"Self care shouldn't be gendered" - top surgery scars

[NeurotrashWarrior]

I find this immensely chilling. I hadn't thought of non binary like this before.

On the one hand creating a child like but adult body ( I feel sick)

And on the other hand exulting in the scars; self harm as self care...

All types of awfulness dressed up as glamour and put on Instagram.

I wonder if this would be discussed in parliament re self image?

www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/05/232331/lachlan-watson-top-surgery-scar-interview

There are, I think, two different things going on in this person's head.

1. the 'non-binary' thing of not having to restrict yourself to the gendered behaviour/hygiene practices/clothing choices/cosmetics/interests stereotypically associated with masculine or feminine traits. No, that doesn't make you non-binary. It makes you an individual. A female individual.

2. the fixation with scars. No different to any other body-modification techniques. That tattooist who was imprisoned for removing the ears from a consenting adult, at that adult's request, was doing the same thing as the surgeon who removed Watson's breasts.

I don't understand what is meant by "self-care" and it being gendered. Isn't self-care stuff like brushing your teeth and washing? Do they mean like whether you use a pink bottle of shower gel or a blue bottle?

I have no idea jellylegs

It was the photos that chilled me jellyslice. She looks so child like and the talk about scars reminded me of self harm sites and Instagram obviously. And effectively removing your breasts is a form of self harm.

I suddenly saw it from a very different perspective where before NB seemed tamer in comparison.

I agree the stuff going on in their head is very mixed; also though they've changed their mind several times. What if they suddenly wish to have a baby; their ability to breast feed is gone.

I also worry about the glamorising of this - almost like page 3 but the total opposite...

Probably extra bothered personally as I'm breastfeeding as I type.

Isn't self-care stuff like brushing your teeth and washing? Do they mean like whether you use a pink bottle of shower gel or a blue bottle?

Yeah, I think so. In the article Watson says that as a transman they felt they had to conform to male stereotypes (not washing, not moisturising etc.) but then realised that men can do these things to, and is now promoting the idea that self care isn't, or shouldn't be, gendered. Which I agree with tbh.

So she was a lesbian then a transgender man and now a something binary.

By the age of 18.

And has a had a double mastectomy

The doctors who did this to,that young girl Ffs.

Top surgery. It’s a double mastectomy

I feel like saying - well doh obvs.

I also feel they're linking it to other things; in that adjusting the whole body to be un gendered is part of the self care.

Just all the language around the mastectomy.

I'm reminded of the breast book aimed at young teens and the inclusion of the trans man and their mastectomy. This feels even starker some how.

'The fact that a brand like Unilever would care as much as to be that representation for someone and to lend me that platform is surreal. '
the naivety of this remark is striking, and sad.
I so, so hope that these surgeons, doctors and pharma companies get sued into penury. Maybe some will see it coming now and desist.

I've never seen myself reflected back on a commercial; I've never related to a single person onscreen in my life.

This bothers me and I don't know if I can articulate why. I rarely see myself reflected on screen but I don't feel alienated from the human race because of it. Of course when I was growing up I felt insecure and worried about not fitting in but with maturity don't we learn everyone is different but we're all equal. It's our differences that keep life interesting.

Does anyone relate to a whole character on screen or do we relate to aspects of their character, their experiences and emotions ; all
of which seems to me to develop from empathy with others as a result of our own life experiences.

I worry that the emphasis on individuality is leading young people to think they have no commonality with other human beings. What a sad state of affairs.

All the changing of mind shows is she wasn't emotionally mature enough to make those decisions and quite frankly the doctors who didn't identify that have a lot to answer for.

I think in the long term she will recognise that, but she will need to go on a journey to discover that.

When I look back, I certainly was emotionally immature though incredibly intelligent. It wasn't until I was post 25 that I could have made that kind of decision fully appreciatung what I was doing.

During the 90s the androgynous look was pretty popular in britpop culture and that's what I wanted to be and really resented that I was definitely not flat chested and couldn't just 'disappear' as a result. I hated being a girl cos 'girls looked wrong with guitars'.

Will all the pressures now, I know where I'd be. I was self harming and trying to deliberately starve myself as it was. It was a challenge of self control to not eat for three days. The self torture was worth it for the high it gave me.

It makes me sad to know where this comes from, and ultimately the journey you need to go on to discover yourself. I hope she and others doing it, come out ultimately stronger and fighting hard for others because they'll be needed in the long term to cut through all this crap.

HOW IS THIS EMPOWERING?

I agree turbo, that comment is disturbing. Though I can see that GNC women and lesbians may be thin on the ground.

I wonder if it's the tumblr/ YouTube effect; having to find your tribe online; your visual pals.

I've mentioned it a few times in all this but the affluenza virus by Oliver James does explore a lot of this. However that's more about having the same as others or what you don't have; this is more to do with being and identifying with what you're not. The driver he identified was visual advertising and tv.

One key study mentions is the very late arrival of tv to a remote island somewhere in the 1980s/90s. Prior to this there were no cases of eating disorders or related anxiety disorders. Within a decade there were.

www.amazon.co.uk/Affluenza-Oliver-James/dp/0091900115

I don't know where this person was living but I simply don't understand how they could have got such a rigid idea of men, women, boys and girls. Their myopia goes way beyond "girls don't play with trains etc"

On make up and clothes the internet is awash with young men giving make up tutorials on how they wear makeup.

The not washing bit- seriously? They think real men don't wash? Or sit with their legs crossed?

I have stopped watching Sabrina. The producers are complicit. This is child abuse

Agree.

In some images on google she looks very like Sinéad O'Connor. I wish young women today had had more access to images like her.

Oh this poor soul.

So they thought they were trans but now they aren’t? Was there any counselling before the operation? Breasts aren’t there as appendages, they aren’t like hair. There is no getting them back.

Yes lass she clearly was brought up in a very sexist world.

A de transitioned woman I've recently spoken to here did mention that she really did have no knowledge of anyone like her growing up and the trans narrative made sense to her.

Glamourising mastectomies again. So offensive to those who have them for necessary reasons, either the gene or actual cancer.

I read that and I just see a total obsession with looks and that their perception of their looks at any given time have a massive impact on her feelings. Like OCD thoughts.

No cult like encouragement there.

Yes definitely

I understand the positives in the idea of 'visibility and representation'. Genuinely.

But I can't help seeing a cultural reflection here of something I keep seeing in different places that are largely entertainment based of feeling like you actually don't exist if you, or someone exactly like you isn't on a screen somewhere. Like the fifteen minutes of fame is actually a laudable aim, rather than a satirical poke.

Again, I truly understand the pleasure and power in that moment of "I thought I was the only one, now I know I'm not." But that's something that is best experienced via actual relationships, not by ticking label boxes in adverts.

I don't know, but stuff like this brings home to me that half the problem here is the fragmentation of communities and positive social contact. It makes people so bloody vulnerable to absurdities and harmful lies.

I've never seen myself reflected back on a commercial; I've never related to a single person onscreen in my life.

I suspect that this is true for most people. It certainly is for me. I am a member of a particular minority group. Even when that group is represented onscreen, I don't see myself reflected back - I see aspects of this minority group, often stereotypes and tropes, rather than my lived experience.

Nobody has the right to see themselves reflected in wider culture. Yes, it is culturally healthier for a society to have all its variations represented onscreen, but it is impossible to represent all its individuals. Expecting that is just toddleristic "Me want!"

(Actually, it's not quite true to claim that I've never related to a single person onscreen in my life. I have: the Ally Sheedy character in The Breakfast Club. But I didn't see myself reflected back in her, because I was loved and cherished by my family and I was not a kleptomaniac Grunge. I was just a misfit freak who hid behind her dark hair.)

Mutilation surgery used to be illegal.

Schizophrenics quite often get obsessed with one part of their own body feeling wrong to them - a man ran a lengthy legal battle for years in the 90s demanding an NHS surgeon cut his leg off. Can't remember which leg, they were both fine, although evidently it mattered a lot to him.

He lost. No idea if his psychosis was fixed.

So what's changed? I suppose a mastectomy is sort of reversible, at least.

Just as a side point about this actor's show.

I find Sabrina to be a very odd series. Season one was okay, but season two ... there's something off-key about it -- to the extent I stopped watching.

And this, in itself, is strange. I am a big fantasy and horror fan. Weird shit does not faze me.

But Sabrina season two started to make me uncomfortable.

What strikes me is how all these people are so up themselves. It's l all " me, me, me" and lots of navel gazing. Very pretentious and self absorbed. It's actually very sad and an indictment of our times

I haven't watched it packing but might have been tempted. I think this will annoy me now.