Grr. Stab 'im wit a rusty spork!

[beandelphiki]

One of the people on my friends list recently posted about raising money for top surgery. Common problem. Always a pain coming up with several thousand dollars, isn't it?

Someone responded (anon! no name!) to say that they are a non-op trans guy and maybe he'd be better off not getting surgery at all?

Fine, nothing wrong with that. But then this commenter went on with what a mess chest surgery results in, allusions to horror stories, "and it leaves a big dent in your side," yada yada...Jesus H. Christ! What the fuck is this guy's problem?!?

Now, I don't consider comments like this mine to respond to. It's not my journal, not my chest, not my life. But, boy, had that comment been in MY journal...!

I checked back to see the response, and I must say I never would have had the patience to answer that comment so calmly and politely. In fact, I'm sure I would have done my level best to rip that commenter into a thousand pieces.

My question is....how can people be so fucking thoughtless?

There are things I think it is "safe" to post your opinion on frankly. Nobody goes and commits suicide or something because another person doesn't agree with, say, their political viewpoint. But it is not right, IMHO, to go telling horror stories about SRS to trans people. ESPECIALLY if you don't know that person.

Being trans is fucking hard enough. There are people who are in very fragile emotional states about transition, and they are online. Most importantly, they are there for support. Carrying horror stories with no real reason to think they will be received well, and just to prove your point isn't helpful, it's SICK.

I'm not trying to say there is anything WRONG with being non-op...please don't misinterpret this. Were we all so lucky to make peace with our body. But there are other ways this guy could have presented his view.

If that comment had been in MY journal, say, a year ago (not that I had an lj a year ago, but we'll pretend) I probably would have considered suicide upon reading it.

Why don't people THINK?

Comments

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. I too have had non-op types running to my journal to tell me all the horror stories they've heard about guys getting top surgery and then being in pain for the rest of their lives and blah blah blah. Frankly, I don't give a rat's fat ass. In my family with the history we have of breast cancers, I was going to have to have a mastectomy anyway at some point. In my family, with the history we have of female reproductive cancers, I was going to have to have a hysterectomy anyway too. People who don't know me have no clue about my back story and don't bother to find out. They just start telling me everything they can think of which can go wrong with those surgeries and bothering and scaring.
And I'm not one of the guys who has the luxury of "choice" on the matter (not that,actually, I think a lot of us do when it comes down to it) because of my familial history.
Way I see it anyway, thousands of women have a mastectomy every year and we don't hear horror stories about them. This procedure is just not -that- different. I've checked with family members so I know.
(shrug) Walking down the street every morning is a risk, but I sure don't want some anxiety ridden person dogging my every step detailing why i should just stay home because "things could happen".
Unfortunately, I think you're totally right about some people being in a more precarious mental state than others. Trans is a hard, hard card to draw in the scheme of things and you'd think other t-guys would be more sensative.

[danielray.livejournal.com]

heh--i didn't even think of it in those terms...

it fell mostly into the "unneeded, unwanted, unsolicited, inaccurate, and poorly thought out advice" category, which just gets shunted into the /dev/null of the brain. mostly my thought was a fleeting, 'huh. must be hard to live as trans and opt against body mod.. but then again, he's identifying as a "gui," which (assuming it's not a typo) implies a level of gender fluidity/inbetweennness/whatever i am currently not claiming for myself and might imply a greater sense of peace with an unmodified body...' and i didn't notice the horror-storiness of the post (i think in part that the problems he cited: a dent, poor nipple placement (?? nature is symmetrical? has this guy ever *looked* at bioguys' chests?), are such nonissues to me), but more the patronizing tone.

i was mostly entertained by its anonymousness (huh--i should ban anonymous comments from my journal, except that once eli clare commented anonymously, and that was good) and by the curt, anonymous reply.

[beandelphiki.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah, I thought pretty much the same thing when I saw "gui." And my next thought was, "Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that DOESN'T apply to Daniel."

Anon comments are almost always a hoot. :D

[danielray.livejournal.com]

ha ha

but i'm genderqueer by politics, though!

i must say, though, i have seen boi, but never gui. it's a nice way of claiming adult status while maintaining a level of genderqueerness.