Mutilation

[bcholmes]

So, some time ago, I kvetched about a trans documentary that I saw.

One of the aspects of the documentary that I still find myself thinking about is a segment involving a guy from Oz named Alan Finch. Alan Finch is a post-op former M2F transsexual who now regrets having had surgery. So he's now suing "Australia's top gender clinic" because they misdiagnosed him. This part bugs me enormously:

"At the end of the day the choice is with the man holding the scalpel. Nobody's got a gun to his head and is forcing him to do this. He's the one who makes the ultimate choice. Now he better be sure he's got it right."

Nope. No agency, there.

But that's not the part that I keep pondering. What I keep pondering is that when the interviewer, Hana Gartner, pressed him about his critical remarks about trans surgery, he finally blurted out: "Look, it's mutilation."

A number of years ago, I worked on a trans magazine, and we discussed an article that had appeared in the Globe and Mail. The author was a woman named Margaret Wente. The article came out shortly after another CBC document about two trans people: one a cop who transition just as she retired, and the other a member of the Armed forces whose surgery was provided by the military. And, they fell in love with each other.

Sex-change surgery has nothing to do with gay rights, or human rights of any kind. I don't care who Cynthia and Sylvia love, or how they express themselves while doing it. They are perfectly free to make those choices. But I do not think we should condone surgical mutilation in the name of therapy. That's malpractice, pure and simple, and I'm against it.

Later she goes on:

It is profoundly unfashionable to question the value of this surgery and no one in the CBC does so. We never hear someone say it amounts to nothing more than crude genital mutilation, performed on people with problems that probably won't be fixed by it.

Flash forward: some time after that, I did a panel at University of Toronto about coming out in the workplace. One of the other people on the panel was a woman who worked for the Toronto Star and somehow we got to talking about Margaret Wente. "She just has this thing about trans people. She's always going on about it." She rolled her eyes in that dismissive way.

Back to the present: What's especially troubling about these statements of mutilation is that they always seem to be followed by a silent, "There, I've said it." As if the speaker knows that it's not polite to say, "you're mutilating yourself", but eventually they want to acknowledge that their gut just screams out "it's not right because it's mutilation."

I've been trying to think, for a while, what I want to say about this. I've though about deconstructing the idea of mutilation: what does this mean? What can we learn about comparing SRS to, say, having your tubes tied, or breast reduction surgery, or any form of reconstructive surgery? I've pondered the problem of categories: healthy, unhealthy, different, wholeness, incompleteness, left-handedness, whatever.

And, I must confess, I don't even think that these are worthwhile points of discussion because I think these ideas all come from the head, whereas people's sense of mutilation comes from the gut.

And how do you change that?

Comments

Mutilation....I don't think so.

[rbowspryte.livejournal.com]

Although I have'nt had surgery and don't plan to the broad mental paint brush of here is simplistic and stupid. Why is surgery either absolutely necessary or fivolous?

A face lift is mutilation by these terms, how about a much needed birth defect procedure that prevents a child from breathing properly? Technically you ae altering the core "birth" being in either regard.

I think people are angry because they see the body as a largely "unchanging thing...if god mean't you to be a....etc. etc."
the ignore the fluid parts and they have real problems dealing with complex and many-faceted multiple issues at once. I call it "one-step thinking". This-equals-that, it's easy, it's simple and forget about it!

In my own case I tried to explain in a long letter to my insurance provider why they should cover the operation to remove my testes...case and point I take pills which cost you X (lots of money a year). I have operation now I don't take pills which costs you (a little money that will save you tons in the long-run). Simple but it was still a fight, needless to say I won, and they agreed to cover more than half. However it all comes back to that "having your gender controlled or dictated to you by the state" (or corporation in this case).

The whole current climate of trans-phobia and trans-socialist dogma really upsets me...but they have numbers and popular opinion and that bothers me most of all!!

As for changing the gut to brain relationship I'm not sure but maybe a start is in marketing...I've heard that a good slogan or protest march can do wonders to bridge the heart-head connection so maybe it's true here as well...something like "You say Mutilation we say a lovely new Creation"....I don't know...just venting a tossing clods.