Gender surgeon promotes bizarre range of ‘nonbinary surgeries’
In the world of gender, evidence disappears from the public realm all the time. Social media giants ban upstart accounts and censor uncomfortable conversations. Videos proudly shared on the website of a children’s hospital one day vanish the next, replaced by carefully crafted denials. This week, a revealing interview with a prominent American gender surgeon named Blair Peters (he/they) suddenly went private.
I can understand why. In the video, Peters demonstrates just how far his field has strayed from the most basic tenets of medical care (the distinctly old-fashioned oath to “first, do no harm”) into the wild frontier of helping patients realise their “embodiment goals” through life-altering, function-destroying surgical procedures.
“As a surgeon, my whole goal is helping you self-actualise how you see yourself internally,” Peters says at one point. “I really love that,” the interviewer gushes. “The collaborative vision-making, as opposed to, like, ‘this is what we’re doing and that’s all you have to choose from.’” Peters chides his fellow surgeons for clinging to a “binary” mindset when it comes to gender surgery, turning away from the wider world of “non-binary” surgeries, which encompasses procedures like phallus-preserving vaginoplasty (this is exactly what it sounds like) or gender nullification surgery (“removing all external genitalia to create a smooth transition from the abdomen to the groin”).
Under the pretence of “following the patient’s lead”, gender clinicians like Peters dabble ever more boldly in body horror. All along the way, training targeting clinicians reminds doctors not to judge their patients’ desires. Under the framework of “gender-affirming” care, doctors become facilitators or customer service specialists, freed from the responsibilities that ought to accompany the power they wield.
I wish I had written the paper I had in mind a few years ago that "patient centred care" would lead logically to this point. From the "lunchtime boob job" through hideous lip-fillers (why do some people want to look like fish?), injecting poison (botulinum toxin), and TV series glorifying pointless cosmetic surgery, this has been carefully pushed for years. I would never have thought that the medical profession would gleefully accept doing it to children, though - it would have been inconceivable even five years ago. We urgently need courts and professional bodies to stand up and reiterate that doctors have a duty to do the right thing, not whatever the patient (claims to) want. It is part of the professional duty of a doctor to say "No" when asked to do something that is harmful or unnecessary.
"Gender nullification surgery" on women is female genital mutilation. The only difference is Western/American Imperialism. The misogyny and dehumanization are the same. The objectification of women can teach us a lot about the objectification of children. In the West, women's "choice" to be objectified is emphasized -- we're seeing the same with children. Women are told they're nothing more than a collection of parts whose main value is tied up in appearing a certain way so we don't bat an eye at their endless surgeries -- it's "natural" and they're "choosing" to do it. Now, girls want to escape this form of objectification and males want to embody it and we're told they can make that "choice" and that their feelings are "natural".