A poster at r/detrans asks: can i still consider myself desisted if i get a hysto/mastectomy? ok i don’t know if i’d get top surgery but i want it. what i for sure hope to get in the future is a hysto. even if i did both those things i’d still consider myself a woman as i don’t believe in gender identity and don’t even feel like identifying as anything else. but if i did those things would i still be considered desisted? what would i even be then? because i’d definitely NOT id as trans
Thanks for tackling this knotty subject.... I think....
As a grannie I love my grandkids exactly as they are. I don't want to see them make any massive mistakes which might damage their bodies in any way. I remember when their father incurred his first scar in an accident with a glass door. I nearly fainted. His perfect skin was perforated and a small scar is still visible on his chest 45 years later.
I worry that these children who have chopped bits off themselves and embarked upon pharmaceutical courses for hormone change will become sad adults who regret their adolescent decisions.
I foresee lives, which held such natural promise, burdened with regret and mourning.
I wish that health professionals would desist from offering their services in the sex change industry. There are so many better ways to help confused children come to love themselves for who they are.
Surgeries and hormones take the psyche further and further away from mind/body connections. Large scars across the chest will eventually dry out and constrict breathing and press on the area over the heart. I'm post-menopause and haven't had a period in 10 years, but felt there was a mystery in the cycle, a connection to the moon. It is disturbing to read of these pointless surgeries. I can't understand how it is these women seek to distance ourselves from their physical self because of how the world reacts to normal female presence. I advocate a program of mind body re-connection:
That video is depressing. "The one thing we truly share is freedom." No, the one thing you all share is internalized misogyny. Breasts are a natural feature of the female body. HATING them is a sad indicator of a mental health problem.
I'm a couple years into menopause, and I deeply mourn the ease of my pre-menopause life. Hot flashes are annoying, as are other problems with temperature control. Thinning and loss of hair have really cratered my self-confidence. Osteopenia is a struggle and a source of pain, though I do my best to ensure several hours of weight-bearing exercise every day.
But worst of all is the loss of the easy ability to sleep, and to stay asleep, that I unthinkingly enjoyed throughout my life. The insomnia that comes to so many with menopause was a complete and unwelcome surprise to me. It wrecked me for months before I dragged myself to my primary care provider.
I elected to do HRT (I know that many don't), and that improved things enough that now, nearly two years later, I can finally get through a night only waking up 6 or 7 times, and usually only once or twice staying awake for an hour or more. But I know that what I've experienced isn't uncommon with menopause.
I can't imagine taking on these changes (or the risk of them) decades earlier. It feels as if many who elect to undergo these trans surgeries have a completely bloodless idea of how the body's systems interact with and depend on one another. Uterus or no uterus, breasts or no breasts, estrogen or no estrogen, but everything else the same ... as if they were just deleting parts from a flat photograph of a body, with no likely impacts beyond the cosmetic ones.
I'd had no idea that some desisters still want to do the surgeries. I though de-transitioning involved realizing that the whole of the ideology was flawed. So I am feeling shocked and sad to read this.
What has always kept me from fully accepting Trans Ideology (even before I fully understood what was happening in the movement) was the disembodiment - the lie in and to the body - that was required to be trans.
As someone who recovered from my trauma by doing somatic therapy and finding healing, connection, and joy in coming back home to my body - the idea of someone surgically modifying themselves unnecessarily makes me forlorn.
They are already disconnected from themselves and then want to wash away the breadcrumbs that can lead them back home? This morning that feels tragic.
I had an ovarian tumour. Routinely, at the time it was being treated, both ovaries and uterus were removed. I was lucky. I had a female, Australian gynaecologist. She told me that approx 12mins was spent at medical school on the uterus and how it connected to the vagina and clitoris but that that recent research suggested there was a more complex connection that expected as many women who had had a hysterectomy then had little or no joy with their sex lives thereafter, most particularly clitoral orgasm - in fact, any orgasm. She thus recommended removal of just the ovary with the tumour; that she would leave a sort of (or as I understand it) temporary, easy-to-open-again incision should lab results show spread to my other ovary and womb. I not only liked her frank, easy open manner, but I trusted her and went for her option. Although I did then experience earlier than usual perimenopause, it was nothing compared to a friend who experienced a similar tumour but immediately had everything whipped out. She went into full blown menopause at 38 and admitted to zero feelings of arousal thereafter.
I think what this highlights is how very little is known about our bodies, including the interconnectedness of these different organs and then what, how, why menopause occurs. I have one sister who's mid 70s who is still experiencing negative menopausal flushes etc after being told around 56 that she'd 'grow out of it'.
When we know so little about real biological women, why the insane rush to create new artificial ones or to de-sex us with no real understanding of the life long impact? If you think about that, it does more than suggest the perception that we do not matter...
This relates to the distinction between reductionism (we are just a collection of cells which can be manipulated at the micro level and/or rebuilt at the macro level) and wholism (the body as a highly complex ecosystem at all levels from microbes to macrostructures, a system which we don't yet fully understand and tinker with at our risk).
Transhumanism asserts that functional womb transplants into men will be possible because it sees the body as a collection of engineering parts, not an interdependent ecosystem. In that belief system, a woman is just a dickless man with bigger breasts.
Outside of the trans stuff, I have come across so many women my age and younger who are poorly educated about their own reproductive system. A lot of them want hysterectomies because they want a 100% guarantee they will not get pregnant ever (tubal litigation, birth control, IUDs or even just asking their partners to wear a condom, has a chance of failing). They don't know that the uterus has way more functions outside carrying a potential baby and are unaware of the awful side-effects that come with getting a hysterectomy, especially when you do it at a relatively young age.
A part of me wonders if their motivation for wanting a hysterectomy is because they want to have sex with no consequences on their body whatsoever, or they have a fear of experiencing the pain that comes with pregnancy and raising children (perhaps as a result of sexual and psychological trauma). I could spend all day thinking about their potential motivations, but it still astounds me that in an age where we can get biological information at our fingertips, people are so misinformed about their bodies and how it works.
I was relieved a bit to see that in response to her post several people advocate caution. This young woman is probably in an early stage of detransitioning and is just not ready to give up her whole "5 year plan" . Hopefully she will listen to the advice of other detransitioners.
I used to tell a joke, “What is the one thing I could never get tired of seeing?” Breasts, the thing I find most beautiful in the world, why would a woman want to remove them?
I am the man who notices them. I am the man who does not see you, but does see your chest. I am the man who reduces you to an object. I will never know what it would be like to be a grown woman or precious teen girl full of personality and promise, suddenly reduced to two objects protruding in front my body. But, I don’t think I’d like it.
I can appreciate how some women can embrace the power their breasts wield over men like me. But I also understand how my gaze is an unwanted intrusion into one’s world. I get how men can reduce a woman to her body and erase their feeling of personhood.
How powerful it would be to take that power away from me? To eliminate that “distraction,” and force me to witness a person and not the body they inhabit. What is the relationship between (what must be) the relentless male gaze and this ostensible act of self-empowerment?
I think I may have mentioned in my previous comments (maybe not) that I ran a virtual support group for premenstrual dysphoric disorder years ago and I stopped after I changed my view on the disorder and because it was becoming so common for women to get or want to get hysterectomies. It wasn't discussed "casually" in so much as women were struggling with very troubling symptoms around their periods but it still really bothered me that this trend was taking place. As I learned more about my body and about how complex trauma can impact our relationships, I began taking a "less is more" approach to addressing menstrual difficulties.
I think it's always been part of the patriarchal project to alienate women from our bodies to the point where it doesn't matter what happens to us, leaving us more likely to go along with our own exploitation. The "empty house" metaphor comes to mind: opportunists are more likely to enter a house when it seems unoccupied. Surgeries, whether "gender-affirming" or not have become much more commonplace but this is a symptom of a much deeper and much older problem. The problem of separating us from ourselves is always present in an oppressive society because we value control over connection. The body itself is treated like a slave rather than a companion and punished for not doing what we want it to. It's heartbreaking.
As someone who had a radial orchiectomy to remove a malignant tumour I will never understand this way of thinking.
I would have died without that surgery. Under no other circumstances would I go back and do it again without the imminent threat of death.
My surgery went pretty much as well as could be expected and I STILL had complications for years afterwards as a result of scarred tissue.
Why on earth we would encourage the idea that young people should treat surgery as a cosmetic procedure to remove healthy organs without fully understanding the risks and almost certain complications is beyond me.
Well, this is a disturbing trend: Women who want to alter their bodies simply to remove the problematic parts of it.
Eliza, because I'm a man, I'm beginning to think that maybe I don't have the right to advise women not to have these surgeries. You seem to be against them too, but you know better than I do what the discomforts of being a woman are. I know that menstruation can be a monthly nightmare, and that a woman's breasts can act up, but knowing "about" those things doesn't mean that I know what the experience is like.
Thanks for tackling this knotty subject.... I think....
As a grannie I love my grandkids exactly as they are. I don't want to see them make any massive mistakes which might damage their bodies in any way. I remember when their father incurred his first scar in an accident with a glass door. I nearly fainted. His perfect skin was perforated and a small scar is still visible on his chest 45 years later.
I worry that these children who have chopped bits off themselves and embarked upon pharmaceutical courses for hormone change will become sad adults who regret their adolescent decisions.
I foresee lives, which held such natural promise, burdened with regret and mourning.
I wish that health professionals would desist from offering their services in the sex change industry. There are so many better ways to help confused children come to love themselves for who they are.
Surgeries and hormones take the psyche further and further away from mind/body connections. Large scars across the chest will eventually dry out and constrict breathing and press on the area over the heart. I'm post-menopause and haven't had a period in 10 years, but felt there was a mystery in the cycle, a connection to the moon. It is disturbing to read of these pointless surgeries. I can't understand how it is these women seek to distance ourselves from their physical self because of how the world reacts to normal female presence. I advocate a program of mind body re-connection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHt7RMHRSxI&t=1s
That video is depressing. "The one thing we truly share is freedom." No, the one thing you all share is internalized misogyny. Breasts are a natural feature of the female body. HATING them is a sad indicator of a mental health problem.
I'm a couple years into menopause, and I deeply mourn the ease of my pre-menopause life. Hot flashes are annoying, as are other problems with temperature control. Thinning and loss of hair have really cratered my self-confidence. Osteopenia is a struggle and a source of pain, though I do my best to ensure several hours of weight-bearing exercise every day.
But worst of all is the loss of the easy ability to sleep, and to stay asleep, that I unthinkingly enjoyed throughout my life. The insomnia that comes to so many with menopause was a complete and unwelcome surprise to me. It wrecked me for months before I dragged myself to my primary care provider.
I elected to do HRT (I know that many don't), and that improved things enough that now, nearly two years later, I can finally get through a night only waking up 6 or 7 times, and usually only once or twice staying awake for an hour or more. But I know that what I've experienced isn't uncommon with menopause.
I can't imagine taking on these changes (or the risk of them) decades earlier. It feels as if many who elect to undergo these trans surgeries have a completely bloodless idea of how the body's systems interact with and depend on one another. Uterus or no uterus, breasts or no breasts, estrogen or no estrogen, but everything else the same ... as if they were just deleting parts from a flat photograph of a body, with no likely impacts beyond the cosmetic ones.
I'd had no idea that some desisters still want to do the surgeries. I though de-transitioning involved realizing that the whole of the ideology was flawed. So I am feeling shocked and sad to read this.
What has always kept me from fully accepting Trans Ideology (even before I fully understood what was happening in the movement) was the disembodiment - the lie in and to the body - that was required to be trans.
As someone who recovered from my trauma by doing somatic therapy and finding healing, connection, and joy in coming back home to my body - the idea of someone surgically modifying themselves unnecessarily makes me forlorn.
They are already disconnected from themselves and then want to wash away the breadcrumbs that can lead them back home? This morning that feels tragic.
I had an ovarian tumour. Routinely, at the time it was being treated, both ovaries and uterus were removed. I was lucky. I had a female, Australian gynaecologist. She told me that approx 12mins was spent at medical school on the uterus and how it connected to the vagina and clitoris but that that recent research suggested there was a more complex connection that expected as many women who had had a hysterectomy then had little or no joy with their sex lives thereafter, most particularly clitoral orgasm - in fact, any orgasm. She thus recommended removal of just the ovary with the tumour; that she would leave a sort of (or as I understand it) temporary, easy-to-open-again incision should lab results show spread to my other ovary and womb. I not only liked her frank, easy open manner, but I trusted her and went for her option. Although I did then experience earlier than usual perimenopause, it was nothing compared to a friend who experienced a similar tumour but immediately had everything whipped out. She went into full blown menopause at 38 and admitted to zero feelings of arousal thereafter.
I think what this highlights is how very little is known about our bodies, including the interconnectedness of these different organs and then what, how, why menopause occurs. I have one sister who's mid 70s who is still experiencing negative menopausal flushes etc after being told around 56 that she'd 'grow out of it'.
When we know so little about real biological women, why the insane rush to create new artificial ones or to de-sex us with no real understanding of the life long impact? If you think about that, it does more than suggest the perception that we do not matter...
This relates to the distinction between reductionism (we are just a collection of cells which can be manipulated at the micro level and/or rebuilt at the macro level) and wholism (the body as a highly complex ecosystem at all levels from microbes to macrostructures, a system which we don't yet fully understand and tinker with at our risk).
Transhumanism asserts that functional womb transplants into men will be possible because it sees the body as a collection of engineering parts, not an interdependent ecosystem. In that belief system, a woman is just a dickless man with bigger breasts.
Outside of the trans stuff, I have come across so many women my age and younger who are poorly educated about their own reproductive system. A lot of them want hysterectomies because they want a 100% guarantee they will not get pregnant ever (tubal litigation, birth control, IUDs or even just asking their partners to wear a condom, has a chance of failing). They don't know that the uterus has way more functions outside carrying a potential baby and are unaware of the awful side-effects that come with getting a hysterectomy, especially when you do it at a relatively young age.
A part of me wonders if their motivation for wanting a hysterectomy is because they want to have sex with no consequences on their body whatsoever, or they have a fear of experiencing the pain that comes with pregnancy and raising children (perhaps as a result of sexual and psychological trauma). I could spend all day thinking about their potential motivations, but it still astounds me that in an age where we can get biological information at our fingertips, people are so misinformed about their bodies and how it works.
I was relieved a bit to see that in response to her post several people advocate caution. This young woman is probably in an early stage of detransitioning and is just not ready to give up her whole "5 year plan" . Hopefully she will listen to the advice of other detransitioners.
I used to tell a joke, “What is the one thing I could never get tired of seeing?” Breasts, the thing I find most beautiful in the world, why would a woman want to remove them?
I am the man who notices them. I am the man who does not see you, but does see your chest. I am the man who reduces you to an object. I will never know what it would be like to be a grown woman or precious teen girl full of personality and promise, suddenly reduced to two objects protruding in front my body. But, I don’t think I’d like it.
I can appreciate how some women can embrace the power their breasts wield over men like me. But I also understand how my gaze is an unwanted intrusion into one’s world. I get how men can reduce a woman to her body and erase their feeling of personhood.
How powerful it would be to take that power away from me? To eliminate that “distraction,” and force me to witness a person and not the body they inhabit. What is the relationship between (what must be) the relentless male gaze and this ostensible act of self-empowerment?
I think I may have mentioned in my previous comments (maybe not) that I ran a virtual support group for premenstrual dysphoric disorder years ago and I stopped after I changed my view on the disorder and because it was becoming so common for women to get or want to get hysterectomies. It wasn't discussed "casually" in so much as women were struggling with very troubling symptoms around their periods but it still really bothered me that this trend was taking place. As I learned more about my body and about how complex trauma can impact our relationships, I began taking a "less is more" approach to addressing menstrual difficulties.
I think it's always been part of the patriarchal project to alienate women from our bodies to the point where it doesn't matter what happens to us, leaving us more likely to go along with our own exploitation. The "empty house" metaphor comes to mind: opportunists are more likely to enter a house when it seems unoccupied. Surgeries, whether "gender-affirming" or not have become much more commonplace but this is a symptom of a much deeper and much older problem. The problem of separating us from ourselves is always present in an oppressive society because we value control over connection. The body itself is treated like a slave rather than a companion and punished for not doing what we want it to. It's heartbreaking.
There is a whole generation that is shunning the very idea of being human.Tragic,wrong and deeply sad.
As someone who had a radial orchiectomy to remove a malignant tumour I will never understand this way of thinking.
I would have died without that surgery. Under no other circumstances would I go back and do it again without the imminent threat of death.
My surgery went pretty much as well as could be expected and I STILL had complications for years afterwards as a result of scarred tissue.
Why on earth we would encourage the idea that young people should treat surgery as a cosmetic procedure to remove healthy organs without fully understanding the risks and almost certain complications is beyond me.
Well, this is a disturbing trend: Women who want to alter their bodies simply to remove the problematic parts of it.
Eliza, because I'm a man, I'm beginning to think that maybe I don't have the right to advise women not to have these surgeries. You seem to be against them too, but you know better than I do what the discomforts of being a woman are. I know that menstruation can be a monthly nightmare, and that a woman's breasts can act up, but knowing "about" those things doesn't mean that I know what the experience is like.