My Completely Quotidian Top Surgery Experience
Part 1: Why it took me so damn long to just let myself live. Plus: why are plastic surgeons better at gender affirming care than queer clinics?
Hello! By the time this piece drops on the afternoon of June 1st, I will have already undergone bilateral, double-incision top surgery in the early morning hours and will hopefully be recovering comfortably at home. While I’m away from my keyboard, let me tell you a little bit about what into this decision, and what my process in navigating it has been like so far.
If you’ll forgive the stereotypical trans narrative, I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of having boobs. I dreaded puberty like the plague as a young teen, and honestly believed that traditional “female” development was so ill-suited to the person that I was that it couldn’t even conceivably happen to me.
I had my first period later than many of my peers, and didn’t begin to develop body hair or breasts until late in eighth grade, and for a while I privately hoped that I had some intersex condition that would prevent me from ever having to deal with bleeding, possible pregnancy, or growing a convex chest.
What I now understand is that intersex people are actually the most violently…
