Friend wants top surgery

As someone who has/had breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy, I find the term 'top surgery' deeply offensive and an attempt to make something life-changing more anodyne and normal. But it is not. It's a major, and to a degree, radical lifestyle choice, one that cannot be reserved. I actually think it's an extreme form of body mutation and always a sign that other things are going on.

While I chose to have a double mastectomy, it really was not much of a choice. However, I did choose not to have a reconstruction, nor do I wear any falsies for a myriad of reasons including not being able to keep my nipples and the at the 'new' breasts would have no sensation. Truth be told, I find it rather liberating being flat-chested. To quote others, I am still supremely feminine without breasts. Indeed, breasts do not maketh a woman, but, if at any point in the future your friend wants children and wants to breast fed, they cannot.

A mastectomy is irreversible. It's also not just about not having breast, there will be zero sensitivity across the chest, breast bone, up to the clavicle and size of the rib cage. Is your friend busty? Is so, the scars will be large even if they surgeon is an artist at their craft. Does she want to keep her nipples? That's another complication that can cause issues and potential loss. There's so much that can go wrong that I know I wouldn't choose to do unless I had to. Does your friend note that the better surgeons are onco-plastic surgeon who only work with cancer patients? And, to be frank, and surgeon who is performing a surgery that is not needed on any medical grounds whatsoever is to my mind, not anyone I would want near me, let alone operating on me.

Your friend has choices. Pre-cancer, I rarely showed off my breasts or wore anything low-cut mostly because I was uncomfortable when I did. And even though I seemingly made a choice to have a double mastectomy and feel liberated, I miss my breasts. I think it's really important that your friend learns to love themselves and accepts the body they are in. Being non-binary is about not conforming to gender stereotypes, that's all. This does not mean surgically removing parts of one body.

Is your friend in counselling? If so, they need to explore why they feel the need to do something so extreme, because it is extreme. And chances are once they go through with the surgery, they will realise it doesn't make them happy, nor the person they seem to think they are.

So she is a lesbian.

This seems to be a very stereotypical pathway for lesbians now (sadly), first realisation of homosexuality, then identify as non-binary, then identify as trans and start cross-sex hormones etc, then regret.

Dead right. Like the thousands of lobotomies carried out in the mid 20th century, often on unruly young women. Brain surgery, originally intended to cure psychiatric disorders, being used to make the patient conform. Rosemary Kennedy, the US president’s sister, was the most famous victim.

I wonder if the therapist is supportive of gender identity or more explorative? It was something that I had to carefully consider for my teen when seeking mental health support. And I assume that some adults are vulnerable as well and need more explorative rather than affirming.

I think you can be interested in the reasons for this choice and express your concerns. Just don’t get invested in stopping her. Them!

Yes, and if women who identify as NB have their breasts removed, why don't men who identify as NB have implants?

Is this something to do with males being the default? Or do the women who do this just want to look childlike again?

And if NB is a 'gender' rather than anything to do with sex, why alter the body at all?

So many questions. None of this makes sense.

I know a few NB people, mainly women.

Those who are quite happy and relaxed about it and seemed to gradually develop this identity are all gay. That's 8 people, it's a small number but it's what they have in common.

The other 4 are women and they seemed to ID as NB quite suddenly. I know that two of them were sexually abused quite recently, the other two I don't know well enough but I can see they are very unhappy in their lives.

If your friend wants to describe herself as NB that's her business. I think you're right to be concerned that she wants surgery but I don't think there is much you can do. I would urge you to watch her mood and consider the events that have brought her here, make sure she seeks help if she's trying to deal with abuse or depression.

This is a very pertinent question.

I'd suggest it's that the whole idea is based on a default male.

Women's bodies being sacrificed on the altar of male desire is nothing new.

I think it is rather telling that gender affirming surgeons use horrific dehumanising language such as 'yeat the teats'! And then there was that male surgeon who would photograph himself with buckets of breast tissue as if it was a competitive sport.

I think that it says more about those surgeons and what they encourage while stating that what they are doing is progressive and caring while they have dehumanised their patients in their own minds and in the way they act.

Absolutely. I can understand not wanting to be female, in a world full of misogyny. But pretending you’re not doesn’t change reality, and surgical self-harming is the opposite of a solution.

Can I ask how big their boobs are? I do think some women have quite a complicated relationship with their breasts, especially if they have been teased for them being too big/ too small in the past. I can see a woman who has big boobs feeling that they are somehow “the problem”.

History shows us that hermaphrodite type and non gender type figures existed hundreds of years ago in several different cultures.

Yes, you can see statues of eg a sleeping hermaphrodite. Also satyrs, fauns, centaurs and other biologically impossible beings.

I don't really understand the breast removal being linked to non binary. I get if you were transitioning to male - but how does a flat chest equate to NB but breasts don't?

And as PP have pointed out, non-binary men very rarely do anything equivalent. One at my former workplace changed nothing except pronouns - kept his name and beard, continued to wear a suit, but got very upset at being called 'he'.

Obviously he assumed everyone was avidly follolowing his blog on the intranet and paying careful attention to his email signature, because apart from those and the whinging about not having suitable staff loos there was absolutely no indication of his identity.. Not so much as lanyard or swipe of nail varnish. Everyone was just meant to know.

Anyone who has seen the results of many Mastectomies due to breast cancer and also seen the results of 'gender affirming' Mastectomies will know that the results for the surgery due to cancer are usually much better (despite often being more difficult due to ensuring all the cancer is removed). I think that it is cleat that the better surgeons work with cancer patients. The ones performing 'gender affirming' surgery just do not have that level of skill.

@Jigglypufff this may appear to be an odd thing to suggest, but it is worth looking at the results and the complications that people document of their own surgery. The easiest place to go is the SRS thread or their thread on surgeon Dr Sidhbh Treasa Gallagher on the Kiwifarms forum as the forum members collect these results together. The SRS thread also contains other surgeries (phalloplasty, vaninoplasty, face 'feminisation' surgery, etc.) so you will need to wade through those to see the 'top surgery' results.

The difficulty is that there are so many people now who have regretted making permanent changes to their bodies, and that they were affirmed all the way, with no-one speaking out.

it doesn’t mean that they have to denounce what the friend is planning to do, but not are they obliged to pretend.

That is Freddy McConnell.

Freddy has also gone to court to have the word mother removed from their child's birth certificate. And is a campaigner to nomalise female people to use testosterone throughout pregnancy to support those female people's gender identities. There was also a paper who declared that any person who did not support those female people taking testosterone due to the high likelihood of birth complications and future health implications directly from that use of testosterone on those infants were haters.

I don't really understand the breast removal being linked to non binary. I get if you were transitioning to male - but how does a flat chest equate to NB but breasts don't?

I will never get over the story of a woman who decided she was either non-binary or trans, had a double mastectomy, later decided that she wasn't, got pregnant and then had the trauma of never being able to breast-feed her baby.

In a few years' time I expect this weird idea of not having a sex to be looked back on as an odd craze of the early 21st century, and teenage girls and young women will find yet another way to be "not like other girls".

In the 1920s there was briefly a theory (related to the acient Greek idea of hysteria and the wandering womb) that a lot of illness - particularly mental illness - was caused by assorted organs 'floating' to the wrong part of the body. This led to a craze for surgery to lash down the offending items (mainly wombs, but sometimes also kidneys). By the 1930s everyone had realised it was absolute nonsense, and.having your organs tied together caused problems, rather than curing them. So people who'd had that operation had another one to cut them all loose again.

Crazy surgical make work schemes.are nothing new. It's usually women who suffer most, and only surgeons profit.

“why they were relevant.”

should be why they were relevant in your mind.

Whilst I don't feel I'm entitled to interfere with elective, paid for privately, surgery, I do question the trend for body modifications and how we've gone from piercings and tattoos, to removal of perfectly healthy organs. I'd feel very differently if your friend had the genetic timebomb that Angelina Jolie has, and would understand her choice under those circumstances. It just seems to be, at the very root, an expression of self loathing when there is no medical need to remove all breast tissue. Even males have breast tissue, so why the need to scrape the area clean of it all?
Still, if she's paying for it herself, then I really don't get to do anything but wonder when the world will make sense again. It probably won't, will it?

It is important for the OP to be also able to understand that there are plenty of false comparisons made, even unintentionally, that will lead to further obfuscation of the issues that OP is seeking to clarify in their mind.

There is an abundance of misinformation around that leverages other people’s medical conditions or their oppression to support someone’s personal choices in having extreme body modifications relating to their philosophical belief. It is actually not derailing the thread to look at these so that OP and others reading along can see how they are used and why they are flawed as comparators to the current gender identity issues being discussed.

These comparisons are not only flawed and therefore confusing to those who haven’t thought about them. They are also used by activists (and any one who then repeats them without understanding the significance of them) to portray a group of people as being marginalised today, as the groups referred to in the past were marginalised. It is a form of forced teaming.

“Please take this as a win for you if that's what you want.”

No ‘win’ intended except to clarify who you referred to and why they were relevant.

Actually no i won't. Because this isn't the point of OPs thread. And I suspect you very well know what I meant even if I phrased it poorly.
Please take this as a win for you if that's what you want. I'm out. Was simply trying to help OP who didn't seem opposed to friend's ideologies and positioning as non binary but wanted to find a way to raise concerns re surgery.