August 8, 2026
Tomorrow is the day we travel to get our top surgery. The surgery isn't tomorrow, but it is in a few days, and we need to travel out of town for it.

My whole system has less than straightforward feelings about the top surgery. We don't expect to get gender euphoria from it, because we just don't seem to experience gender euphoria except over very specific things that are technically not related to gender and are probably not the best for us to pursue, like drug abuse or physical pain.

A lot of people have had trouble understanding why we're getting the top surgery at all if we don't expect to get gender euphoria from it, but then I remind those people that I am an intersex man who was forced on estrogen and has breasts, or at least breasts of this size, due to non-consensual HRT in childhood. This tends to get them to realize how stupid their questions were, but it is disappointing that I have to remind them of that, because given how vocal I am about my intersex history, you would think this would be basic information to the people around me.

I don't expect people from in person to start gendering me better. I use he/they in person but prefer he/him, and everyone knows this. I exclusively get called they/them, to the point where I am considering removing they/them from the pronoun sets I use in person, using only he/him, and enforcing stricter boundaries about this, to the point where I may stop socializing with certain people if they don't respect my pronouns. The fact is, though, I am more prepared to cut people off than to believe that they will respect my identity, just because, in my experience, people don't really care about gendering trans people correctly, they just like making up a headcanon about what they think your pronouns and identity should be and stick to that even if you tell them they're wrong.

Top surgery is therefore more of a symbolic gesture than a practical one. I do not expect anything about my life to materially change after it. I know I will by and large be considered less attractive if I get top surgery than if I don't. I know I will not have a partner to validate my choices and tell me I look better now, unless you count fictional characters.

However, I don't need any of those things to know I'm making the right choice. I don't need people to treat me differently to be myself. I don't need to be understood by others, because I know they will never understand me. They barely understand how someone can be cisgender and transgender at the same time, so how can I expect them to understand my transition and intersex history? I can't, so I don't, and I don't care about them or how they see me.

The fact is that I exist for myself and only for myself, and I don't give a shit how anyone else perceives me or treats me. I will become myself even if no one else understands what that self is.