I've read my share of dystopian sci-fi novels, but I don't remember anything quite like this.
Plastic surgeons in the US, primarily in California, are advertising to the non-binary market “gender-affirming” surgeries designed to remove their “genital structures” so that their bodies “neither resembles a natal male nor female.” A kind of androgynous surgical mutilation, in other words.
MoZaic Care, a cosmetic surgery provider in San Francisco, California, offers a “nullification” procedure that “removes external genitalia while preserving a urethral opening and anal opening.”
The same company offers a procedure called “phalgina,” or “penile preservation vaginoplasty,” which allows males who identify as transgender or non-binary to install a facsimile of a vagina while retaining the penis. Several photos of completed phalgina surgeries are featured on MoZaic Care’s website. A web search of the word shows that, other than on transgender surgery and health websites and a tumblr user discussing the surgery, uses of the term phalgina appear only on the web in transgender and enby (non-binary) porn.
Align Surgical Associates, also in San Francisco, promises its nullification procedure will enable “non-conforming patients […] to enjoy a body that looks closer on the outside to the way they feel on the inside.” to enjoy a relatively smooth genital area. Like MoZaic Care, Align offers a “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty” option for male patients who prefer two sets of genitals. A “vagina-preserving phalloplasty,” for female patients who would like a penis but would prefer to retain their vaginal canal, is also an option. The clinic additionally offers “top surgery” that amputates “feminine breasts.”
Davis Plastic Surgery of Palo Alto, California gives its procedure – which “includes a complete penectomy [removal of the penis], orchiectomy [castration of the testicles], a reduction of the scrotal sac, and shortening of the urethra” – the cutesy name “smoothie,” or “male to eunuch.”
Delightful. This is where you end up, I suppose, once the notion that you can be born in the wrong body takes hold. Pay a fortune to have your body mutilated, to fit some absurd idea of gender identity.
“The potential overlap with body dysmorphia are difficult to ignore,” one person tweeted.
“We are enabling people with severe mental health issues to chop up their bodies,” another concerned Twitter user said. “What has happened to us as a society?”
I wonder when someone will start to research a procedure, perhaps a pill of some sort, that just removes the sense of dysphoria.
Posted by: Dom | July 25, 2021 at 01:54 PM
No, no, that would be conversion therapy. Which massive intervention with hormones and surgery, of course, is not.
Posted by: AlanS | July 25, 2021 at 04:44 PM