Transgender teen attempts self-mastectomy before pool party
Transgender teen attempts self-mastectomy before pool party
The lack of gender-affirming care drove him to this desperate act.
According to the New Zealand not-for-profit Gender Minorities Aotearoa, the wait time for bottom surgery in the public health system is 10 to 12 years.
Holy shit, that's a long wait time.
That’s cruel. There are more doctors that are qualified and willing to perform these procedures and I would argue that it’s the ethical responsibility of the public health system to do whatever it takes to utilize these doctors.
Tbh I'm always amazed by how trans care is so... whacky.
Like, the US is becoming more and more hostile towards trans people (especially trans women), and US healthcare means gender affirming care can be very expensive (especially surgery-related stuff). On the other hand, adults in the US can typically start HRT within a week of seeing a doctor because the US allows for informed consent; you see a doctor, request hrt, they inform you of the risks and effects, and if you consent, you can begin HRT. Then, if you have the money or really good insurance, you could be """finished""" transitioning (be on hrt and have gender-affirming surguries done) within a year or two. You probably still won't pass because I've been told it can take years for HRT to fully feminize/masculinize you, but at that point the only thing left is waiting for your body to do its thing.
Then you have Canada and European countries, where, based on what I've seen, they tend to be more accepting of trans people and trans care tends to be covered by the government (or so I've heard). However, they have all kinds of waiting periods, from being forced to wait several years to ensure you're "truly trans", waiting again to see if your surgery is approved, waiting again for an opening, waiting again because the doctor decided to take the week of your surgery off to go on vacation, etc.
Then you have Australia and New Zealand where you're forced to wait and there's no guarantee the government will cover the medical costs of transitioning.
Why is this so hard?
Why can't people get their shit together so it doesn't take a decade or more for someone to finish transitioning?
Considering the symptoms and side effects of gender dysphoria, it's unlikely someone suffering from gender dysphoria will be functioning at maximum efficiency. As such, while it might appear more expensive on paper, it seems like the impact of prioritizing gender affirming care (similar to how I assume people with cancer and disabilities are prioritized) would be cheaper long-term. The faster you get them care, the sooner they can start working at their maximum potential; and the sooner they start working at their maximum potential, the larger the benefit they can provide to society.
This guy wasn’t necessarily denied care but similar things could happen with bans in the US
Will happen. The same goes with self-abortions.
And the assholes are okay with that because they’re assholes.
I feel like calling them “assholes” unfairly defames assholes, but even “murderous fascist monsters” doesn’t adequately convey their sheer, staggering violence and inhumanity.
They're more than ok with it, they revel in it. This is "god's punishment" or some stupid bronze age bullshit we should've left behind centuries ago.
Facing a long wait for top surgery through New Zealand’s public health care system, a transgender teenager desperate to transition attempted a life-threatening mastectomy on himself.
A lack of funds for private gender-affirming care combined with the “significant psychological stress of having breasts at an upcoming pool party, pushed him to try the surgery himself,”
If you have to wait a year or more for medical care, and you cannot afford to jump the queue by going to a private practice, then I would argue that he is, in fact, being denied care.
Delayed care can absolutely be denied care, even if the delays aren’t intentionally weaponized against the patient.
Unfortunately healthcare is expensive and delays are not unusual. Italy has decent public healthcare overall, but my mom was still required to wait 9 months for a cat scan after a suspected stroke. It is the reality of many public facilities where funds get continuously slashed. If people wait for months and months for procedures needed for life-threatening conditions, I don't see how other procedures (which are lower priority I would say) could not be delayed until much more funding is allocated to healthcare (which unfortunately is not very likely...).
My 13-year-old daughter's best friend is trans. His parents will not give him any sort of puberty blockers or hormones, but they do let him use a chest binder, which must be quite uncomfortable. They accept that he is trans and do not deadname him, but won't go any further than that.
He has a lot of psychological issues.
I worry about him a lot.
Sounds a lot like they're hoping it's a phase and will "work itself out".
My oldest is NB, they're 15. I like to think we're about as open-minded as it gets, but I still had the thought that it might be something brought about by seeing people they look up to being a certain way and not from internal, intrinsic reasons.
I hope your daughter's friend ends up ok. If nothing else then knowing there are people out there that think of him might help with feeling isolated and misunderstood.
That's definitely a possibility. I only met his mom once and only for a second, but they seem supportive enough to spend money on boys clothes for him.
I'm more worried about how he's treated in school- they deadname him (and his parents have told the school not to), they make him use the girls' bathroom and locker room, and once a girl was being bigoted, he slapped her for it, and only he got punished.
We took my daughter out of that school and put her in online school because she was bullied so badly it was giving her major psychological issues and she is cis, so I can't imagine how bad he has it. I do know that at 13, he's already vaping and smoking weed. And he cuts himself. If I could, I would take him out of that school and drive him to my house every day to do online school with my daughter.
I still had the thought that it might be something brought about by seeing people they look up to being a certain way and not from internal, intrinsic reasons.
Funnily enough, that's very similar to the thought process I had regarding masculinity when I came out to myself as non-binary.
Thanks for supporting your kid.
I wore chest binders for like 4 years. They're not bad. It's a great way to present masculine while deciding if you want to make a move that will dramatically change the course of your life.
Well I'm glad to hear they are not as uncomfortable as I had feared. There are a lot of other issues with him, unfortunately. Poor kid.
A lack of funds for private gender-affirming care combined with the “significant psychological stress of having breasts at an upcoming pool party, pushed him to try the surgery himself,” according to the Journal.
The trans teen prepared for the procedure by watching a how-to video on YouTube, planning ways to control the pain and bleeding, and marking out the incisions to make around his left breast.
Several hours into the home surgery, he began to worry about nerve damage and sought medical attention.
In the hospital, the teen underwent a mental health assessment before surgeons completed the left mastectomy, as well as a “symmetrizing” mastectomy on the right breast.
Doctors noted deep cuts around his entire left breast. He was reportedly released the following day.
According to a post-op report a month later, healthcare providers noted the teen’s improved mood and self-esteem.
Wow, that poor kid. I'm glad it worked out so well for him.
That was a wild ride, good for him it worked out well in the end!
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Fucking ouch. That poor mother fucker. I'm glad they didn't die and ultimately got the surgery they wanted but Christ that must have been awful
According to an earlier mental health assessment, doctors said the patient didn’t have any previous psychiatric diagnoses and wasn’t suicidal.
Sounds like a failure of the mental health system as much as the medical system. If you were seeing a mental health professional regularly and you had feelings about self harm, I would hope that this would be addressed before it happened.
Except the people who have feelings like these know they can't express them to their therapist (if they have one) without threat of being put into a hospital that's overpopulated and under staffed to the point that people with suicidal ideations are thrown in with people who have schizophrenia or whatever other disorder to the point you can't sleep because a guy keeps screaming about the demons in his head.
It's not exactly a suicidal urge. Growing up trans before it was very commonly discussed I very nearly did this myself but ended up going the route of extreme binding, over exercising and eating disorder to avoid putting on weight that would go to places in the wrong distribution. I was in constant physical discomfort for years.
It's more an extreme anxiety. You don't necessarily want to die but management of that anxiety to self soothe means physical pain is less of a problem than the anxiety. A lot of people trivialize that with trans people. They think "oh it is just looks, it is surely not that important." but how your gender is outwardly read colors every interaction you have with strangers. Not passing means you want to go out and participate in life less. The questions they ask suicidal people won't nessisarily catch that because you are dealing with someone who is waiting to finally break out of that place to actually live... not wanting to die. The problem with framing surgeries as self harm is not realizing that the alternative is self harm. This guy just got pushed past the breaking point waiting for someone else's permission to live.
Wanting to cut your boobs off may not come up in discussion of suicide but should come up in conversation if you’re being honest with your therapist.
Aside from that, I’m curious how this is different than somebody who needs other forms of cosmetic surgery to feel confident with their body and the way they are perceived by society?
Let’s say somebody is avoiding sexual relations because of the penis they were born with and tried to circumcise themselves because it’s not covered by insurance as an adult.
Should everybody be provided care to undergo whatever surgery they need to feel comfortable in their body?
Is anorexia not self harm if somebody does it because they can’t afford surgery and it gives them dysmorphia?
Mental health systems are so overburdened that it's not uncommon for someone assessing a trans person's poor mental health to go "well, you're experiencing [wide array of concerning mental health symptoms], but it's my opinion that these symptoms are almost entirely attributable to gender dysphoria, and you're already on the waitlist for the gender identity clinic, so there's nothing more I can do." and then they discharge them.
With such huge wait lists, it would make sense to keep someone on your books to keep an eye on them at least, if they've expressed feelings about self harm, but that doesn't happen because the system hasn't sufficiently acknowledged just how fucked the trans healthcare wait times are. Like, in the UK, there's a statutory maximum of 18 weeks wait from when the referral was made until your first appointment, but the standard wait for an adult to have a first appointment at a gender identity clinic (which doesn't involve any treatment, that comes months later) is literally years. But officially, you should be seen within 18 weeks, and under those circumstances, well the mental health people discharging you is reasonable if there's little they can do to support you
Imagine mental health professionals should address this situation with gender dysmorphia in the same way their might address somebody who wants to get a BBL.
Let’s say the person has dysmorphia about their body and they are willing to undergo one of the most dangerous cosmetic procedures available (1 in 3000 mortality) in order to feel good about themselves. A good therapist/psychologist, and maybe in conjunction with a psychiatrist, should try to get them to a place where they are comfortable with their body and do not have feelings of self harm because of it.
That's too broad and assumption
Republicans are erect and salivating.
Christianity almost killed another one.
I'm in the US. This is New Zealand. I'm less concerned about the health care situation. I assume it's superior to ours.
I have questions about the pool party though.
It seems like it must've been far more than just a pool party, since self surgery felt like a better option than not going.Not to be an ass here but the article states pretty clearly in the first line that it was due to the surgery wait time. The pool party is only tangentially related.
Tangentially related in that bathing suits are revealing. The timing may have something to do with his decision
I did read it. It does go on at length about the healthcare situation. Private is too expensive, public is too slow. It's that simple.
The article only mentions “significant psychological stress of having breasts at an upcoming pool party, pushed him to try the surgery himself” It just accepts that, as if his actions were reasonable. It doesn't begin to explore why he felt so pressured to even go, that this seemed like a good idea.
This could have been an article about peer pressure, teens trying to fit in, or how awesome New Zealand pool parties are.
That would have been more complex and interesting than a story about a health system that works like people expect.Actually... How awesome New Zealand pool parties are, would probably be common knowledge there, and not so interesting a story to them.