What feels damaging depends entirely on whose body it is
Dr Helen Webberley on Heretics: the gender debate, with Andrew Gold, Heretics
When doctors and commentators describe gender-affirming surgery as "long lasting and potentially damaging," they assume that framing is neutral and objective. It isn't. It's the view from outside a body that was never in distress to begin with.
What I was trying to say there is that the word "damaging" only makes sense relative to a starting point. For someone who has spent years in a body that feels profoundly wrong, a permanent change is not a damage: it is the whole point. When I hear "please let this last," I understand that the permanence is not the risk they are weighing. It is the relief they are hoping for. We cannot assess what is harmful to someone else's body by imagining how we would feel in it. That is not medicine. That is projection.
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