I had top surgery in mid-July. For those not in the know, that’s breast augmentation surgery (BAS) or breast implants. As in starting hormones and getting bottom surgery, I underestimated the effect it would have on my life. I guess if there’s one theme that has run through the last six years of transitioning, it’s that I have been repeatedly skeptical of the impact that a step would have on my life.
I attribute this tendency both to my natural skepticism and to the general feeling of disconnection to my body that I have had since I was a kid. After almost forty years of gender dysphoria, in which my own mental perception of my gender remained deeply rooted in my core sense of self in spite of puberty, masculine conditioning, and constant contrarian societal affirmation (oof, sorry for that sentence), I suppose it’s hard for me to believe that anything happening to my body, which feels outside of myself, will impact how I feel on the inside. Perhaps there should be a book written about the stubbornness of the trans woman. Of course, I’m jesting, but like all jests, it’s a mode of exploring truth, because if being trans is a choice, then trans people are the most stubborn, mule-minded group of folks on the planet, absolutely refusing to change their opinions of their gender, regardless of the entire planet telling them that it’s not true. In terms of the performativity theory of gender, trans folks, and trans women in particular, refuse to willingly participate in the role that society has created for them, and when they do perform they grit their teeth and only do it because there is the sense of the guillotine behind the curtain waiting for those who don’t perform their assigned role.
So where is their sense of gender coming from? It’s not coming from society, or the words that society uses to interact with them, or the entire stage that has been set for their appearance. It’s as if their sense of gender developed so early, and took such root, during their cognitive development, that something was whispering to them inside of themselves. Perhaps it was the cognitive dissonance produced from having a brain shaped one way and a body shaped in another. As of right now, it’s all murky? And what does this have to do with a post about top surgery anyways? It’s just a rambling distraction from the fact that I now have breasts, and that it took a damn long time to get them, and that it has been life changing in a way that I did not predict. In terms of my ability to predict my own reactions to transitioning, it turns out that I am completely blind.
But it has been transformative. For the first time in my life I am gendered correctly most of the time. It turns out that breasts, especially when proportional to one’s frame, are key to gendering. And it’s much more of a relief than I thought it would be because after the bottom surgery misgendering affected me much more than before. Being misgendered after having had bottom surgery felt like a blow against the fresh feeling of authenticity that I had acquired. Whereas before bottom surgery I was able to shrug off misgendering for the most part, afterwards it hurt quite a bit, and I braced myself in almost every social situation in order to protect that feeling. It turns out I just had to acquire a pair of breasts.
I don’t doubt that I will always be misgendered some of the time, but that’s ok. Life isn’t perfect, and I never expected it to be. But being gendered correctly even 51% of the time feels like stepping through a door and into the sunshine, and that’s something to celebrate.