And then the doctor drew my boobs

[CW: descriptions of dysphoria and discussion of institutionalised transphobia in healthcare]

With the doctor’s professional, gloved hands on my chest, I felt inescapably reduced to my body. To my boobs. 

Dysphoria roiled in my stomach and I wanted to scream. Or cry. Or maybe throw up. I’d been so excited about today, but the sensation of someone touching my chest overwhelmed everything else. I tried to breathe evenly; I tried to disassociate, to pretend that it wasn’t my body that was experiencing this.

The doctor was pleasant and practised as she took the necessary measurements, but that didn’t make it easier. I fixed my sight on a spot above her head, trying not to think about how the numbers she was saying related to my body. My chest ached. 

It was my first appointment with the surgical team at the hospital who will eventually do my top surgery. I was so grateful to be in that appointment room – so desperate to be approved to join their waiting list – that I didn’t realise that under the dysphoria and dissociation, there was another emotion too. All I wanted to do was put my sweaty t-shirt back on and go back to acting like my chest didn’t exist. 

And then the doctor drew my boobs. 

I've known for more than half a decade now that I want top surgery; I've been waiting years for this appointment. But that didn’t mean that I was ready for this. For the barrage of questions about my gender and my autism, with the focus on diagnoses and appointment dates and no acknowledgement of how long I might have struggled before I could access official recognition or support. For holding my beasts up as the doctor measured from my nipples to the bottom of my chest.

And definitely not for the tiny drawing of my chest in the notes she was taking throughout the appointment. My – as she informed me – lopsided boobs, complete with all the measurements she had just taken of them. 

It’s the doodle that stuck in my head. Later, when the adrenaline coursing through me calmed and the gratitude I’d felt had slowly been replaced by anger, I figured out what I had been feeling as I had sat in the appointment room staring at it. What I was still feeling. Shame. Humiliation. Disgust.

But I’m not embarrassed about my body and I’m not ashamed of being trans. So why did the appointment leave me overwhelmingly disgusted, not just with my chest but at myself?

I live in a country desperate to reduce trans people to our “biological sex” – regardless of how nonsensical that term is. Even though sex is neither binary nor immutable, science and basic human dignity are being disregarded in favour of upholding rigid gender roles. 

While my "biological sex", such as it is, might be more relevant in a medical setting, it can still be demeaning. The doctor whose hands were on my chest likely did not understand that my body is already male. She probably saw me as female, even if she also understood that I am a man. I felt so powerless, knowing that I needed her approval to move to the next stage of the process. Hating that I had to present my body and other cisgender doctors’ opinions about my gender and capacity to consent to this surgery as though those were objective facts. 

I felt stripped of my autonomy by this asinine system, wherein other people get to decide if I am mentally stable enough to access healthcare that will make me more mentally stable. 

I don’t want to imply that the doctor was trying to make me feel reduced to a body that I had no power to define or make decisions about. She was just doing her job. And the drawing of my chest was an effective way to capture the information about my chest that is important in this particular context. But it was so ridiculous, so humiliating. 

Am I disgusted by the hoops trans people are forced to jump through to get the healthcare we need we need, or with myself for jumping through those hoops? 

Are the notes the doctor was taking just for her reference? Will they stay analogue, or be scanned in and uploaded to the hospital system? Will they just be accessible by the surgical team doing my top surgery, or will they be attached to my NHS records?  

In the future, when I've had top surgery, will a new GP that I register with be able to look back though my notes and see a drawing of what my boobs once looked like? 

I need this surgery, but each appointment that gets me closer also gives me another chance to mess up and say the wrong thing and end up back at the bottom of years, even decades long waiting lists. If I was a more reasonable person, I’d probably point out that the doctors aren't actively looking for reasons to deny us access to the care we're asking for, but honestly? It feels like they are. It feels like it’s all a test, and if I get one answer wrong then I don’t get the healthcare I desperately need. 

Maybe a drawing of my boobs in my doctor notes – even if it will stay in my records forever – is so far down the list of dehumanising things that are such an unavoidable part of this process that it feels silly to complain about it.