My boobs never used to bother me - physically. They never got swollen, ached, got in the way, or felt like they had lead inside of them & someone was trying to yank it out of there when I bend over. Now they do all of those things. I don't know if it's due to getting older (I'm not that old!) or what, but it's really annoying & uncomfortable. It's making top surgery look more attractive to me, when I didn't necessarily want it before, but I don't know if physical discomfort is a good enough reason to have this kind of surgery. It probably isn't. But I don't really know if that is truly the full story behind my feelings on the subject.
I used to think that having top surgery would be butchering my body, and since I have small boobs (and they used to not bother me), I didn't think I'd do it. I felt that I could live with the chest I had, even though it would create some awkwardness in certain situations depending on exactly how I chose to express my gender identity. And that is something that I still haven't quite figured out. But the problem with saying all this is that I'm not really sure if that's really the full story for me. I don't know if I convinced myself that I could "live with" my chest out of fear and/or denial of my genderqueerness and/or transgenderedness. It is quite possible, since I have to admit I do have body dysphoria. I just never translated it into specifically breast dysphoria. All I know is that I'm not 100% comfortable in the body I have, and I have always wished that I could be. The tricky thing here is that I'm not among the majority of people who want top surgery because they
hate their boobs. I hate certain things about my boobs, but I don't particularly hate them as a whole and haven't had concrete dysphoric feelings about them...until now. Maybe it's easier to blame my present dysphoria on the physical symptoms I'm having, or finally admit my possibly pre-existing dysphoria because the physical symptoms give me a justifiable excuse - both of which might be cop outs. Maybe I haven't really allowed myself to acknowledge that it is okay to want my breasts removed. I really don't know at this point what my authentic feelings about this are.
I'm simply not sure yet if I want top surgery or not. It makes sense to me, but I often wonder if down the road I would regret it. It's obviously a long way off so I have time to figure this out. This is one of the reasons why I'm writing about it in order to explore my feelings. I am a bit apprehensive about putting my true feelings out there, because they scare me. I don't know what is "normal" or "not normal" and I'm frankly terrified to find out. In other words, I'm terrified of my own truth because I know deep down that my true feelings are
my normal. It really doesn't matter what other people think. It matters what is right for me.
The concept that top surgery is a way to feel more comfortable in my body is something that I've only recently allowed myself to seriously consider for myself. I had (and still have) a lot of "what if" thoughts & "what would so and so think" & weird adherence to vague rules like "God gave you breasts so you were meant to have breasts" that I'm not really sure I agree with. I have watched several videos on YouTube about people who have had top surgery, and I found out today that all of them had one type of surgery called "
Double Incision/Bilateral Mastectomy." I guess I had the wrong impression that was
the top surgery. It's not. I found
a video from transoutlaw that introduced me to another type of top surgery called "Peri-areolar." The important difference here is that with the "Double Incision/Bilateral Mastectomy" you have two large scars on your chest and the nipples/areola are reconstructed, neither of which were appealing results to me. It fed the "I can live with my chest the way it is, I guess, if that's what my alternative is." The
Peri-areolar surgery - and another surgery called Keyhole - do not use the same technique; instead these surgeries (which vary slightly) use incisions directly on the areola (area around the nipple) and it is left intact. In addition, the scars are minimal & less noticeable compared to the former surgery. I was amazed at transoutlaw's results in the video because you cannot see the tell-tale chest scars (you can read about his transition on his
Gender Outlaw blog). Since I'm smaller-chested, I am a potential candidate for either the Keyhole or Peri-areolar surgeries so I am going to look into them more. I am definitely more excited about top surgery with this new knowledge because the results are
much more appealing to me. The thought of having a "stealth" male chest (i.e. it's not obvious I had my breasts removed due to large double scars) is amazing & opens up a whole new world for me! It's scary but enlivening at the same time.
Time will tell what is right for me. I owe it to myself to find out what that is.
** this entry was written partially on 4.6.2010 & partially on 4.7.2010 **
