Phalloplasty: In loving grace
Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman (WiaW) repeats a trope that women are being mutilated into becoming men and having experimental surgeries to become facsimiles of men. In one segment a trans* man decries his phalloplasty as experimental, a procedure that has disfigured him and left his life shortened due to lack of insurance and infection. WiaW is part of a burgeoning cultural criticism of phalloplasties, testosterone HRT, and mastectomies in which trans* men are treated as errant girls who have no agency over their own decisions. What they forget is that all of these treatments have nearly a century of medical practice on cis bodies, no trans* man was the first to receive these treatments, they were a pleasant beneficiary of the science.
Phalloplasty especially gets opprobrium due to photos of the immediate aftermath of the skin grafts requires, with cis folk decrying that it is a fake manhood and a mutilation of precious womanhood in the name of medical profit. Yet, as Michael Dillon points out in his biography, phalloplasties were developed by Harold Gillies to mend soldiers injured in the battles of World War 1. Those men suffered horrific shrapnel and bullet wounds to their genitals, and the phalloplasty was conceived to give them back a sense of manhood. Dillon was one of the first trans* man to have phalloplastic surgery in around 1943, and in his relating of his personal narrative the other patients at Gillies’ hospital he was treated as he, not based on his assigned sex at birth.
Gillies was a pioneering plastic surgeon who saw his patients as human beings in need of grace and tenderness. The medical revolution that was plastic surgery transformed deformed bodies shunned by society back into men who could have confidence into themselves. Much work was done to mend their bodies and their minds, seeing the whole human beyond the damage done.
For trans* men these surgeries offered a solution to their inner identity, allowing them to exist in a masculine world free from any judgement when in same sex spaces. Since 1943 trans* masc identities have evolved from a purely cisnormative perception of male bodies, and many trans* men do not have this surgery due to the risks and potential scarring. Yet, the grace Gillies provided towards his patients is still imbued by surgeons in the 2020s.
What Walsh and his ilk forget is that all surgery has risks, all surgery has complications, and all trans* surgeries were carried out on cis folk before trans* folk. WiaW deliberately paints trans* medicine as experimental and of the moment, yet every single surgery and treatment has nearly a century of practice. Trans* bodies exist in a state of medical grace precisely because of this history; to have surgery in 2023 is to be passed that baton. Yet, because trans* surgery is seen through the eyes of a cis majority they only see the surgeries that make the headlines, those that go wrong or are carried out on high profile bodies.
Every surgery carries risks, every surgery has remorse and regret rates, yet trans* surgeries usually have 90%+ satisfaction rates. Yes, our bodies may be shaped and sculped by the knife, and that surgery is done in grace and mercy. We are the bodies reborn in science and the kindness of doctors seeking to provide release. To cis folk who call this butchery no amount of evidence will suffice; I say to them look at the grace, look at the mercy, and look at the lives reborn. Phalloplasties transform lives in loving grace, this is not butchery but transfiguration.
