Top Surgery

Hello! My name is Rhys, and I’m a twenty-four-year-old transgender man. As a child, I never felt truly comfortable with my assigned birth gender, and I didn’t know why until a few years ago. Having grown up in a small country town, I’d never even heard of the term “transgender.” For years, I thought every girl dreamed of being a boy. I had no idea why my own name sounded wrong whenever I introduced myself, or why I got so anxious whenever someone called me “she” or “her.” My reflection in the mirror always felt like someone else’s, but I convinced myself that was normal.

Only when I went to college did I start to unravel that tangled ball of frustration and confusion. I met my partner, Chester, in my freshman year; in our sophomore year, they came out as nonbinary. They were loving, tolerant, and patient, even as I bombarded them with questions: “Is it normal to want to be a different gender?” “How do you know if you're trans?” “What if I wanted to go by different pronouns?” Excited by the assurance that what I’d felt for years could, in fact, be remedied, I went on a rollercoaster of different names and pronouns. I began to explore myself in ways I never thought were allowed. The reflection in the mirror slowly but surely transformed into someone I could recognize. And then, at the 2018 Richmond Pridefest, I took a chance on a spin-the-wheel booth and won, receiving my first binder.

In the following years, I settled more and more into my newly chosen self. With the added confidence of wearing a binder, I could pass more as a man when out and about, and I finally felt comfortable enough to come out publicly. I came out to my parents in early 2020, and later that same year, I started taking testosterone. Now, in 2022, I feel as if I have finally reached a point where I can call my body my own. The only hiccup I face now is my chest. While wearing binders helps me remedy my dysphoria and outwardly pass as male, it feels like a Band-Aid on a deeper problem. For health reasons, I can’t wear binders for longer than eight hours. Even if I could, there's still a noticeable difference between a bound chest and a natural cis male chest—sadly, my dysphoria forces me to see every single one of those differences. I spend my time without my binder wearing baggy shirts, hunching over so I don't have to see my chest, and I still have trouble looking in the mirror without covering myself.

At this point, getting top surgery is one of the last hoops I need to jump through in my transition. Despite the clinically significant distress I live with every day, insurance has refused to help pay for the procedure, even though I meet all the qualifications. Unfortunately, it’s up to me to somehow provide the funding. The road so far has been a hard one, for sure – but I know for a fact that everything up until now has been worth it. Any and all help means a lot to me, and I’ll be forever grateful to those who support me and my journey.