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Trivializing Breast Cancer for the Transgender Agenda
In December 2020, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and in February 2021, I had a single mastectomy. It was a stunning diagnosis, because I had been in great health, had regular mammograms (which would not have detected this lump) and had no history of breast cancer in my family. Prior to the surgery, a team was organized for my treatment. I was also encouraged by my surgeon to speak to a doctor who could do reconstructive surgery, but when I went to schedule an appointment, I decided against it. My husband and I agreed that the less surgery I had, the better. When my surgeon asked me if I had talked to the plastic surgeon, I said no, and that was the end of the discussion. The cancer team, including the surgeon and the oncologist, were compassionate and were devoted to my care and to answering my questions. The chemotherapy nurses in particular were beyond kind and considerate.
So when I learned recently about how the transgender movement is essentially trying to coopt breast cancer detection and treatment, I was angry. That movement has already disrupted the health and well-being of girls and women, boys and men, to such a degree that I was baffled that they were trying to corrupt breast cancer treatment. How was that possible?
For nearly four decades, the country has recognized October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Sadly, this year we must draw attention to how activists and even some medical professionals are exploiting the complex disease. Breast cancer treatment is the latest medical field to be ‘queered.’
Apparently, there are men and women who feel that it’s a travesty to identify certain types of cancers with certain genders. For example, even though breast cancer appears primarily in women who are born women, it is now discriminatory to say so. A Canadian site, queercancer.ca, provides further explanation, but here is a description of one former cancer patient:
Through the site, LGBT cancer patients can access the personal medical histories of their peers, such as that of British breast cancer survivor Angie Beckles, who identifies as being ‘queer, autistic, disabled, non-binary, mixed race, demisexual, asexual/graysexual [and] romantic.’ Beckles feels breast cancer is ‘one of those really gendered cancers’ and is ‘very, very cisnormative, not to say cissexist’ as it forces sufferers to think about their breasts ‘constantly when you’d largely managed to ignore their existence’ for years. These ‘annoying, large lumps’ had suddenly ‘sprouted” on her at age 11, “without my consent,’ only to later ‘horribly betray her’ by becoming cancerous.
To perceive one’s breasts in this way is a tragic distortion and misunderstanding of a woman’s breasts, and a denial that women were provided with breasts that served, at one time and even today, an important function, as well as a beauty that artists have portrayed for centuries. Some transgenders who contract cancer actually believe that the disease is one way to identify the body’s rejection of breasts.
Some women feel they have been unduly pressured to have reconstructive surgery. The recommendation to at least explore this option is depicted as an effort by surgeons (who are primarily male) for women to return their bodies to a kind of normalcy. Now there are “flat advocates” who feel this pressure exists and insist that women who decide on this option, do so under pressure from their surgeons. Here is the explanation by one “flat advocate”:
‘For me, becoming an advocate was less of a choice and more of an awakening to the deep roots of misogyny in breast cancer care. Everything about breast cancer care orients to the assumption that a woman without breasts is a travesty. As soon as I started seeing how the male gaze shapes breast cancer care, I couldn’t see anything else. As a women’s health journalist, it was (and is) my responsibility to shine a light on it.’
Transgender patients who have chosen to have their breasts removed are also angry that they have been asked to postpone their surgeries, which require pre-surgery mastectomies, for cancer patient mastectomies to be treated first:
Trans patients were called last week and informed their long-awaited top surgery [i.e. taxpayer-funded breast removals] had been cancelled to let more cancer mastectomies happen. It’s not their [i.e., transsexuals’] responsibility. Our surgery is not cosmetic. Transgender wait times are fatal and #IWon’tDieWaiting.
Finally, hormone treatment for both men and women can increase the risk of breast cancer. It’s not clear if people who receive hormone treatment are being educated about this risk.
* * * *
It is mindboggling to see the many ways that the transgender folks will take actions that serve their own agenda and distort our modern understanding of the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. We have come so far in our treatment of breast cancer; it is no longer a death sentence and the science, including surgery and post-surgical treatment, whether it’s radiation or chemotherapy, continues to progress. Transgender people have now used breast cancer as another avenue to attack men, and to portray themselves as attacked and minimized. To watch transgender people adopt cancer into their own twisted and self-serving agenda is a travesty to those who have contracted and been treated for breast cancer.
They have invented just one more way to trivialize the human condition.
Published in Healthcare
There are no words to describe the distorted comments from some of these people, and how sick it is, but what really jumps out is how selfish people have become. So glad you are a survivor and well – that is all that counts.
Thanks, FSC, but I can’t help worrying about the people who are taken in by these lies. Dealing with breast cancer is challenging enough without dealing with the distortions that they are telling.
I’m also angry at the thought that both men and women in our lives, family, friends, medical and non-medical can contribute greatly to our recovery and wellbeing. To insist on trashing the men is unfair and untrue. And I’m quite frankly sick of it.
What baffles me is how doctors can ethically provide emotionally disturbed or mentally ill people the all-important letter that claims their “diagnosis” fits an actual medical condition, and thus permits the health insurance industrial complex to connive with unethical surgeons by covering the cost of these
mutilationselective surgeries. A recent video from a conference, I think it was Vanderbilt, or maybe Boston Children’s, had a speaker stating $40,000 as a common amount the hospital receives for so-called “top” surgery. The whole thing is sick beyond measure.It was Vanderbilt, Fritz, and they were bragging about the revenue. They removed the video from their website. I wonder what the fate of medicine will be if it continues along these lines. These are deplorable decisions they are making.
Just like the decisions that are being made in sports, education, the military; just about every area of our society. Some day it has to end but I don’t know how or when.
Despite having seen, heard and read up on transgender ideology and trends, I still seem to lack the imagination to have predicted this newest complaint from the trans “community.”
I didn’t see this one coming either, Lilly. I don’t want to indulge my imagination, either, because the prospects will likely be impossible to bear.
My grandmother died of breast cancer, so don’t take what I say next as an attack on what you are saying here.
I stopped donating to breast cancer awareness because they were already trivializing it. Forcing pink socks on football players for a whole month? And then the support for abortion, which increases BC risk.
The pink lobby is corrupt.
I think that many important causes have been corrupted by the marketing people, Stina. It’s all about bringing in the bucks and competing against thousands of issues. Although I’m not willing to put support for abortion in the same basket.
Still, to me the seriousness of the issue doesn’t lose its impact if we seek out the truth. Pink headbands and socks are in their own sad category. But all the promotion of breast cancer and mammograms has saved lives. And I’m not willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Men who must have a testicle removed, due to Cancer or some other illness, are asked beforehand if they would like a prosthetic implant, because it’s easier to install the implant during the same surgery than to schedule a second surgery to install the implant.
Are the doctors “pressuring” these patients by bringing up the option, unsolicited? Are the doctors pushing cisgendered normativety on these patients?
Hundreds of men die of breast cancer each year, but still.
Every time I try to put together a post on the ghouls “practicing medicine” of this sort on children, I sail so far beyond the boundaries of the Code of Conduct that I have to bag the effort.
Exactly, Mis. When you have an agenda, common sense is irrelevant.
Why, one might call it a transvesty.
It is my understanding that a male whose mother experienced breast cancer is at much higher risk for prostate cancer. I look forward to a logical explanation of why that would be, but in the meantime, meditate on it as a peculiar indicator of just how different males and females are, regardless of the fashionable gender idiocy of the day. Be nice to people, but remember that kowtowing to someone’s psychotic break is mean, and dangerous for them. Some hack surgeon might leave them suicidal after having milked their insurance.
This is just ghastly, but unfortunately exactly what I expect from the trans activists.
I had breast cancer too, Susan, in 2020. Fortunately it was caught soon. I’m glad to hear you got the care you needed!
Good for both of us!
I was listening to a podcast today and they were discussing corporate wokeness (specifically, the recent PayPal kerfluffle). When asked if this craziness was likely to last for a while, one of the podcast panel said that she thought it would, because though ordinary Americans don’t like this sort of stuff, it takes a lot to get them to rise and push back. I wonder if the trans activists, perhaps emboldened by the media and by the medical community’s complete surrender to their ideology, might be pushing so far that they will provoke a backlash. This craziness, Susan, affects real women with real problems, and I wonder if lawsuits might result from hospitals accommodating these activists. If so, then some sanity might return if they are hit in the pocketbook.
All of us saw what the fate of medicine will be when we realized how most doctors merely had to be threatened that their medical licenses would be removed if they spoke up against any of the NIH/CDC guidelines for COVID.
Sure some doctors spoke out. Dr Z, the doctors at America’s Frontline Drs, Dr Ryan Cole and some others. The Association of America’s Surgeons and Physicians also attempted to point out how ludicrous and dangerous the NIH/CDC guidelines were.
But the rest of our physicians went along with hideous “remedy” protocols while pretending HCQ with zinc, ivermectin and other items didn’t exist. They also complied with the early Oct 8th 2020 guideline that forbid them to offer any COV patients under their care any treatment at all until said patients were in the hospital and intubated.
Somewhere along the way, the ancient oath of “First do no harm” was amended to become “First due no harm — unless your government agencies and medical boards tell you your orders include inflicting lots and lots of harm.”
As far as why a woman’s offspring is at greater risk for cancer if the mother has cancer can be due to genetics.
However it is also true the environment that people often choose for themselves plays a part in falling prey to various ailments. Theo Coburn did research showing how damaging pesticide exposure is to development of reproductive organs. If both mother and son are exposed to high levels of pesticides while in utero and then again in teen age years, the reproductive organs would be expected to be more likely to be impacted by cancers. (This stuff is in our air and drinking H20 — not necessarily our choice!)
There was a study done on twin children who had been put up for adoption and raised by different families. Diet, a tendency to regard exercise as important or unimportant, lifestyle choices like use of booze, cigarettes, over indulging in candy and sweets, and these days, avoiding loading up your body with toxins via inhaling Febreeze, Lysol, Glade and other chemical poisons, can play a part in how healthy or unwell a person is.
The kids raised in healthy families on average were far healthier than the kids raised in unhealthy families. Kids raised in families where overeating was the usual habit, and who rarely exercised, had gone on to develop diabetes, even though genetically speaking, nothing in the family background suggested this. Proof of this were the twins raised in families with healthier habits. They didn’t have diabetes.
The twins who had to deal with cancer had those that were similar in nature to cancers the adoptive parents had suffered with. Meanwhile, the other twins remained cancer free. In such situations, exploring a community’s environmental health makes sense. If one child grew up downwind of an industry while the other grew up in the wilds of Montana, it might be their childhood neighborhoods which offered disease or respite from disease.
Of course as we age & enter our 7th decade, certain conditions crop up that seem to come out of nowhere. It could be that with our bodies’ cellular factories, the mitochondria, becoming diminished in length and vitality, so our genetics suddenly override whatever steps we have taken to remain healthy until our ninth or tenth decade. It is also true when we age, we lose out on what makes life meaningful, in terms of family members, friends and acquaintances who died before we have. Intense grief often precedes a cancer, heart attack or stroke.
Not terribly long ago, I asked my wife what it was like growing breasts. It seemed to me that going from girl to woman was more immediate and specific than going from a boy to a man — a 13-year-old boy doesn’t just grow a full beard in six months. Or sprout body parts. She said, They just grow. Oh, okay.
But to the point of the article, if breasts are such a terrible “travesty” and young women can lose their lives waiting for “top surgery” (top, bottom, from and back are such a dumbing down of language) and if breasts cause uncomfortable gazes from men in a man’s world, why do so many men go out of their way to take drugs to create them or have implants to imitate them?
Fugue.
From what?
The discomforts of mundane reality, I should think.
I so hope that your prediction is correct, Jean. If people only realized that initially a pushback might feel scary, but ultimately it will be empowering. We can only pray they wake up–in the best possible way.
Yeah, ennui. That’s sort of what I thought you meant. Playing the guitar too much creates an ennui on occasion, but living a life which is so boring or dissatisfying that one says, Here, let’s go cut some parts off, is crazy.
Beautifully put. As always, it gets back a loss of love for God and thus for self.
I think some portion of trans mutilation originated in the medical profession. If you trace the money history, it goes back to only a handful of plastic surgeons.
Bingo.
From the OP, quoting a breast cancer patient:
I wonder how long it took, and how many of those largely imaginary conditions she had to assume on her own behalf before she decided that no-one else could possibly have all the same ones as she did, and she’d put herself in the center of her own little world, secure that no other icky people could join her there, or even compete.
First world problems. It used to be that membership in the human race–and its commonality of experience–held us together. Now, for what seems like an increasingly large (and accelerating with youth) segment of the population, being the “same as,” and feeling a connection with, others not only isn’t enough: It’s to be avoided at all costs.
In and of itself, that might not be so bad, if each of these little tin-pot dictators who invents his own uniqueness just disappeared up his own bum and didn’t feel compelled to denigrate and bully the rest of us into a state of equal dysfunction and misery.
For some reason (self-loathing perhaps), the West seems particularly susceptible to this sort of thing at many levels, which is why we’re treated to the sight of a teenage Swedish school dropout with her own history of emotional and mental disorders swanning all over the world in a boat, being feted by heads of state and–spittle-flecked–shouting at us all from a podium at the United Nations.
“The world is not enough” for these people. They’re unhappy, they’re not enjoying their time here, and they want to make the rest of us miserable too.
I won’t comply.