Long-read about trans surgery going wrong **Title edited by MNHQ**

[PrincessZog]

A horrifying (and at times delusional) investigative article by a trans journalist about the many complications that can happen with "sex reassignment" surgery (I say delusional because it includes sentences such as this: "phalloplasty, the surgery which creates a functional penis for transmasculine trans people" - personally, I wouldn't call a flap of skin that needs a pump to inflate it "functional" but what do I know).

The article also contains the obligatory reference to evil "T*RFs" who use these kinds of surgical failures for their own evil ends (that is, politely suggesting that maybe voluntarily mutilating genitals isn't the answer to psychological turmoil) and complains that some states in the US are preventing under-18s from having these surgeries (despite the entire article being about how badly they can go wrong).

The most surreal bit, however, is that the author uses Dr Marci Bowers and Dr Ting as a "good" counter-balance to the "bad" surgeon (Dr Rumor) - despite the fact that Bowers and Ting performed Jazz Jennings' vaginoplasty.

For the unaware, Jazz Jennings is now on her 4th surgery after suffering endless, horrendous complications. In the show, there is a scene where Bowers and Ting are arguing in the operating theatre about what to cut during one of Jazz's follow-up reconstructive surgeries ()

Anyway, feel free to read it for yourselves:
jezebel.com/when-surgeons-fail-their-trans-patients-1844774990

Written by Katelyn Burns. Nuff said.

This gem stood out - "post-op genitalia are slightly different from their cisgender counterparts" ...

Whatever your feelings are about self ID and gender, it’s obscene that people aren’t getting clear information about all the possible complications and the odds of them occurring before having surgery. How can it be informed consent if you don’t know the risks you’re facing?

But the people who are not satisfied with their surgeries, at the hands of Dr. Rumer or others, have found it difficult to have their complaints meaningfully addressed. In the highly politicized world of gender-affirming surgery, answers about standard measures of care can be hard to find. Advocates describe a patchwork of surgical practices and “transgender centers for excellence” overseen by local hospitals and state medical boards. Offices can vary widely when it comes to patient-to-doctor ratios and what kind of specialized training a surgeon receives.

There is a larger concern that is poised to swell as demand for GRS grows: that without a specific reporting mechanism for patients who feel wronged or an institutional body tasked with regulating the specifics of trans-affirmative care, patients who seek these surgeries are locked in a devil’s bargain, unable to be assured of the quality of care when they sign on and unclear how to move forward when they’re unhappy with the results.

May 2018, 192 post-op trans patients penned an open letter to WPATH laying out several concerns about the current system, among them that surgeons were offering “free or low-cost surgeries to under-resourced patients in order to gain operating experience in procedures for which they have incomplete professional training,” falsifying complication rates in “preoperative counseling, academic publishing, and public presentations,” providing experimental surgeries without informed consent, presenting inaccurate medical information to patients, and providing insufficient aftercare for patients.

I realise things are different in the US healthcare wise but this is horrific. This is something TRAs should be campaigning about.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

But the people who are not satisfied with their surgeries, at the hands of Dr. Rumer or others, have found it difficult to have their complaints meaningfully addressed. In the highly politicized world of gender-affirming surgery, answers about standard measures of care can be hard to find. Advocates describe a patchwork of surgical practices and “transgender centers for excellence” overseen by local hospitals and state medical boards. Offices can vary widely when it comes to patient-to-doctor ratios and what kind of specialized training a surgeon receives.

There is a larger concern that is poised to swell as demand for GRS grows: that without a specific reporting mechanism for patients who feel wronged or an institutional body tasked with regulating the specifics of trans-affirmative care, patients who seek these surgeries are locked in a devil’s bargain, unable to be assured of the quality of care when they sign on and unclear how to move forward when they’re unhappy with the results.

May 2018, 192 post-op trans patients penned an open letter to WPATH laying out several concerns about the current system, among them that surgeons were offering “free or low-cost surgeries to under-resourced patients in order to gain operating experience in procedures for which they have incomplete professional training,” falsifying complication rates in “preoperative counseling, academic publishing, and public presentations,” providing experimental surgeries without informed consent, presenting inaccurate medical information to patients, and providing insufficient aftercare for patients.

I realise things are different in the US healthcare wise but this is horrific. This is something TRAs should be campaigning about.

Yes I actually knew about this from going down a Jazz Jennings rabbit hole elsewhere.

It's also pretty much impossible to sue for botched SRS because most doctors aren't willing to testify as expert witnesses against other doctors performing this kind of surgery - because they all know it's so experimental that they too could just as easily be sued.

That's what I found disingenuous about this article - that it presents SRS as completely typical, if novel, surgery and those with problems are outliers.

Whereas the reality is it is still completely experimental surgery with absolutely no oversight.

It's also very hard to get another doctor to operate on botched SRS because they don't want to get involved and risk being sued for someone else's bad job. So some trans people are left in limbo with mutilated genitals and no way to fix them (understandably they don't want to go back to their first surgeon).