First, it started with people saying cis women getting breast implants was gender-affirming surgery and at least that kinda made sense on the very surface level. Now people are claiming all plastic surgeries are gender-affirming which made me check whether this was some orchestrated trolling effort. Doesn't seem like it.
Here's the tweet .
i mean...they're certainly right about that as well. i'd consider it more broadly socially affirming than strictly gender affirming, but it's still more care than trans people often have access to. and that's the point no? there's all sorts of supposedly "medically unnecessary" procedures that exist solely to attempt to help a person feel affirmed in their social identity that are widely accessible, and are used by the rich and famous without broad social reckoning.
One point, I would argue against this, is that no they are not widely available, they are available to the rich & famous such that they might reinforce their own social position by better embodying traits which are understood to be desirable.
You cannot as a random cis-prole-asshole wander into the doctors office & ask for the Insta-Fit Model Special, and expect to fuckin get it. You can barely expect to be allowed enough time to yourself to groom yourself, or to be able to follow a coherent exercise regimen; and even then that's entirely dependent on whether or not you can still maintain economic productivity while doing that.
Yeah, that's certainly true, but we're talking about Elon specifically and the hypocrisy of our societal acceptance of his self-affirming actions relative to trans people being demonized for wanting to do so in the first place. I would also argue that these things are widely accessible at least in the sense of "probably won't get responded to with hate crimes," even if practically capitalism is the fuck that it always is.
Well I'm not arguing against the notion trans people are prevented from pursuing their gender identity; or that there aren't reasons beyond "just" economic disenfranchisement for that, as it were.
Edit: fuck I think I miswrote that before hand.
I guess my point here is that I think that even cis-people are more fucked up & insecure about their own bodies (at least I know I am) now that body-modification & "physique enhancement" among the wealthy has basically completely lost any taboos & as labor continues to get more squeezed for economic value.
oh yeah, I mean of course that's true, it's just not what I thought we were here to talk about I guess. that said, I qualified my original comment for a reason.
I'm not saying that it is genuinely freely available to cis people, or even that cis people don't have issues relating to gender, of course they do. I'm neurodivergent and one of the phrases that I've resented my entire life has been "act like a man." I don't fit the western standards of masculinity in many ways, it's just not something that I struggle with or has caused me harm in many ways, so I don't really talk about it, I just try to be an enthusiastic advocate for the marginalized. anyway, my point was rather that cis people are encouraged in many ways to affirm their gender in society, and there is much more acceptance of that affirmation taking the form of cosmetic and/or surgical intervention of some kind. fuck, most men I know are circumcised, a genital mutilation that is generally accepted as a normal gender affirmation to be applied to male newborns. that's way more drastic than what people are saying is "grooming" the kids as trans or however reactionaries put it.