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Jun. 24th, 2002 07:35 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
ftmichael.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
transSorry for cross-posting.
This excellent article was forwarded on the GAIN Digest, TransgenderNews, and RIGC. It reminded me of our discussion last month in my support group about mutual respect between those of us who have identities that are more "fluid" or more "binary." Regardless of all that, there's still so much we have in common.
Source: Curve Magazine
Author: Zak Szymanski
Via: GR Morgan
Date: June 2002
Article: Breast Chance for Survival - A boy dyke faces cancer and fights for proper care of the breasts she never wanted anyway. (CA,US)
Place your arm behind your head. Bring your other hand to your breast. Pressing gently but firmly, make inroads with your fingertips. Check for changes in texture and appearance. Repeat every month.
It never worked for me.
Who can find tiny balls of tissue in a sac filled full of fleshy nuggets? Premenopausal breasts are so dense and lumpy that many women under 50 might feel like they're walking around with two C-cup tumors. And as a boy-identified dyke, my breasts had always been so foreign to me that I could invariably find something wrong with them every time I touched them.
Still I knew that my usual reality had shifted. My arm fell awkwardly against my side, almost as if it were hitting something on the way down. Large veins were pulsating above my nipple as if they were trying to escape. My right breast was suddenly different, and with my family history of breast cancer (a mother, her sister, their grandmother), I decided to check it out.
I never felt a lump.
Not before calling my primary physician for a permission slip to get a mammogram ("How old are you? Usually they won't screen patients that young").
Not while waiting in the McMammo office with the rest of the herd in transparent gowns, only to be turned away ("Get dressed and come back when you have your relatives' medical records"). And not during my eventual breast compression that, and hour after I was freshly squeezed, revealed "a significant nodule" in need of a biopsy.
I was smug, not scared, because I knew the statistics: More than 80 percent of breast cancers occur in postmenopausal women, and 70 percent of all cases occur in women with no family history at all. And while I'd heard that lesbians may be at greater risk for developing the disease, I also knew the data was based on lifestyle factors rather than sexuality.
What I didn't know was that the small percentage of women who do develop premenopausal breast cancer are more likely to be looking at a hereditary from of the disease. Because young breast cancer is so rare, it stands to reasons that a young woman with breast cancer is the victim of genetic factors at work.
Doctors decided to do something called a core biopsy, whereby a large needle is inserted under local anesthetic at various points in the lump to take samples. It is a nice alternative to a lumpectomy, I was told, because it spares the woman from having to undergo surgery. And so I received a series of booby-holes, punched along a perforated tumor line.
I would be in pain for months to come.
It was a fibroadenoma. Benign. Not cancerous. A common condition. I could keep my breasts. It was supposed to be good news.
But it was too late for my disenchantment, which had only grown as I received more information about my fate. Because of my family history, every unusual finding would have to be biopsied in the years to come. And continued biopsies, I was warned, would cause scar tissue to interfere with future mammograms.
I was referred to the genetic counseling risk-assessment program at the University of California, San Francisco, where I described my kinfolks' malignancy chain. Genetic counselors presented me with an artistic circle chart that followed the course of my bloodlines like planets in the solar system of disease.
The illness pattern on my maternal side, as well as my Eastern European background, indicated a strong possibility that I would test positive for BRCA1 or BRCA2, the two mutations that have thus far been identified as factors in hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer. Most women have up to a 13 percent chance of developing breast cancer during their lifetime. My own risk was more than three times that rate, at 40 percent.
Although not foolproof, a prophylactic, or preventative, mastectomy is one way to reduce the cancer risk for gene-carrying members of the mutation club. And a few blood samples were all it would take to get the gene test rolling. But I had already made my decision. Positive or not, I was getting rid of my breasts. I never liked them anyway, and they weren't worth all the worry.
My cancer doctors were very understanding, even as I explained to them that my multigendered identity made a mastectomy all the more desirable. But as I sought social support for my decision, it was absent from the very communities where I expected to be.
Let's get real. Many butches and boy dykes would rather not draw attention to their chests. Witness the ever-prevalent breast-binding in lesbian bars. Listen to legendary lesbian music, like Tribe B's "Ta Ta, Ta Ta's." which details the great lesbian cartoonist Kris Kovick and her struggle with breast cancer: "I said 'Take both dangit, don't leave me hangin'./They said 'Lady it's cancer, not a sex change.'/I'm a human test tube./They're making a bundle amputating my boobs./Who needs tits? Never used 'em anyway./So what? use 'em or lose 'em./Se ya, bye, they're just in the way."
Kovick has since passed away, but her friends and lovers remember her as a woman of many genders. And within that same San Francisco community, lesbian porn producers Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano relayed to Michelle Tea in a San Francisco Bay Guardian article last year, "of all the swaggering boy-girls in town, only two butch dykes auditioned. And even they weren't itching to fling off their tops."
Still, a butch woman is expected to keep her tits, I soon learned. Voluntarily lopping them off can out her in the "transgender male" category, whether she identifies as such or not. Countless women have received cancer-related mastectomies and did not opt for reconstruction. But you're a queer girl who wants a flat chest, it's dangerous territory for dykes and trannies alike.
I could have gone the strict medical-establishment route from the beginning. However, women who don't choose female reconstruction after surgery are often left with chests that have been cosmetically ignored. "It's as if the moment I said 'no' to fake boobs, they decided they didn't give a shit what I looked like," said my friend Xayn, a
boy-identified lesbian and 13-year cancer survivor. Xayn has large uneven scars that lead to thick folds of excess skin under her arms. There are concave pockets where her breasts used to be, and she can reach in and almost touch her heart. "Those cancer doctors left me a mess," she warned.
My safest bet seemed to be in the transgender community, where my desires for a nicely sculpted chest would be honored without having to explain that I didn't want implants. I arranged a consultation with the local surgeon responsible for giving many of my female-to-male friends their smooth guy chests. I also started taking testosterone to prepare my pectoral muscles for their entry into the world.
The tranny surgeon didn't care whether I identified as male or female, neither or both, but he did want a letter from a therapist certifying that I was not psychotic and that I was capable of making major decisions. This request sounded reasonable at the time. Unfortunately, my desires tocontinue to identify as female did not concur with standard transgender psychology.
"I cannot sign off on your surgery until one year has passed," said one lesbian psychologist who "specialized" in gender issues. I tried to explain that my surgery was already medically approved, that I was bringing in the tranny surgeon purely for aesthetics. She says that the standards of care dictated that I must live as a man in order to enjoy a chest so flat. Only women who hated their cancer mastectomies, by her
logic, were allowed to have them done.
The "Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association's Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorder," adopted by many therapists, is a set of guidelines applied to those who seek sexual reassignment measures. With the insulting assumption that people who are gender-defiant have a "disorder," the standards require that hormone- and surgery-seekers live as the "opposite" sex for minimum time periods before therapists can sign off on procedures.
Although inherently biased (no biological woman needs a therapist's note to enlarge her breasts, for example) the standards remain the only way for many FTM (female-to-male) and MTF (male-to-female) transsexuals to obtain the treatments they need to survive. Yet the rules are so entrenched in efining "male" and "female" behavior that they tend to alienate the genderqueer population.
I encountered a lot of assumptions in the queer establishment during my quest for a body I could live with. Dykes thought I was leaving them. Transmen thought I was joining them. It would eventually be up to the more conservative medical establishment to give me what I needed to feel at peace.
Just as my quest for a letter of sanity was about to make me psychotic, it was suddenly time for my follow-up breast exam. My cancer surgeon asked me about my planned mastectomy, and I described my gender-tainted journey, much to her horror. Turns out tranny top surgeries aren't as thorough as mastectomies when it comes to removing enough tissue to reduce the risk of disease. She wanted to do the mastectomy, she said, and she would invite the hospital's plastic surgeon to reconstruct me in a masculine manner.
Despite my complex gender identities, my tranny-friendly city will still legally recognize me as a man because of the tangible steps I've taken to alter my appearance. Yet I can also gain access to lesbian separatist events, even though I don't fully identify as a woman under their classifications. What does that say about how we allow society to define gender for us? How does actual illness influence our gender and sexuality? And how can the mainstream gay movement pretend that transgender issues are not important to their cause?
If gender can be legally assigned and interpreted differently by various institutions, that fact alone throws the right-wing argument against same-sex marriage on its head.
What I've come to is this: Gender is and inescapable part of lesbian sexuality and presentation. From the long-haired butches to the femmes who reclaim stereotypes to the bearded ladies, the dyke community has always played with gender expectations. Yet as transgenders become more visible, the gender discussion within queer circles has increasingly been fixed in binary terns. I don't think that rigidity plays out in our best interest.
It's been almost a year since I swapped my bosoms for a Ken-doll exterior, and I could not be happier with the result. But my experience with the queer community has left me with unanswered questions. I'm still trying to figure out exactly where I belong. But one thing is certain: I never expected a run-in with cancer to teach me so much about identity.
This excellent article was forwarded on the GAIN Digest, TransgenderNews, and RIGC. It reminded me of our discussion last month in my support group about mutual respect between those of us who have identities that are more "fluid" or more "binary." Regardless of all that, there's still so much we have in common.
Source: Curve Magazine
Author: Zak Szymanski
Via: GR Morgan
Date: June 2002
Article: Breast Chance for Survival - A boy dyke faces cancer and fights for proper care of the breasts she never wanted anyway. (CA,US)
Place your arm behind your head. Bring your other hand to your breast. Pressing gently but firmly, make inroads with your fingertips. Check for changes in texture and appearance. Repeat every month.
It never worked for me.
Who can find tiny balls of tissue in a sac filled full of fleshy nuggets? Premenopausal breasts are so dense and lumpy that many women under 50 might feel like they're walking around with two C-cup tumors. And as a boy-identified dyke, my breasts had always been so foreign to me that I could invariably find something wrong with them every time I touched them.
Still I knew that my usual reality had shifted. My arm fell awkwardly against my side, almost as if it were hitting something on the way down. Large veins were pulsating above my nipple as if they were trying to escape. My right breast was suddenly different, and with my family history of breast cancer (a mother, her sister, their grandmother), I decided to check it out.
I never felt a lump.
Not before calling my primary physician for a permission slip to get a mammogram ("How old are you? Usually they won't screen patients that young").
Not while waiting in the McMammo office with the rest of the herd in transparent gowns, only to be turned away ("Get dressed and come back when you have your relatives' medical records"). And not during my eventual breast compression that, and hour after I was freshly squeezed, revealed "a significant nodule" in need of a biopsy.
I was smug, not scared, because I knew the statistics: More than 80 percent of breast cancers occur in postmenopausal women, and 70 percent of all cases occur in women with no family history at all. And while I'd heard that lesbians may be at greater risk for developing the disease, I also knew the data was based on lifestyle factors rather than sexuality.
What I didn't know was that the small percentage of women who do develop premenopausal breast cancer are more likely to be looking at a hereditary from of the disease. Because young breast cancer is so rare, it stands to reasons that a young woman with breast cancer is the victim of genetic factors at work.
Doctors decided to do something called a core biopsy, whereby a large needle is inserted under local anesthetic at various points in the lump to take samples. It is a nice alternative to a lumpectomy, I was told, because it spares the woman from having to undergo surgery. And so I received a series of booby-holes, punched along a perforated tumor line.
I would be in pain for months to come.
It was a fibroadenoma. Benign. Not cancerous. A common condition. I could keep my breasts. It was supposed to be good news.
But it was too late for my disenchantment, which had only grown as I received more information about my fate. Because of my family history, every unusual finding would have to be biopsied in the years to come. And continued biopsies, I was warned, would cause scar tissue to interfere with future mammograms.
I was referred to the genetic counseling risk-assessment program at the University of California, San Francisco, where I described my kinfolks' malignancy chain. Genetic counselors presented me with an artistic circle chart that followed the course of my bloodlines like planets in the solar system of disease.
The illness pattern on my maternal side, as well as my Eastern European background, indicated a strong possibility that I would test positive for BRCA1 or BRCA2, the two mutations that have thus far been identified as factors in hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer. Most women have up to a 13 percent chance of developing breast cancer during their lifetime. My own risk was more than three times that rate, at 40 percent.
Although not foolproof, a prophylactic, or preventative, mastectomy is one way to reduce the cancer risk for gene-carrying members of the mutation club. And a few blood samples were all it would take to get the gene test rolling. But I had already made my decision. Positive or not, I was getting rid of my breasts. I never liked them anyway, and they weren't worth all the worry.
My cancer doctors were very understanding, even as I explained to them that my multigendered identity made a mastectomy all the more desirable. But as I sought social support for my decision, it was absent from the very communities where I expected to be.
Let's get real. Many butches and boy dykes would rather not draw attention to their chests. Witness the ever-prevalent breast-binding in lesbian bars. Listen to legendary lesbian music, like Tribe B's "Ta Ta, Ta Ta's." which details the great lesbian cartoonist Kris Kovick and her struggle with breast cancer: "I said 'Take both dangit, don't leave me hangin'./They said 'Lady it's cancer, not a sex change.'/I'm a human test tube./They're making a bundle amputating my boobs./Who needs tits? Never used 'em anyway./So what? use 'em or lose 'em./Se ya, bye, they're just in the way."
Kovick has since passed away, but her friends and lovers remember her as a woman of many genders. And within that same San Francisco community, lesbian porn producers Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano relayed to Michelle Tea in a San Francisco Bay Guardian article last year, "of all the swaggering boy-girls in town, only two butch dykes auditioned. And even they weren't itching to fling off their tops."
Still, a butch woman is expected to keep her tits, I soon learned. Voluntarily lopping them off can out her in the "transgender male" category, whether she identifies as such or not. Countless women have received cancer-related mastectomies and did not opt for reconstruction. But you're a queer girl who wants a flat chest, it's dangerous territory for dykes and trannies alike.
I could have gone the strict medical-establishment route from the beginning. However, women who don't choose female reconstruction after surgery are often left with chests that have been cosmetically ignored. "It's as if the moment I said 'no' to fake boobs, they decided they didn't give a shit what I looked like," said my friend Xayn, a
boy-identified lesbian and 13-year cancer survivor. Xayn has large uneven scars that lead to thick folds of excess skin under her arms. There are concave pockets where her breasts used to be, and she can reach in and almost touch her heart. "Those cancer doctors left me a mess," she warned.
My safest bet seemed to be in the transgender community, where my desires for a nicely sculpted chest would be honored without having to explain that I didn't want implants. I arranged a consultation with the local surgeon responsible for giving many of my female-to-male friends their smooth guy chests. I also started taking testosterone to prepare my pectoral muscles for their entry into the world.
The tranny surgeon didn't care whether I identified as male or female, neither or both, but he did want a letter from a therapist certifying that I was not psychotic and that I was capable of making major decisions. This request sounded reasonable at the time. Unfortunately, my desires tocontinue to identify as female did not concur with standard transgender psychology.
"I cannot sign off on your surgery until one year has passed," said one lesbian psychologist who "specialized" in gender issues. I tried to explain that my surgery was already medically approved, that I was bringing in the tranny surgeon purely for aesthetics. She says that the standards of care dictated that I must live as a man in order to enjoy a chest so flat. Only women who hated their cancer mastectomies, by her
logic, were allowed to have them done.
The "Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association's Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorder," adopted by many therapists, is a set of guidelines applied to those who seek sexual reassignment measures. With the insulting assumption that people who are gender-defiant have a "disorder," the standards require that hormone- and surgery-seekers live as the "opposite" sex for minimum time periods before therapists can sign off on procedures.
Although inherently biased (no biological woman needs a therapist's note to enlarge her breasts, for example) the standards remain the only way for many FTM (female-to-male) and MTF (male-to-female) transsexuals to obtain the treatments they need to survive. Yet the rules are so entrenched in efining "male" and "female" behavior that they tend to alienate the genderqueer population.
I encountered a lot of assumptions in the queer establishment during my quest for a body I could live with. Dykes thought I was leaving them. Transmen thought I was joining them. It would eventually be up to the more conservative medical establishment to give me what I needed to feel at peace.
Just as my quest for a letter of sanity was about to make me psychotic, it was suddenly time for my follow-up breast exam. My cancer surgeon asked me about my planned mastectomy, and I described my gender-tainted journey, much to her horror. Turns out tranny top surgeries aren't as thorough as mastectomies when it comes to removing enough tissue to reduce the risk of disease. She wanted to do the mastectomy, she said, and she would invite the hospital's plastic surgeon to reconstruct me in a masculine manner.
Despite my complex gender identities, my tranny-friendly city will still legally recognize me as a man because of the tangible steps I've taken to alter my appearance. Yet I can also gain access to lesbian separatist events, even though I don't fully identify as a woman under their classifications. What does that say about how we allow society to define gender for us? How does actual illness influence our gender and sexuality? And how can the mainstream gay movement pretend that transgender issues are not important to their cause?
If gender can be legally assigned and interpreted differently by various institutions, that fact alone throws the right-wing argument against same-sex marriage on its head.
What I've come to is this: Gender is and inescapable part of lesbian sexuality and presentation. From the long-haired butches to the femmes who reclaim stereotypes to the bearded ladies, the dyke community has always played with gender expectations. Yet as transgenders become more visible, the gender discussion within queer circles has increasingly been fixed in binary terns. I don't think that rigidity plays out in our best interest.
It's been almost a year since I swapped my bosoms for a Ken-doll exterior, and I could not be happier with the result. But my experience with the queer community has left me with unanswered questions. I'm still trying to figure out exactly where I belong. But one thing is certain: I never expected a run-in with cancer to teach me so much about identity.