Source: Women are Human
Last Updated 15:32:16 UTC Saturday, July 24, 2021
US — . Individuals who claim a non-binary identity often indicate that they feel their personalities do not fit into the male nor female categories. Plastic surgeons in the US, primarily in California, are advertising to this rapidly growing market “gender-affirming” surgeries designed to remove their “genital structures” so that their bodies “neither resembles a natal male nor female.”
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 health and surgery websites and a tumblr user discussing experience with the surgery, the term phalgina appears only in transgender and enby (non-binary) porn.
MoZaic Care’s director, Dr Heidi Wittenberg, MD, is prominently featured on TransHealthCare.org, which brags the largest database of “Gender Surgeons,” and receives funding from its “partner surgeons and advertisers.”
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.” Like MoZaic Care, Align also offers a “phallus-preserving vaginoplasty” option for male patients who prefer to have two sets of genitals. A “vagina-preserving phalloplasty,” for female patients who would like a penis but wish to retain the vaginal canal, is also an option. The clinic additionally offers “top surgery” to amputate the “feminine breasts” of these patients.
Davis Plastic Surgery of Palo Alto, California gives its nullification 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.”
With branches in California and Texas, Crane Center advertises its “genital nullification” surgery as “Nullo, or Eunuch procedures” that “involve removing all external genitalia to create a smooth transition from the abdomen to the groin.” The website explains that the surgery sometimes “involves shortening the urethra. For patients born with a uterus, a hysterectomy is required prior to any genital nullification procedure.”
The clinic of Chris McClung, MD, of Columbus, Ohio, says its “gender nullification” procedure will “remove existing genitalia so that it neither resembles a natal male nor female.”
“The potential overlap with body dysmorphia are difficult to ignore,” one person commented on Twitter.
“We are enabling people with severe mental health issues to chop up their bodies,” another concerned Twitter user remarked. “What has happened to us as a society?”
A 2018 survey found that younger females were more likely than younger males to identify as non-binary, while older males were more likely than older females to identify as non-binary. Respondents who were younger, female, same-sex attracted, more highly educated, higher income earners or living in capital cities were more likely than their counterparts to identify as non-binary. Being taller or having fewer offspring were other factors found to increase a female respondent’s likelihood of identifying as non-binary.
Updated 15:32:16 UTC Saturday, July 24, 2021
Featured image credit: Pixabay / Ri_Ya
