Friend wants top surgery

[Jigglypufff]

One of my closest friends is saying they are non binary and has changed their name. I have gone along the route of not making it a big deal, like "ah that's nice pal, which film shall we go to see this weekend."
I don't know if this is the right tactic. I have been vocal about the fact that I don't understand why we would be boxing gender into stereo types- ie. Makeup and high heels does not a woman make. You can wear masculine looking clothes and still be a woman. Etc.

They now are saving for top surgery. Should I just keep with my current tactic? Im worried about side effects? They aren't on any hormones.

I just feel a bit like it's getting away from them, the name change etc has been very quick after announcing they are non binary.

I'm also a bit sad if I have the right to feel that.

@ArabellaScott

I don't want to derail the thread but wanted to add that I do feel there is a degree of care, not to mention compassion and wanting the best outcome for the patient which is why with breast cancer, breast conversing surgery and/or a reconstruction is routinely offered and actively 'pushed' (for wont of a better word). So much money and research has gone into pushing the boundaries of what they can do with regards to oncoplastic breast reconstruction. I have no doubt that within the next decade, if not sooner, patients will retain sensation in their skin post-surgery.

I can't speak for anyone else, but when I was told I had cancer, it was such a shock and very very surreal. I honestly couldn't process anything. Even now, 18 months later, I still don't think it's truly dawned on me what I've been through. As someone else said, breast cancer isn't an medical emergency, it's an emotional one. A fortunate to have a very good sense of self and body image, something I only really realised having come through breast cancer and having lost both my breasts and (albeit temporarily, my hair). Even so, it was a fuck of a lot to cope with.

One of the things I do vividly remember is that from the moment of diagnosis and probably up until my first mastectomy, I had this overwhelming of wanting to rip my skin off. I couldn't bear anyone touching me. Apparently the former is quite common along with a knee jerk reaction to remove one/both breasts. I do believe that this is why they're so thorough with offering and talking through reconstruction options and for those who say no thank you, they do make it clear that they can change their mind. Practically, even if someone starts to waver in their decision, an expander can be put in which will make a reconstruction easier. Like I said a few posts ago, if a mastectomy is done correctly, there is nothing to reconstruction - not only is the skin and breast tissue removed, the chest wall is sculpted too.

During my research of mastectomies, the worst I saw were always 'top surgeries', even those done by the supposedly good surgeons. It's butchery is all but name.

And that seems to be a fairly common belief - because men taking oestrogen grow breasts, women who've had them removed can regrow them by doing the same. They can't.

Males have breast tissue so there's something to grow. My work colleague, a 50+ year old man, had breast cancer. It's unusual but it does happen.

If all the breast tissue is scraped away during these surgeries, there's nothing to grow, no matter how big a dose of oestrogen you take. The fact that some young woman go ahead with the mastectomy without understanding that once they're gone, they're gone, is frightening.

It's not like having a spur of the moment haircut. That, no matter how bad, will eventually grow out. These suckers are not growing back. Who tells them that? Does anyone? I don't think anyone can be telling them, because why would we get so many stories from those saying "I didn't understand" if so?

Thanks, doublec, that all makes sense.

Apologies, so many typos and other errors in my post(s). Chemo brain is very much a thing, and add that to menopause brain fog, and oh my god, welcome to my very muddled world 🤦🏻‍♀️

Back on topic, sort of, but I can't help but wish any surgeon whom is found to be carrying out so-called gender affirming surgeries would be struck off. However, while in the US such surgeries are allowed for anyone who pays, it's never going to happen. At best, 'top surgery' along with other so-called gender affirming surgeries are an extreme form of body modification. I honestly can't wait until all this non-binary/TWAW nonsense is over. Given how many are finally dumping their pronouns (thank god), we must nearly be there now. I feel strongly that with time, OP's friend will feel very very differently and realise it was a band wagon that was largely out of control due in part to the West's hyper-sexualised male gaze.

Tnh it has nothing to do with you or your opinion. I can't imagine they've entered into this decision lightly. I would just maintain your current strategy

Thank you @Helleofabore

I'm sure that one of the reasons that you feel uncomfortable OP is that because what your friend is doing is exactly the OPPOSITE of being their (her?) true self.

Extreme body modification to hopefully create some sort of alignment with a (rather questionable) identity.

In what other scenario would this be allowed or socially acceptable?

I have a similar experience, bear with me here...

About 10 years ago, a close relative of mine was debating whether to spend quite a large amount of money on something that was ostensibly a short term fix for a problem (unrelated to bodies or identities thankfully). The proper fix for the problem would have cost around 50% more, which was definitely expensive but affordable at a stretch.

I said to the relative very clearly that I thought they were making a grave mistake in spending a large amount of money on a temporary solution, but that it was their money and their decision and that I wouldn't mention it again. They did the temporary thing anyway (and ironically recently complained that a further fix is now needed... to which I rolled my eyes).

My point being, I thought that I could manage the relationship if we excluded this issue and if I had my say.

This could work for you.

But then IME gender-questioning people tend to make 'gender' such a central part of their lives and constantly agonise over it that I don't know if the friendship could truly survive that anyway.

By "gay" I assume she's lesbian. Is she unhappy being lesbian?

What effect (if any) on her relationships does she think removing her female secondary sexual characteristics will have? Does she think she will cease to be a woman? What does her partner think of this or - if she doesn't have one at present - what would your friend expect prospective lesbian partners to think about this mutilation?

To be perfectly frank if she were in a heterosexual relationship and decided to vlountarily have her breasts removed for no medical reason, I think I'd see little chance of any current relationship continuing or any future relationship forming. Except with some very odd men...

I don't see why being lesbian would be any different.

It's so sad that the only solution some women see to living in a misogynistic society is to mutilate their own bodies, rather than try and change society.

Breasts are organs, and they are designed to do an amazing thing, create food for babies. Removing that organ of course can have serious consequences just as removing any organ in the body. Having fake breasts is not the same, it's like having a plastic kidney, not a lot of use, really.

I didn't want children at 29. I desperately wanted them at 36.

And women who've already got children and for very good reasons (often financial or medical) wish for sterilisation, are pretty routinely refused. Make it make sense.

Please don't use wrong-sex pronouns here OP. The act of doing so undermines safeguarding for children. Fine if you must to your friend's face (or in her hearing) but I find sex deception pronouns actually quite offensive due to the safeguarding abuses it ushers in. There has been abuse / coercive control of many children in school by forcing them to use ungrammatical, illogical sex deception pronouns. Against their wishes and without their or their parents consent. It's just flat wrong, and that's before the damage to their education in English is even addressed. If some people can demand compelled speech for wrong-sex pronouns can dyslexic children compel wrong-spelling words too?

@Manxexile

I don't want to go over personal details like their relationships as it could be outing.

Right now I am just trying to work out how best support them and still raise my concerns about the major surgery.

I hadn't even thought about the calibre of surgeon, in terms of compared to surgeons who perform double mastectomys for cancer patients.

This is really valuable information, even just to ensure they get the best care. Thank you everyone who has raised that point.

Maybe I’m saying something totally stupid, but I don’t think I can justify it the way you do. For example, someone develops gangrene in the leg. Will they consider the patient‘s opinion on how much to take out? Someone has eye cancer, will they retain as much as possible of the eye or just replace it with a ‘fake (sorry, I can’t think how else to describe this) one’? It seems to me that breast cancer is the only one in which the patient’s ‘needs’ are listen to so carefully. Please don’t think I’m saying everyone should have a mastectomy the way I did, but to me breasts are such cultural signifiers that they cannot be understood as other tissue when they become diseased.

Sorry to derail.

...breasts are such cultural signifiers that they cannot be understood as other tissue when they become diseased

And this is what I meant about breast cancer being an emotional emergency, not a medical one.

---

i agree with a lot you say. I've also had to remove my ovaries and fallopian tubes and have joked that there's nothing left for me to remove now.

Seriously though, breast cancer is interesting as it's treated very differently now than it was even a few decades ago. For many, mostly those with a low grade hormone-fed cancer, it's easily treated with little to no risk of recurrence. And for others, well, it's harder but can be treated and staved off for quite some time. Even those with secondary breast cancer are now living longer than they ever did before. I've read papers and symposiums where there's a belief that breast cancer will be treated as an ongoing illness, something someone can live with. (Not the word I want but I can't think of the word I mean)

To a degree, I guess breasts aren't considered important in the way an eye or a leg is. It is my understanding ocular and bone cancers are harder treat and more deadly, and amputation is the only way to treat the latter at a certain point. In my instance, I know I was able to stand my ground re. a mastectomy because I had no children and was already post-menopause (thanks to a premature menopause). In fact, the premature menopause paved the way for me not having to wait for a salpingo-oophorectomy.

I don't know.

I do know I miss my breasts. Greatly. But I don't miss them enough to have to put myself through more chemo.

💐

I wonder if the surgeons and doctors who are involved in elective double mastectomies to allow someone's body to fit their identity explain what happens to long and large scar tissue with age? And of course, that is if the surgery had the best possible outcome in the first place.

Seems unlikely. According to Freddy McConnell, the doctors didn't even explain that a double mastectomy would mean that they wouldn't be able to breastfeed if they had children.

The concept of informed consent doesn't seem to apply to people with trans identities.

You have a point oldcrone.

The issue for me is that there are all these people who have had these surgeries saying that they have no complications etc, but who are only speaking about their experience soon after. Not over decades.

Because it has been rare for women to have publicised the long term impacts of their surgeries because those double mastectomies were to treat cancer usually. There was little choice at the time. And perhaps even rarer for them to have those surgeries so early in life.

Yet, now we have a situation where these surgeries are being done for an identity and some are glamourised on billboards, social media, books and mainstream media. Who have been fed a stream of placating ‘better the negative side effects than [insert a number of scaremongering alternatives]’ with little understanding of the long term impacts. Impacts that are easier to dismiss due to the lack of public discussion from those with the experiences as those cancer sufferers such as on this thread.

Wondering if her therapist has been pushing this "non-binary" nonsense on her, or affirming it rather than challenging it.

Well it's wrong this wasn't made crystal clear but also - it's not rocket science is it? The basic lack of understanding of how a female body works is depressing.

No such thing as non binary

Young people are being taught there are '100 genders' (BBC)

https://www.thetimes.com/article/bbc-films-teach-children-of-100-genders-or-more-7xfhbg97p

or '24 genders' (Scottish government)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/10/20/snp-guidance-public-bodies-24-genders/

They're told that we can change sex. (Scientific American)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

The NHS still links to WPATH guidance. With the chapter on 'eunuch gender'.

https://ncth.nhs.uk/other-gp-guidance

It is absolutely unsurprising that we are going to have a generation of very confused people who've been taught utterly fabricated bullshit.

I suspect that there is going to be a group of female people in 20-30 years to come who will be finding their choices to have added decades of pain and discomfort to the already various pains associated with age and menopause.

And no one will have told them or if they told them it would have been in a way that is easy to dismiss in the moment. Because apparently, from poster's on other threads, it is all about validating that identity.

Plus remember we are constantly told that ALL surgical treatments have side effects and negative outcomes.

I was told by a poster a couple of years ago that a double mastectomy on a teen or 20-30 year old was ever so necessary and should be considered like a knee replacement - many of those fail, many people regret them immediately or over time, and those knee replacements have negative side effects. That poster, one who prides themselves on having a university education in the topic, simply kept deflecting with acknowledging how a knee replacement was a physical treatment for a medical condition that could be definitively diagnosed vs a double mastectomy being an elective cosmetic body modification where healthy body tissue was removed to fit a person's body to a philosophical belief.

It is and always was a false comparison. Just like the false comparisons that are used to prop up the flawed 'Transgender people, (or hermaphrodites) have existed for centuries'.

And that is the ideological aspect to those who actively support the surgeries being offered.

(To note: I am not referring to those who are providing emotional support to loved ones while not supporting the actions)

I agree it's not rocket science, and I would have expected a university educated woman in her 20s to understand that you need breasts in order to breastfeed, but Freddy seems not to have understood that.

That admission is a bit of an own goal for the genderists though, because if Freddy didn't understand the consequences of their medical treatment, how can it be argued that children do?

Yet another tick for operation let them speak.

That poster, one who prides themselves on having a university education in the topic, simply kept deflecting with acknowledging how a knee replacement was a physical treatment for a medical condition that could be definitively diagnosed vs a double mastectomy being an elective cosmetic body modification where healthy body tissue was removed to fit a person's body to a philosophical belief.

Sorry

deflecting 'from' not 'with'.

This! I was going to ask the very same question. I have a friend who identifies as trans/non binary and had a double mastectomy quite some time ago now. I think it must be getting for 8 years. I knew her from the age of 12, and she had large breasts that made her acutely uncomfortable and which she sought to hide as much as possible. She’s now in her early forties and has never had a physical relationship of any description, not even a kiss, either before or after the surgery.

I do wonder how many of the women who go ahead with this process have big boobs that they hate.

Just to add, I saw this friend swimming last year and she seemed unable to fully extend her arms to the sides - she had a very limited range of movement and was struggling to swim as a result. I don’t know if that’s down to the surgery or not, though (she also suffers from RSI and has had shoulder pain before).