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I have conflicted feelings about having cosmetic surgery (facial feminization in particular), and didn't think I'd want it when I started transitioning, but lately I find myself thinking about it every day.
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My desire to B-Pass raises some uncomfortable questions. If strangers usually don't misgender me (and usually they don't)—why should I care whether or not they can tell I'm trans? Is it bad to be trans?
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This is particularly a worry since I'm a fairly public and visible trans person. Shouldn't I be proud to be trans? Shouldn't I be modeling trans-positive thinking and behavior?
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Beneath the cosmetic fussing is a philosophical question about what being trans means to me. When I'm being absolutely honest with myself, I have to ask: deep down, don't I in fact wish I were a cis woman? (an impossible wish)
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Trans people usually like to think that by transitioning we are expressing some inherent inner truth—not imitating cis people. But what is it I'm trying to accomplish by changing my voice, clothes, endocrinology? Am I expressing what's already there or am I changing what's there?
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If I could wave a magic wand and be transformed into a cis woman would I do it? Intellectually: hm interesting question I'd have to think about that Emotionally: yes, of course, god yes
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The worry is this: if what I'm doing is trying to approximate cis womanhood then isn't the trajectory of the whole project doomed, since the best case scenario is an ongoing asymptotic approach to an unreachable goal? For that reason I hope that's not what I'm doing.
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I have a deep fear that dysphoria is a spiral of doom that I can never outrun. I look back at myself six months ago and think "God, how did I even make it through one day looking like that, sounding like that." In fact, my dysphoria was no worse then than it is now.
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Has my dysphoria been alleviated? In some significant ways, yes. But it also has an insidious way of returning in more sophisticated form. It's like a devil speaking: "Fine, so your skin is softer and your voice is higher. Well done. Too bad about that facial structure though..."
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So the question is: will cosmetic surgery actually help with this? Or is it just the next stage of this terrible arms race I'm waging against my own mind?
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You can be proud (more accurately, not ashamed despite the pressure) of who you are, and still counter the effects of having the wrong hormones for too long. They’re not mutually exclusive.
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You didn’t ask to be trans. You didn’t volunteer for this. What you should be modeling is that your decisions are valid because they’re yours and you did them after careful consideration and you shouldn’t let the nagging feeling of social gender pressure hold you down.
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Not something that can be answered with a simple yes/no, but in general while I understand the feeling of need to B-pass, it's become decreasingly less important to me with time. The progress behind that was probably rather subtle and nuanced though, I'd imagine.
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I don't want to sound patronising but you're still pretty new to all this, so figuring out which motivations go into it is just part of the process; I'd say you should look at it separate from the consideration of attractiveness though. That's really nothing to worry about.
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