoria isn't about body positivity at all. It's literally about having the wrong genitals. In my family we were very sex positive and no subject was taboo. When I was a teenager I knew it was okay to masturbate but I always got a horrifying feeling when I looked or touched down there. Eventually I became more open to sex but as I have gotten older the feeling of a missing penis has become stronger. Some days I feel like I was castrated or like a part of me died before I was even born. Even women who are very insecure about their bodies don't feel that way.

4. Would you say that general body positivity could help trans ppl or be more dysphoria inducing? (Especially the kind of body positivity that says “just accept your trans body”.)

Yes, I think in some ways it could. but not about certain body parts. I don't feel like I should be talking about MTF people so I will talk about FTM examples. For example, breasts are not a male body part, even though some cis men develop breasts because of gynecomastia. They develop if there is a hormonal imbalance of female hormones in a man's body. Telling a (cis or trans) man that he should accept his breasts as part of his body is upsetting because they are not supposed to be there. Also telling a trans man that he should try to be more positive about his reproductive organs, genitals, or bodily functions is not helpful either. If he was born with XY chromosomes chances are he would not have those. In fact, the few cis men who are born with the wrong parts often do get them surgically removed or altered so they can live healthfully. I read of one man who was born with completely male genitalia but also had a uterus inside him, and he had a hysterectomy because it was causing issues. so whereas a small percentage of men are born with or develop female parts like a uterus or breasts, they usually get them removed (I am not talking about intersex people).

I am not sure what kind of body positivity would benefit trans people. I value the way I grew up, even though I wish I had known about transitioning when I was younger. I don't think everyone is like me.

Also, even though I think I am very body positive, I think I am still dysphoric about how much body fat I have or how short I am. I don't think I am a bad person for having extra body fat, and I don't see it as a negative but I know that if I had been born in a male body I would not look this way because of my active lifestyle and diet. So it's very frustrating but also makes me feel wrong. Not shameful or embarrassed, just wrong.