In Which I Rant A Little

[clovehitched]

So a conversation develops in an IRC channel about post-op regret, and it starts me on one of my hobby horses. Thing is, I have been asked by several medical professionals whether I regret vaginoplasty (or "the sex change op", to use the vernacular). Some of these had no connection with the surgical procedure in question, and I cannot fathom any way in which the answer would have affected the care I was receiving from them at the time, so I tend to infer that the question is driven by noseyness, morbid fascination with genitals, and more than a little cissexism (the belief that the identified genders of cis people are more valid or authentic than those of trans people).

These uncharitable suspicions towards random doctors of whom I have, from time to time, been a patient, is made worse by the fact that none of them have asked me if I regret having had an endoscopic nasal polypectomy; this includes the ENT specialist who performed the follow-up to that same surgery.

So I sense a little bit of a double standard here. The answer to the question I keep getting asked by doctors is, "No". The answer I sometimes want to give is, "Does it affect what you're about to do?"

When really irritated, the answer I think I'd like to give is, "Mind your own sodding business. Anyway, so what if I do? There are far worse things than having to sit to piss. Three billion people, give-or-take, have to and, you know, joining their ranks was hardly the worst thing that could have happened to me in my life. Also, given the state that I remember most gents being in, especially the ones in pubs, it might make the world a better place if the other three billion joined us."

Hmm, it occurs that I might want to add "misogyny" to that list of reasons I've been asked.

So anyway, my plea to the medical community is, either stop asking me if I regret vaginoplasty, because I don't, or start asking me if I regret nasal polypectomy, because I do (it made my post nasal drip worse, and I'm now on far more drugs to deal with that little issue than I am for anything trans-related), and nobody has actually bothered to find out.

That is all.

Comments

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Quite.

And "unladylike" - WTF? Accepting certain physical realities is not patriarchy, any more than walking round with piss stained jeans (or urinating into pint pots - I like to go to nice pubs a second time) is striking a blow for the sisterhood.

*boggle*