"Surgery" is a scary word. For most people, it's something to be avoided. Few eagerly anticipate spending hours under general anesthetic only to wake up nauseous and spend weeks on bed rest. Most people count themselves lucky if they can just get through life without having to undergo such an ordeal.
Yet for transgender folks, surgery is supposedly to be expected. In order to gain full legal and social membership to our own genders, we are required to undergo major surgery. Potentially dangerous surgery. Expensive surgery.
Pretty much everyone else assumes that for trans people, surgery is the most important event in our lives, kind of like graduations, weddings, and winning the lottery all rolled into one. And yes, to a lot of us, it's pretty damn important. But just like everyone else, we have college to pay for, and weddings to plan, and lottery tickets to buy.
And to some of us, surgery is optional. Or doesn't even come into the picture.
Let's unpack ideas about transgender surgeries a little bit. To a lot of people who are—it would be unkind to say "ignorant," so let's go with "less informed"—trans people are divided into two categories: "pre-op" and "post-op," with "op" standing, of course, for "operation." A third category has reluctantly been added to this worldview: that of "non-op."
So there are trans people who have had "the operation," trans people who haven't had "the operation" yet, and trans people who, for some wacky reason, will never have "the operation." All well and good, right?
Not really. For one thing, what's this single, magical, one-size-fits-all procedure, signified by "op," that we all undergo? Because the fact is, there are a whole lot of "ops" out there. [Now pay attention, because this is the one article in the history of ever in which I plan to delve into the prurient details of SRS (sexual re-assignment surgery) that you are all, I'm sure, dying to hear about.]
For trans men, there's "top surgery" (mastectomy) and "bottom surgery" (one of a couple different procedures by which a penis is constructed). There's also hysterectomy, which may be desired or medically required. Trans women may get bottom surgery (vaginoplasty) as well as breast augmentation, and perhaps a tracheal shave to remove the appearance of an "Adam's apple." For everyone, there are also facial surgeries available. Genderqueer folks may get any of these surgeries as well.
So when we say someone is "post-op," do we mean that they've had one (or more) of the surgeries that they've planned? Or do we mean that they've had them all? Is there some particular surgery that one has to get in order to qualify as post-op? One could of course say "I'm post-op for top surgery, pre-op for bottom surgery," but that would ruin the facile elegance which is the only good thing these terms have going for them in the first place.
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