Help Ezra Get His Top Surgery

My boyfriend needs to get something off of his chest, literally. Let me tell you about him.

Ezra goes out of his way to try to help. He’s pulled more than one friend out of a tight spot by getting them a job. He once stayed at his office after a long shift to provide free tech support to an artist he’d just met so she could be ready for her gallery show. I’ve seen more than one picture of him hand-feeding stray farm animals that wandered onto the property he grew up on. Maybe he’s even helped you at some point.

He also loves animals. He greets them with salutations like “Mr. Truck” and “Miss Chunky” because he wants them to know they’re important. The first time he saw his favorite duck in the wild, he started crying because he was so happy. I hear him rant about saving the Florida gopher tortoise at least once a month. (He would want me to say that gopher tortoises are a threatened keystone species and that you shouldn’t step on the sand around their burrows.)

Ezra has been living as a transgender man since 2020, though he says he remembers wanting to be a boy as early as Kindergarten. He has undergone transgender hormone therapy for about a year, and I’ve seen the positive effect it has on him. Since he started transitioning, he’s had fewer panic attacks and no longer suffers from bouts of severe depression. People are recognizing him for who he is- a man- more often than not these days, and I can see how happy it makes him.

Unfortunately, Ezra’s chest is holding him back from living the life he wants. He told me with dismay that he has always had larger than average breasts, and that his current breast size is likely a 42G cup. This prevents Ezra from wearing a lot of men’s clothes and makes it easy for people to tell that he is transgender, making him fear for his safety in rural areas and in public restrooms.

He suffers from severe gender dysphoria because of his breasts, often refusing invitations to social events because he does not want people to see his body. He routinely feels uncomfortable even when going outside to get his mail, constantly worried about people seeing the thing he is most ashamed of. They cause him back pain as well, which is sometimes so severe that he cancels social events even when he is emotionally well. His chest is weighing on him physically and mentally, always making him uncomfortable and always on his mind.

Ezra has tried different products to bind his chest to appear more masculine, but they are not very effective for a chest of his size and cause him a great deal of pain. I remember once after Ezra had worn a supposedly safe chest binder for a few hours at work, he came home only to lay in bed and cry from the severe pain in his back and ribs. He has since stopped binding altogether, which has improved his physical pain but increased his emotional distress.

Ezra had money saved up that he wanted to use for top surgery, but he spent it all to flee his deeply conservative Florida hometown in 2021. He feared that he would experience discrimination and even violence if he were to try to transition in Florida, and I genuinely think he was right to be worried. Within two years of his departure, the nation’s biggest LGBTQ+ organization issued a travel advisory for Florida due to “laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ community.” At this time, Ezra cannot even travel back to Florida to visit friends and family because getting caught using a men’s bathroom would get him charged with a crime.

Ezra has worked as hard as he can to pay for this surgery himself- he was unemployed when I met him, but now he has a full-time job in the field of user experience research. He is fortunate enough to have health insurance from this job that pays for most of his surgery, but not all of it. And even though his wages have increased since he was working a minimum wage job at a plant store, the rising costs of living have kept him from saving much money at all. Just this month, he found out that his rent will be increasing by almost $250 per month. That is where I am hoping that you come in!

This procedure was deemed medically necessary by a well-respected surgeon, Ezra’s physician, two therapists who have met with Ezra on multiple occasions, Ezra’s insurance company, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and literally everyone on planet Earth that Ezra calls a friend. We are expecting that with insurance, the bill from the hospital for this procedure will be around $4,500.

Ezra wants folks to know that he tried as hard as he could to pay for the whole surgery himself. He feels embarrassed to ask for help. He hopes that you don’t feel pressured to donate, especially if you are low on money yourself.

But I am asking you to donate if you can, because Ezra deserves this help from us. He will return it to the world a hundred times over.

Edit: we just did a live stream for the benefit of Ezra and raised 680 dollars. The new total reflects this!!!