2026/09/24 - Late night notes app thoughts on transmedicalist shifts
i personally struggled for years with whether i want to get sexual reassignment surgery because of outside factors like the feeling that society would respect me more afterwards and a kind of pressure i felt from inside the community with how prevalent the topic was.
it's still very much present and there are still people in the community that see it as the last goal to achieve but i'm noticing a shift. a shift away from genitals and towards the face.
the face is usually the first thing we notice about someone and by looking at someone's face we gain a lot of information about them and how they are feeling. so it's understandable that a lot of trans* folks feel dysphoria about their faces. especially trans* women (me included), which is also no shock when thinking about how normalized plastic surgery is for cis women.
i've recently seen an influx of FFS content. FFS stands for facial feminization surgery. and with most ffs content that i was seeing there was an undertone of "you have to do this or you'll be clocky" and even stuff like saying "i feel like this feature on my face is way too manly" can make people with similar facial features feel insecure to the point of inducing dysphoria. phrases suggesting strangers online watching a creators videos are gonna get FFS are often used which leaves little room for nuance and personal decisions like being fine with one's face.
i personally started to feel bad about my face the more FFS content i got on social media especially when i noticed that ill never be able to afford it. here in germany it's almost impossible to get it covered by health insurance
ffs is a priviledge few can really afford and it's starting to feel like there's a wider spread pressure to do it beginning to form.
in my very own definition of me being a trans woman i try to leave very little space for outside pressures which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. it got easier when our own community started caring a little bit less about genitals and it's getting tougher again now that a shift towards a new wave of transmedicalist ideals is happening.
i wonder if increased transmedicalist ideals and pressures are correlated to the increased dangers we now face again through right wing shifts noticeable around the world.