1. Lobotomy was generally not voluntary on the part of the patient.
2. The outcomes of these procedures are in different stratospheres, and gender surgery doesn’t involve changing the makeup of one’s brain and the fundamental structures through which one experiences subjective reality.
3. Given what we’re learning about the fluidity of sexuality and gender dysphoria, there’s at least some argument to be made that these surgeries have at least the potential for net benefit, even if the jury’s out on the actual degree of benefit or the specific circumstances under which benefit is experienced.
With all of that said, encouraging these surgeries nonchalantly and without regard for their permanence and real world impacts is hugely problematic. The problematic parts are amplified when the patient is too young to legally make other life changing decisions.
But to me, comparing these surgeries with lobotomies reduces issues of dysphoria and its potential remedies to a caricature of the situation and shuts down lines of thinking regarding potential benefits.
After all, if these are truly as problematic as lobotomies, all discussion should turn to how we should campaign against said surgeries. Reality is not nearly this simple.
I’m curious how you feel about other forms of body modification, from the routine (nose job, breast augmentation, etc) to the more extreme (extreme jewelry/piercings, tattoos, etc).
It seems to be culturally acceptable (for the most part) to modify one’s body based on other characteristics of one’s identity that are arguably far less innate than sexuality.
It’s puzzles me that people see gender surgery so differently.