give us our roses while we’re still here
When I was recovering from top surgery, our flat was filled with flowers. There were flowers in the kitchen, flowers in the bathroom, flowers in the bedroom, flowers on the floor, flowers in the hallway, flowers on the sink, flowers on the windowsills. So many flowers. I’d never seen so many flowers. Save at a wedding or a funeral or a wake or something similarly memorial, which was, in fairness, quite fitting—given that days prior, part of me, my body, had been sliced off and thrown in a medical waste incinerator, to be returned to the earth at some future point.
With every new bunch of flowers that arrived, in a monolith M&S box dumped on our welcome mat, or a coy flatpack thrust through the letterbox—I’d spend ages arranging and rearranging—plucking each stem out individually and inspecting it thoroughly, feeling its weight in each hand, pressing it up into my nostrils, mentally debating it’s particular shade of ochre, orchid, was it cream or magnolia? After much deliberation and perusal, I would then delicately, graciously, bequeath it to its new bountiful vase, where it would remain amongst friends for the next two weeks until rotten. This plucking, sniffing, weighing, debating, arranging, then rearranging, became one of my favourite daily activities—a ritual of sorts, something to keep my semi-incapacitated T. rex arms busy, a welcome reprieve from Netflix and the 2000-piece cat puzzle I’d also been bequeathed.
Some of the flowers were from friends whose silence over the past few months has been blinding. A silence which has permeated private spaces, as our right to exist as trans people in the UK has become more and more quashed, our access to public space more and more restricted and suffocated. Maybe the flowers were a gesture of recognition, a non-verbal offering imbued with reconciliation via universal material language.
Or maybe they were reflective of the fact that this particular flavour of self-elected aestheticising violence, done unto my body by way of incredibly expensive plastic surgery, and my current somatic incapacity, was a language that they understood. A tangible thing that had happened to me, a tangible incident to recovery ratio or narrative arc. Tangible in a way that the unknowability of implicit violence, this wry thing which has no immediate or discernible shape, no rough edges to cling onto, that manifests as a girding undercurrent, a tout pique feeling—that is transphobia, was not. Either way, I appreciated the flowers (and the cat puzzle) as objects separate from these laden feelings—temporary, fragile, strong, poised.
As each bunch blossomed, drooped, shrivelled and greyed, the trite metaphors aplenty for my dead tits reverberated around the house. It’s a very strange feeling to know that something once attached to you, your tissues, is dead. Trans people, on average, have a shorter lifespan than cisgender people. The exact figures remain elusive because there’s obviously hardly any scientific studies done or data collected on trans people ever, but numerous studies and articles I researched quoted that it is significantly less.
One paper I read said:
‘Mortality among transgender and gender diverse persons may be higher than that of cisgender persons because of increased risk of external causes of death and deaths due to illness. The minority stress model posits that chronic stress due to repeated exposure to violence, discrimination, economic and social marginalisation results in greater vulnerability to poor health outcomes and mortality among transgender individuals globally. Transmasculine persons have a higher mortality from external causes of death than cisgender women.’ 1
My lifespan is shorter than the lifespans of those friends who couldn’t be bothered to send a text.
I don’t really worry about dying from a violent attack. Maybe that’s ignorance and certainly a level of white male privilege that I can now sometimes slip into as long as I don’t open my mouth or smile or draw attention to my girly dimples in the wrong places, but also statistically, out of all gender non-conforming people I’m only 4% likely to die from a violent transphobic attack. But then, when you also add misogyny and violence against women to the mix, the odds do go up some, but I think I’m still statistically okay. I do worry about my trans-femme friends dying from violent attack, as out of all trans people, they are 96% likely to, which is so abominably high I don’t know what to do with that kind of statistical information.
I also worry about the minority stress model. I worry that my heart or blood vessels, or some kind of tissue matrix, won’t be able to take it. That one day I’ll be: one more disgust stare from a middle aged man on the tube; or one more security guard storming into the ladies toilet to manhandle me away mid piss; or one more ‘dyke’ spat at me in front of rose pharmacy where I’m innocuously trying to pick up my prescription; or one more drunk guy asking me if I’ve got a pussy or a dick outside Highbury station at 7:00 am on a Tuesday; away from a fatal aneurism. It does worry me, the minority stress model striking midnight.
Sometimes being trans feels like being constantly surrounded by little deaths. I chose death for my breast tissue, now incinerated to an ashy pulp in a bin somewhere in W1. I chose death for my given name, which lingers now only on my Tesco’s Club Card because I refuse to give up the many meal deal points it has accumulated over the last decade that I’m still yet to see any real monetary value from. I chose death for friendships and family ties that refuse to recognise me in my fullness, or that lack the capacity to see that fullness anew. I choose death every time I crush my body into failure at the gym, pulverising my womanlyness in an Acker-esk obliteration of self.
But through all these deaths, these little incommensurate deaths, I choose life, life so beatific and real. I choose a very expensive, plastic chest rendered with sinew and decorated with scar tissue that somehow frees me. I choose a totally fabricated name that I have to constantly reiterate that no, it’s not an initial and yes two two-letter names are a thing, that somehow delineates me. I choose a body built form comprised of coagulated and ultra-processed protein powders, which somehow affirms me.
There is nothing about me which isn’t artifice, wholly performative, completely unnatural and always in abject opposition to what others and my own internal DNA provided for me. But that plastic-y artifice is life, and I choose it again and again and again, and I wonder, with each moment of pure, unadulterated, charlatan joy, how many years I’m adding to my lifespan.
Gender affirming surgeries have the lowest regret rates for any kind of surgical intervention2.
Google Gemini tells me—sending flowers is a good way to express regret.
Notes
With every new bunch of flowers that arrived, in a monolith M&S box dumped on our welcome mat, or a coy flatpack thrust through the letterbox—I’d spend ages arranging and rearranging—plucking each stem out individually and inspecting it thoroughly, feeling its weight in each hand, pressing it up into my nostrils, mentally debating it’s particular shade of ochre, orchid, was it cream or magnolia? After much deliberation and perusal, I would then delicately, graciously, bequeath it to its new bountiful vase, where it would remain amongst friends for the next two weeks until rotten. This plucking, sniffing, weighing, debating, arranging, then rearranging, became one of my favourite daily activities—a ritual of sorts, something to keep my semi-incapacitated T. rex arms busy, a welcome reprieve from Netflix and the 2000-piece cat puzzle I’d also been bequeathed.
Some of the flowers were from friends whose silence over the past few months has been blinding. A silence which has permeated private spaces, as our right to exist as trans people in the UK has become more and more quashed, our access to public space more and more restricted and suffocated. Maybe the flowers were a gesture of recognition, a non-verbal offering imbued with reconciliation via universal material language.
Or maybe they were reflective of the fact that this particular flavour of self-elected aestheticising violence, done unto my body by way of incredibly expensive plastic surgery, and my current somatic incapacity, was a language that they understood. A tangible thing that had happened to me, a tangible incident to recovery ratio or narrative arc. Tangible in a way that the unknowability of implicit violence, this wry thing which has no immediate or discernible shape, no rough edges to cling onto, that manifests as a girding undercurrent, a tout pique feeling—that is transphobia, was not. Either way, I appreciated the flowers (and the cat puzzle) as objects separate from these laden feelings—temporary, fragile, strong, poised.
As each bunch blossomed, drooped, shrivelled and greyed, the trite metaphors aplenty for my dead tits reverberated around the house. It’s a very strange feeling to know that something once attached to you, your tissues, is dead. Trans people, on average, have a shorter lifespan than cisgender people. The exact figures remain elusive because there’s obviously hardly any scientific studies done or data collected on trans people ever, but numerous studies and articles I researched quoted that it is significantly less.
One paper I read said:
‘Mortality among transgender and gender diverse persons may be higher than that of cisgender persons because of increased risk of external causes of death and deaths due to illness. The minority stress model posits that chronic stress due to repeated exposure to violence, discrimination, economic and social marginalisation results in greater vulnerability to poor health outcomes and mortality among transgender individuals globally. Transmasculine persons have a higher mortality from external causes of death than cisgender women.’ 1
My lifespan is shorter than the lifespans of those friends who couldn’t be bothered to send a text.
I don’t really worry about dying from a violent attack. Maybe that’s ignorance and certainly a level of white male privilege that I can now sometimes slip into as long as I don’t open my mouth or smile or draw attention to my girly dimples in the wrong places, but also statistically, out of all gender non-conforming people I’m only 4% likely to die from a violent transphobic attack. But then, when you also add misogyny and violence against women to the mix, the odds do go up some, but I think I’m still statistically okay. I do worry about my trans-femme friends dying from violent attack, as out of all trans people, they are 96% likely to, which is so abominably high I don’t know what to do with that kind of statistical information.
I also worry about the minority stress model. I worry that my heart or blood vessels, or some kind of tissue matrix, won’t be able to take it. That one day I’ll be: one more disgust stare from a middle aged man on the tube; or one more security guard storming into the ladies toilet to manhandle me away mid piss; or one more ‘dyke’ spat at me in front of rose pharmacy where I’m innocuously trying to pick up my prescription; or one more drunk guy asking me if I’ve got a pussy or a dick outside Highbury station at 7:00 am on a Tuesday; away from a fatal aneurism. It does worry me, the minority stress model striking midnight.
Sometimes being trans feels like being constantly surrounded by little deaths. I chose death for my breast tissue, now incinerated to an ashy pulp in a bin somewhere in W1. I chose death for my given name, which lingers now only on my Tesco’s Club Card because I refuse to give up the many meal deal points it has accumulated over the last decade that I’m still yet to see any real monetary value from. I chose death for friendships and family ties that refuse to recognise me in my fullness, or that lack the capacity to see that fullness anew. I choose death every time I crush my body into failure at the gym, pulverising my womanlyness in an Acker-esk obliteration of self.
But through all these deaths, these little incommensurate deaths, I choose life, life so beatific and real. I choose a very expensive, plastic chest rendered with sinew and decorated with scar tissue that somehow frees me. I choose a totally fabricated name that I have to constantly reiterate that no, it’s not an initial and yes two two-letter names are a thing, that somehow delineates me. I choose a body built form comprised of coagulated and ultra-processed protein powders, which somehow affirms me.
There is nothing about me which isn’t artifice, wholly performative, completely unnatural and always in abject opposition to what others and my own internal DNA provided for me. But that plastic-y artifice is life, and I choose it again and again and again, and I wonder, with each moment of pure, unadulterated, charlatan joy, how many years I’m adding to my lifespan.
Gender affirming surgeries have the lowest regret rates for any kind of surgical intervention2.
Google Gemini tells me—sending flowers is a good way to express regret.
Notes
- S.S Jackson, J. Brown, (2023) ‘Analysis of Mortality Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults in England’, JAMA, Vol 329, P2145
- S.M Thornton, A. Edalatpour, K.M. Gast., (2024) ‘A systematic review of patient regret after surgery - A common phenomenon in many specialities but rare within gender-affirmation surgery’, American Journal of Surgery, Vol 234, P68-73
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