It's Time to Help Girls and Women Accept Their Natural Bodies

Please Stop Encouraging and Profiting from Healthy Breast Removal

How did our society evolve to affirm, accept, normalize, encourage, and celebrate the removal of healthy breasts from girls and young women? Why are girls’ mastectomy scars glorified on social media, as well as artwork with rainbows next to those scars, sending messages to vulnerable girls that it is cool to cut off these healthy parts of their bodies? Why are more and more girls disassociating from their bodies, womanhood, motherhood, and sacred and powerful feminine energy?

Another effect of medicalizing our girls to present themselves as boys is the loss of the mother-daughter bond that often results. This loss leads to the subsequent cessation in the passing of the torch of matriarchy, feminine knowledge and wisdom, and other special traditions, rituals, and intangibles that used to be considered special before gender ideology muddied priorities and values in radical ways. Sadness within families abounds. The decision of a girl or young woman to leave no visible trace of femininity on her body, and to eradicate anything that showed her previous life as a female since birth, is often painful to the mother, who holds the knowledge and memories of the truth and beauty of who her daughter once was. A mother’s grief at losing her daughter to transgender medicalization and ideology is real and tangible, but she often bears it alone, misunderstood and feeling other people’s disdain. Fathers feel this loss acutely too. 

Activists have been using the word “hateful” to describe moms, dads, and others, such as detransitioners, who are against medicalization of healthy young bodies in the name of gender affirming care. Those who are upset that protective safeguards were removed for drastic body interventions are labeled transphobic. Those who advocate for comprehensive and ethical medical care—which used to include a differential diagnosis, exploratory therapy for gender dysphoria, and natural, non-invasive treatment options, such as therapy—are told by activists that they don’t care or love their kids and are perhaps abusive or evil for their beliefs in protecting the natural body. Activists also use the word “genocide” to scare people and pass on misinformation that those who want to preserve the health and bodies of kids are trying to kill trans people.

During the hippie era of the ’60s and ’70s, it was in vogue for young women to burn their bras. In today’s world, this has gone to the next level: flaunt radical, elective surgery to remove beautiful, healthy body parts—breasts. How did we evolve to call these mastectomies by the euphemistic label of “top surgery,” and make it sound more appealing to girls to disown this part of their bodies? Girls are being influenced and sometimes groomed on social media to disassociate from their body, to believe they were born in the wrong body, to take drugs (testosterone) to erase their femininity, and then to have mastectomies to rid themselves of that external reminder of womanhood. Some even move on to have a hysterectomy to further remove their reproductive capabilities. All these extreme measures don’t make these girls men and rarely solve their gender dysphoria, but they help them escape from the responsibilities of being a woman, a mother, or one who lives in feminine stereotypes. Somehow, these girls got the message that life would be better and happier after they rid themselves of all traces of femininity. Or they were so traumatized by something or someone that these drastic measures seemed the only way to escape from their pain and trauma.

Activists and those who financially profit from medicalizing girls and young women have twisted things up by calling those drugs and surgeries “progressive”. There seems to be no consideration of the ripple effect of these radical interventions to cement an identity that might not last or might be a maladaptive coping strategy for pain, mental distress, dysphoria, and confusion. There is no concern for the long-term mental or physical ramifications of these drugs and surgeries. It isn’t profitable to help girls accept and love their bodies and mature into women. Affirmation-only gender care assures there is no going back. It might have been helpful to treat emotional dysregulation and underlying distress, to discuss how to overcome possible gay shame, and to teach critical thinking skills and adaptive coping mechanisms to be used for a lifetime of challenges. But those sorts of inquiries involve time, skills, and dedication. Why not give the girl her quick fix and hope it works out okay? Activists told surgeons it was the right thing to do. But was it? Is it kind or ethical to cut off body parts because they aren’t liked at the moment? Does the removal of breasts, no questions asked, serve this girl, her future, and her family? Does it model for younger girls how to reclaim their bodies, their power, their beauty, and the wonder of being a woman?

Mel Day wrote an article for Inspecting Gender from the perspective of a breast cancer survivor.

For Girls and Women with Gender Dysphoria, Solidarity from a Surprising Source

She shared her story and started a supportive sisterhood called “Staying You,” which “supports women—adult human females—to celebrate the awesomeness of being a girl, a biological female, a warrior, a witch, a queen, a mother, and a daughter.” Thank you to another group of people who care about what is happening with medicalizing gender confusion and distress in young girls.

We have failed our youth big time. And we have demonized parents who don’t support this medicalized pathway. We have failed to honor and respect the girls’ moms and dads who tried and but were unable to protect their daughters from self-harm. Instead, those who don’t really understand the activist agenda, or an industry’s profit focus, cheer on gender affirmation-only care.

In the ’60s and ’70s, a new bra could be purchased after the bra-burning era concluded. But the girls who want their breasts back after “top surgery” are out of luck. They can elect to sue the doctors and clinics and practitioners who failed them because these girls realize that removing this body part did not make them a man—just a woman without breasts who often suffers from lasting numbness and pain from the procedure. How did our world devolve to such disregard and lack of protection for girls and young women? Perhaps those who enabled and encouraged this tragedy were misled or duped or had a blind spot due to ideological capture. But the time is now to cease participation in medicalizing gender identities.

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