On non-binary dysphoria, and top surgery

[azurelunatic]

Quoted with permission. The writer is non-binary gendered, AFAB, and has recently had top surgery.

One of the best things about [top surgery] is how quickly my dysphoria has eased. One of the things I worried about was whether I actually had dysphoria - after all, I was managing to hold down at least one job, go out, have a relationship and so on. I was pretty functional, right? Now I've actually had surgery, I realise how bad it was: all the things I avoided because it meant putting a binder on, all the ways it impacted my relationship and friendships, the way it affected about how I felt about my body, the constant buzzing low level awareness that couldn't be switched off. And now it's gone, and its absence is so noticeable.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

(My own non-binary gender includes a breast-having shape in my self-image, but I know enough people who are going "well, I don't LIKE them in fact I kind of HATE AND FEAR them, but ... what if I regret top surgery????" ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT IF YOU HATE AND FEAR YOUR BREASTS, YOU WILL NOT REGRET TOP SURGERY unless there's some other medical fuckery.)

[tim]

I'm genderqueer enough (I guess? this feels like an implementation-detail thing, not a public-API thing) that sometimes I want to femme it up and in those situations, my no-longer-existent F-cup breasts would come in handy. But I didn't want permanently-attached breasts, and since there are no detachable breasts, I got them detached and I've never regretted it. Easier to wear fake boobs (whether that means stuffing a bra with socks or something else) than to go through most of my life with breasts I don't want just so I can occasionally do something I mildly like but am not too attached to.

[azurelunatic]

Fake boobs do seem best for those circumstances.

[kellan_the_tabby]

I mostly dress femme & I mean the chesthangers I'm stuck with look nice with the dresses & all? but ARGH i still do not want them

& honestly I'm pretty sure I'd just be insufficiently arsed to stuff & go around boobless wearing dresses, which would probably be amusing for the looks I'd get if naught else.

[tim]

I would just wear dresses too if I wasn't scared to do it on the street (outside, like, parties with other queer trans people). The reasons why I want to and don't feel like I can are best left for exploration at some time when I have more spoons to think about why ;)

But yeah, I was attempting to affirm the point Azz was quoting, and go a step beyond and say: even someone who didn't unambivalently hate their breasts (me) was still happy to be done with them :)

[kellan_the_tabby]

Yeah I basically look like a girl so wearing dresses isn't gonna get me punched at least. Once I got over the childhood 'dresses=girl but not a girl??' stuff they got pretty easy for me.

& thank you for the affirming thing. I would quite like for mine to be gone. Alas, money.

[tim]

Yep :/ Insurance paid for mine. Unfortunately, the way things are looking, it looks like whatever progress has been made in the area of insurance covering transition-related care will be rolled back.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Yeah, I'd JUST gotten a doctor I could finally talk to about it, & now this...

I'm glad you got your snippy-snippy while the getting was good.

[vass]

Thank you, this is really helpful to hear from someone who's been there.

I didn't want permanently-attached breasts

I can remember... whenever it was I first heard King Missile's 'Detachable Penis', thinking OMG I WANT DETACHABLE BREASTS. And having a recurring fantasy of being able to just leave them in my underwear drawer when I'm not using them. I did not, at the time, identify those thoughts as dysphoria.

It took me a long while to get from there to "no, seriously, it is time to look into top surgery." (looking-into still in progress)

am not too attached to.

*snickers at pun*

[tim]

Yeah, I certainly had cis female friends who told me "I wish I could get top surgery!" to which my response was "um... you can..." (though I'm guessing they all would have been happy to have much smaller breasts, rather than none.)

I halfway thought about getting a reduction to A-cup so that I could still have boobs for sexyfun genderfuck times, but bind much more easily... but in the end I was so sick of binding that I didn't want to go half-assed. Or half-boobed.

[vass]

I'm not cis.