"im Just A Girl...im Just A Girl In A World...THAT'S ALL THAT YOULL LET ME BE!!!!!!"

"im just a girl...im just a girl in a world...THAT'S ALL THAT YOULL LET ME BE!!!!!!"

im obsessed with this verse...its like...i didn't ask for this, and now im gonna make it everyone's problem. some real righteous frustration right there, oh yea.

I was hesitant to write this post, but I want to talk about why so many women and teenage girls are getting double mastectomies.

The justification a lot of trans people use for elective double mastectomies is that "top surgery" helps people feel comfortable in their bodies. Traditionally, this surgery was restricted to transmen. In the recent decade, however, nonbinary identified and even non-trans identified women have been getting mastectomies. I remember clear as day when my coworker (who identified as a "cis" woman) told me that at 18 she was planning on saving for top surgery. I myself got my breasts removed when I identified as nonbinary, having been on testosterone for 2 years.

It's important to remember that no person is born wanting surgery. Society creates conditions that are hostile to women, GNC, and gay people, and this hostility encourages a dissociated state. The body is removed from the mind - instead of the body being an intrinsic part of your personhood, a mechanism through which we experience the world, it instead becomes ornamental. This is perfectly represented by all forms of non-reconstructive cosmetic surgery, which risk people's health for entirely aesthetic reasons.

So, why do teen girls want to remove their breasts? For those of who experienced unwanted sexual advances from a young age, the answer is intuitive. Breasts are inherently sexualized. They are not seen as a vital organ that contributes to bodily function and health, but as a decoration, the only purpose of which is to attract men and feed babies. In this way, a woman's breasts do not even belong to her. When men openly gawk at a woman without a bra, when relatives grope at her as a pubescent girl, when we are exposed to an endless stream of hyper-sexualized images of women with their cleavage out, a message is sent loud and clear: existing in a female body is unsafe.

I want to make it very clear that an elective mastectomy and the practices of breast ironing are very different, but there are commonalities in that attitudes behind both. Breast ironing is done to pubescent girls in order to "prevent" her being sexually assaulted or harassed by men, sometimes including male relatives. When I hear stories of girls in the West starving themselves and binding to hide their chests, I can't help but see similarities. When I was binding and restricting calories as a 15 year old, I would have said I was doing it so that I could pass as a man. But I would have been lying to you. I was lying to myself. I didn't hate my breasts because I was "born in the wrong body." I hated my breasts because they were used to justify my sexualization. From my perspective they put me in danger.

We often hear that women's rights in the West have been secured, but you need only look at the war on women's bodies to see that that is a fantasy. When young girls constantly receive the messaging that your curves and boobs WILL attract men and that you will be objectified for it, many will try to opt out.

Take Liv Hewson, for example.

She says herself that her anorexia was a manifestation of "gender dysphoria," but the question remains - where did this dysphoria come from? Why would anorexia develop as an outlet for it? What makes more sense: a young woman was born hating her body and her breasts because she has a gendered, non-female soul, or that same woman hates her body because she has been conditioned as such by a patriarchal society, the same society that encourages extreme self harm and body modification through a multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry?

Gender dysphoria in young women needs to be demystified. It's not special, it's not unique. It is NOT evidence that she needs invasive surgery or steroids to feel comfortable in her body. It is evidence that she is in pain. In order to address the rising rate of transition in young women, we must first acknowledge the conditions that nurture this form of self-hatred.

Transition IS a feminist issue. It is just as relevant in Western feminism as tackling the beauty industry, female sexualization, and violence perpetrated against women through porn. All of these issues are deeply interconnected. When we approach dysphoric women with compassion and encourage them to perceive their bodies as a part of themselves that deserves to remain intact and whole, rather than as their enemy, we take a necessary step towards female liberation.

so you're admitting it? you're admitting that the entire concept of trans identity is based on upholding harmful gender stereotypes??

I don’t know how to comment this.. "also like 90’s lesbian" so for you gender is like a feeling from some aesthetic? I don’t wish any bad to the person who made this post, but it just doesn’t make sense

:/