Why is breast surgery available at 15 when bottom surgery is only available at 18? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by Stoneblackdog@beehaw.org to c/lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org

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I was watching this video by second thought and when he talked about the bomb threat towards the children's hospital, he mentioned that breast surgery is available for 15 and older while genital surgery is available for 18 and older. My question is, why? Is breast surgery less risky/more reversible/something else than bottom surgery? Please, I really am not writing this with transphobic intentions, I'm just tryinf to understand. Thanks.

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[-] exohuman@programming.dev 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Top surgery, while permanent happens in cis women too and can be changed using implants easily. Plenty of cis females have small breasts. MTF Bottom surgery is a hell of a lot more invasive and complex. It involves the removal of the testicles, the removal the penis, and new structures created using penile tissue and skin graphs. A person would need to be in bed for at least a week to 10 days, getting up only to use the bathroom. They will also need the privacy to dilate every day. Dilation involves inserting a medical dilator into the vagina to keep it from closing. The process can be painful and messy.

If for some reason they are misdiagnosed and want this reversed, undoing that is a complex, multistage procedure, with follow-up procedures.

With that said, 15 seems like it’s a bit young to expect responsible after surgery care. It’s a highly advanced procedure that is probably right to be set for 18.

Sources:

[-] HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Eh, with respect to being in bed, they actually encourage you to get up and walk, not a marathon but at least a little, as early as the day after. I definitely spent a lot of the first week in bed flying on pain meds, but I did also get up and shuffle around, and I got the packing out after six days.

[-] BlueSharkEnjoyer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 year ago

Yes basically, it's also less complex. Due to this there's more research data to support it for under 18s than genital surgery.

See the section "Consideration of ages for gender-affirming medical and surgical treatment for adolescents" in WPATH v8 which covers this in depth.

[-] liminalDeluge@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is purely my own speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is partly to do with the reasons that cis people get the same operations. If a cis teen gets breast cancer (which is rare but does happen), there needs to be a legal and medical process to authorize a mastectomy as soon as possible, since waiting will allow the cancer to spread. A cis teen with a genital injury won't be physically harmed by waiting until adulthood to get reconstructive cosmetic surgery. Whatever authorization process that exists for these purposes is probably the baseline that processes for transition surgeries are built on.

Edit: typos

[-] hoyland@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

It's worth noting that the surgeons who do top surgery and the surgeons who do mastectomies or reconstruction for breast cancer often aren't the same people (on top of that, I believe it's common for the person doing the actual "cutting out cancer" part and the person doing the reconstruction to be separate people)--they're fairly distinct medical communities. This may be changing a bit in the US now that there's insurance coverage for top surgery, but they're still pretty different worlds, afaik. (I actually knew someone who had discovered he had breast cancer as he was preparing for top surgery. It did upend the plan somewhat, but he happened to be seeing a surgeon who actually saw cancer patients, so it was less disruptive than it could have been. I suspect the surgeon I saw would have said "yeah, sorry, can't help you".)

[-] TokenBoomer@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Money and religious fundamentalist legislation. Same reason Viagra is covered by insurance but tampons can’t be supplied in schools.

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

I would assume it has to do with bodily development more than anything, like nerves and shit, but I'm not sure.

I'd say looking more at medical journals and the like will provide more answers than an internet forum.

But keep in mind that just because it's available doesn't mean that people can just go sign up for it. They'd still need their doctors to sign off on it to get insurance to do anything other than wish them good luck.

[-] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago

You can get breast implants, but once your penis is cut off or you have a hysterectomy and have your vagina closed, they’re gone forever.

Neither should be offered to minors.

[-] UngodlyAudrey@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Neither of them are offered to minors, and nobody is suggesting that we do.

Also, there's more to gender affirming surgery than just "penis is cut off". Few of us elect to have such surgery to begin with(I plan to, but I am definitely in the minority here), but it is a useful tool in our arsenal to help relieve dysphoria.