It’s not “self harm”

FtMs are not giving themselves double mastectomies and metoidioplasties and phalloplasties and hysterectomies. Surgeons are. Doctors and therapists are signing off on it. Insurance companies are approving these as medical necessities. Parents are helping their kids get these surgeries. In some places, the State pays for these surgeries. Hospitals are accommodating patients for these surgeries, nurses are attending to patients who get these surgeries.

When there are complications? When there are blood clots or strictures or fistulas, who left the scars? Who did their job badly? This is not “self harm.” It is medical abuse.

Psychologists are diagnosing the condition that allows their patients to be eligible for surgery and hormone replacement therapy. Boards of clinicians are making decisions about the future of care for dysphoric people. Someone is out there teaching and licensing the people who give these diagnoses. Plenty of people are out there making money off “informed consent.”

When someone takes a prescription medication in the prescribed dosage as instructed by a doctor, they are not “self-harming” with testosterone. They are following a doctor’s orders. They are taking a medication prescribed by a doctor based on a diagnosis that some psychologist gave them.

When there is harm done (BY WHO?) to the patient during medical transition, this is medical abuse: there are virtually no studies on the long-term impacts of testosterone on our health; they treat us as less than lab rats not worthy to even keep data on. They use us for experimental surgery and do their jobs so poorly that some patients have brought lawsuits against them, for example Dr. Curtis Crane.

Butch women of past generations didn’t do this because it wasn’t offered, wasn’t pushed, wasn’t made into the only option, wasn’t paid for by insurance, wasn’t something you could walk into a planned parenthood and receive, wasn’t encouraged by the lgbt community, wasn’t available.

I recently saw someone asking if trans-related surgeries should be considered “self-mutilation.” It is misguided, victim-blaming, and willfully ignorant to say yes. There is a huge, complex web of people who created this situation we are now in, with doctors who are making a living solely from doing transition-related double mastectomies, one after another, every day, like a factory, giving out hormones after a 15-minute discussion and a single page printout of information, and leaving us to fend for ourselves when something goes wrong or doesn’t work out in the process of transition.

With most any other feminist issue you will find not just willingness to name the agent, but a direction of approach that focuses on naming the agent and placing the spotlight on the perpetrators. In other feminist issues, it’s much more emphasized to dig out and shed light on the underlying institutions that created and perpetuate the problem. But not this one. When it comes to females who transition, radical feminists love to place focus on the victim herself as being problematic. I think it’s appalling that radical feminists can name trans ideology as a cult, but turn around and make fun of women and girls who get caught up in it. And I think it’s purposefully provocative and obscuring to use language like “self-mutilation” in reference to life-changing surgeries that are simultaneously named as patriarchal creations to subjugate women. It’d be nice if more women could look up from that headless photo online used without permission long enough to see the big picture here.

Please stop fixating on the victims you claim to defend with objectifying, dehumanizing language and look instead to the plethora of perpetrators that can be named and that feminists could take action against.

Give those of us with a trans history the respect of listening to our perspective before using us as a talking point. Stop ogling sensationalist, circular, dime-a-dozen shock articles/blog posts/etc and thinking it’s doing anything to help the women who are harmed by medical transition. Name the agent. Name the perpetrators.