My body doesn’t look the way I want it to right now, but I’m trying to find ways to love it anyway in spite of that.

3 weeks post op with doctor corrine wong with denver health 

This was. funny to me

(they could be real btw: [1] [2])

i need all fat people who want top surgery to know you are not too fat for top surgery. a competent surgeon and anesthesiologist team will make things work for you regardless of your size. if one doctor gives you shit about your weight or bmi or outright refuses to operate on you, get a second opinion. go to a second doctor. go to a third doctor. go to a million doctors until you get what you want. the dual combo of fatphobia and transphobia in medicine cannot keep us down. you do not need to be skinny to change your body how you want to change it. you do not need to be skinny for top surgery.

A tribute to the transmasc body

I'm going for my first top surgery consultation tomorrow!!!!!!!!

Me by photographer Steven Harwick, AKA Bound Leather Zine (@intoguilt)

Why I want top surgery:

so i can wake up and not immediately feel disgusted by myself

so i can go to sleep comfortable

so i cannot be constricted every day by binders and still feel like it isn’t enough

so i can wear clothes and feel like me in them

so i can shower and be able to look down

so i can not feel weighted down whenever i’m not binding (or even double binding on bad days)

so i can feel like me

so i can know what freedom is

so i can run and swim and bang on my chest like a goddamn gorilla because i’ll be free

so i can be happy without always having to feel like there’s two humongous weights hanging from my chest

so i can be happy

and, most importantly: so i can have sick ass scars and walk around without a shirt on

a list i made because my mom keeps trying to gaslight me into thinking i’ll be making a mistake when i turn 18 and immediately get surgery asap

The Lake

pre-anything | 1.5 years on t | 4 weeks post-op

looking at these pictures side by side like this really puts so much in perspective. all the hard parts of second puberty and surgery recovery, all the fighting with my parents over the steps it took to get here, all the hours i worked at an awful job to save up for it, all the years i spent waiting for any of this to be possible…it’s all so worth it to be where i am now.

two years ago, if you had shown me the picture on the right, i probably would’ve said that even t and top surgery could never make me look like that, no matter how much i wanted to. that was the kind of person whose pictures i would look up to as some sort of wishful thinking, never as a realistic goal, and now here i am. now that’s my body and i feel like i can relax in it and just be for the first time.

being trans is so fucking cool man.

Just a slutty little guy doing slutty little things.

I’m so happy it’s summer and my top surgery scars are completely healed now :)

I see a lot of people saying that gender-affirming health care like top surgery for trans people like myself should be freely available (which is correct), but one of the reasons they often give is that top surgery is very safe and has a very low rate of complications compared to other surgeries. And I often see transphobes clutching their pearls over the few people who do have complications. What about them?! What if you're one of the unlucky ones?! Should we really let those transes risk it??!!!

Setting aside the fact that no one raises such concerns over other types of surgery, I'd like to use myself as an example for anyone who needs one.

In May of 2022 I had top surgery (double mastectomy). The surgery was done by a gynecological surgeon, not a plastic surgeon, because that way my insurance would cover it.

The surgeon did his job and removed the breast tissue, but he did not make it look pretty. I have dog-ears at both ends of both scars (extra bits of skin that hang off in a very unappealing fashion), my chest still looks unnaturally flat with no muscle or fat despite a lot of working out, and one of the stitches didn't heal properly and was left as an open wound through "secondary healing" for several months before it finally healed over into a very large scab (and eventually a very large scar). My nipples are uneven and irregular and look... well, just awful, really. Due to bad genetic luck, I wound up with keloid scars which, instead of getting smaller and lighter over time, have instead expanded, becoming thicker and darker. Worst of all, I now have chronic nerve pain in my chest. My GP thinks the surgeon must have hit a nerve during the procedure, and now I have random sharp pains all over my chest even now, nearly ten months later. The pain might improve with time, or it might not.

I basically had almost every possible complication one can have from this surgery short of infection or death. Some of the aesthetics might be fixable with more surgery (though plastic surgery will be expensive). Some are probably permanent. I might never feel comfortable taking my shirt off in public again. I might have to tattoo over the scars.

And pay attention to this next bit, because it's the most important part of this whole post: I do not regret the surgery. Even with all the complications and the ugly state of my chest and the pain. If someone said they could push a button and make it so that the surgery never happened and I'd have a perfect, unmarred chest with C-cup breasts again, I would tell them to take their button and fuck right off. Because even with basically the worst of all possible outcomes, that surgery was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I don't feel good about taking my shirt off in front of people now. I do think my chest is ugly. But it's a male chest now. When I put on a t-shirt, it rests flat against my chest. No one will ever mistake me for a woman again. I'll never have to wear a bra or binder ever again.

The dysphoria I felt from having breasts was so severe that a hideously scarred chest and chronic pain are vastly preferable. The euphoria I feel when I look in the mirror with a shirt on is something I never knew I was capable of feeling.

And it's my fucking body, and it's up to me what I do with it. If I wanted to tattoo myself from head to toe, or file my teeth into fangs, or have a doctor break my legs and surgically implant extensions to make me taller, that's my right because it's my body. The fact that all those things are regarded as basically acceptable (if a little weird), but I had to have a dehumanizing interview with an old cis psychiatrist who hates trans people and wants us all sterilized just to get a piece of paper giving me permission to have my tits removed, is fucking absurd.

Top surgery (of any kind) is generally very safe, and complications are rare. But even with the worst outcome, a trans person will basically never regret it.

And frankly, if a cis woman wants her tits cut off, or a cis man wants a pair of boobs to play with on his own chest, more power to them because literally who gives a fuck what people do to their own bodies? I saw a dude on TV when I was a kid who'd tattooed his whole body to look like a cat, filed his teeth into fangs, and had loads of plastic surgery to surgically implant whiskers and make his face look more feline. It was weird! But literally no one said that should be banned because he might regret it. It's his body to do whatever weird shit he wants with.

The next time someone clutches their pearls and kicks and screams about how you can't let someone permanently alter their body in a way they might regret, feel free to point to me and my complete and utter lack of regret.

(Or have a little fun with it, go hard in the other direction, and say you absolutely agree, which is why we should ban ALL non-emergency surgeries until the patient has been FULLY evaluated by three psychiatrists - along with tattoos and piercings. Oh, and ballet lessons for anyone under the age of 25, since ballet changes the structure of a child's body FOREVER.)

Vent piece because I'm having a rough time getting top surgery.

i want y’all to know i got my top surgery at ~270 pounds and it looks fucking fine like you are not too fat to get top surgery and have it be flat and nice and feel better

just letting the internet know that i’m having a consultation for top surgery on monday :)