Transgender allies sometimes talk about the right to gender-affirming care by explaining that cisgender people have no right to ban it when they get it all the time through treatments like Botox, breast enlargement surgery, or lip filler. But one trans person wants cis folks to know that the comparisons don’t match up, and that it’s actually quite offensive to connect the two types of care.

In an op-ed for Autostraddle, Woodlief McCabe writes that “well-meaning liberal or left-leaning” news outlets often think they have “the perfect gotcha” when they call cosmetic procedures gender-affirming care, as in a recent bout of articles on White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s lip filler.

Related

Bruised but still here: A trans woman learns to “speak louder” the more Trump tries to silence her

McCabe says that’s not gender-affirming care: “If lip filler is gender affirming care, then so is a haircut,” they declare. “If everything is gender affirming care, then nothing is.”

Instead, gender-affirming care has a deep meaning, “And telling me the procedures I fought for in my transition are the same as a cis woman getting lip filler, is frankly, insulting.”

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

They emphasize that there are limits to the “medical pathologization of transness” but said that in regards to life-saving interventions, “we cannot afford to mess around with what falls under the umbrella of ‘necessary’ care.'”

Treatments like hair plugs and nose jobs do not stem from the same internal agony that gender-affirming care does, McCabe explains, explaining that gender dysphoria is not simply “wanting to be prettier.”

“Gender dysphoria is a deeply psychologically damaging experience that affects how one is able to move through the world… Asking people why they got gender-affirming care produces pretty much the same answer across the board. We did it because we had to.”

Gender dysphoria, they continue, isn’t about not liking the way you look. “It’s about a visceral need to make changes to your body in a direction that doesn’t feel foreign. It is an alleviation of the feeling of wanting to rip your skin off, break your own bones, tear yourself away from any physical body at all.”

They also point out that gender-affirming care is a matter of keeping people safe, whereas standard cosmetic procedures are not.

“Even the simple aspect of looking your age lifts an enormous psychological weight. Cis people are not targeted for physical [harm] because they don’t have hair plugs, and they are not denied jobs and kicked out of locker rooms because they don’t have breast implants or lip filler,” she wrote. “The stakes of getting gender-affirming care are simply higher than having a nose that you don’t really like.”

McCabe also warns that encouraging folks to look at cosmetic procedures the same way as gender-affirming care is a slippery slope toward convincing insurance plans that it is not necessary care to cover.

“Trans care is a unique type of care that doesn’t need to be assimilated to the treatments that cis people get,” they say. “And that is fine, actually! Transness does not need to be compared to cis experiences and perspectives to be valued, protected, and legitimized.” She adds that trans people cannot protect their rights if their medical needs are folded in with a category of cosmetic care that legislators aren’t banning.

In short, they conclude, it’s okay that trans people are not the same as cis people, and trying to say we are all the same is actually quite harmful.

Besides, they say, “owning” anti-trans conservatives by calling out their supposed hypocrisy when they do receive cosmetic procedures doesn’t work because they don’t care about being hypocrites.

“We have our own things, and gender-affirming care is one of them,” McCabe says. “When you want to talk about the appearance of a politician you hate, it would be nice if you could just keep us out of it… I’d just rather not continually be compared to the people you despise.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.