When Amy Sousa was recognized with Stage 3 breast most cancers in April, she went into “icy chilly panic” about whether or not docs may shrink the 10-centimeter tumor in her proper breast — or if she would want a mastectomy.
It’s a tragic, and ironic, place to be in for an activist who has spent the previous 5 years warning younger ladies in regards to the “contagion” of transgender ideology and the celebratory trendiness of prime surgical procedure — having your breasts eliminated as a part of gender-affirming care — on social media.
“Radical double mastectomies on women aren’t a product of their so known as ‘psychological sickness,’ they’re a product of social indoctrination,” Sousa, who holds a grasp’s diploma in psychology, informed The Publish from her dwelling in Port Townsend, Wash.
“Youngsters are being disassociated from the realities of life and are being indoctrinated by publicity and advertising and marketing to assume that surgical procedure and lifelong medication will make them completely happy.
“They’re being manipulated to show one thing usually considered as painful and critical to affiliate it as a substitute with one thing to envy and with celeb standing.”
Now she’s utilizing the ache and worry triggered by attempting to avoid wasting her cancerous breast from amputation to shine much more of a lightweight on what she sees as sharp rise within the glamorization and advertising and marketing of prime srugery for organic females who don’t establish as ladies or are transitioning to males.
In an essay on The Identified Heretic Substack which she authors, Sousa, 48, wrote: “My battle with breast most cancers is giving me a contemporary lens by which to view transgender propaganda, advertising and marketing, and so-called ‘gender-affirming care.’”
Younger individuals ages 13 to 17 are the most important group that establish as transgender within the US — round 1.4% of the age group, or about 300,000 of them, based on the Williams Institute at UCLA.
The general variety of Individuals present process gender-affirming surgical procedure is on the rise, analysis in 2023 revealed, nearly tripling between 2016 and 2019 alone.
Between 2018 and 2021, a minimum of 776 mastectomies have been carried out in the US on sufferers ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria prognosis, based on knowledge evaluation based mostly on insurance coverage claims. This tally doesn’t embrace procedures paid for out-of-pocket.
The intercourse reassignment surgical procedure market was over $733 million in 2023 and is projected to surpass $2 billion by 2032, based on the International Market Insights analysis agency.
Among the many surgeons who specialise in “gender affirming surgical procedure” are Dr. Dany Hanna of Frisco, Texas, who advertises “genital nullification,” and Dr. Siobhan Gallagher of Miami who popularized the phrase “yeet the teets” — slang for eradicating breasts — and has nicknamed herself “Dr. Teetus Deletus.”
Gallagher, who’s initially from Eire, has mentioned she does greater than 500 gender-affirmation surgical procedures a yr, a few of them to teenagers beneath 18.
She was reported to the Federal Commerce Fee in 2022 for utilizing her huge social media platforms “to attraction to tons of of hundreds of underage social media customers, promote Gallagher’s ‘gender affirming’ cosmetic surgery companies, and promote them to a weak and impressionable inhabitants of kids and youth experiencing misery with their gender id and creating our bodies.”
“Simply realized I solely get to yeet 4 teets subsequent week,” Gallagher posted to Instagram atop a selfie of her wanting unhappy.
Her account contains many post-op pictures of sufferers celebrating in addition to pictures of issues like synthetic testicle implants and breezy movies like one which begins: “Let’s discuss nipples falling off (post-surgery) actually fast.”
And it’s not simply Gallagher. Instagram and TikTok are replete with movies of “Yeet the Teet” events commemorating voluntary mastectomies, in addition to customers who put up pictures of their bandaged chests and discuss nonetheless being drugged up on morphine.
“Ya (trans) boy is getting prime surgical procedure tomorrow! Time to yeet these teets,” wrote one poster on Reddit as commenters cheered.
“Chesticles to da recepticles! wrote one.
“Boobye!”
“Misty-colored mammaries!”
“I simply imagined them launching off your chest like twin area shuttles,” wrote one other. “I can’t cease laughing.”
Earlier this yr, celeb make-up artist Gottmik, the primary trans man to look on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” celebrated her double mastectomy on the present — strolling the runway in a inexperienced latex skirt with disembodied pretend arms embracing her and brandishing a scalpel subsequent to “bloody” scars on her chest.
Gottmik — who was born a girl and transitioned to a person, makes use of she/her pronouns in drag and he/him when not, based on The Advocate — additionally carried a transparent biohazard bag containing pretend, bloody breasts.
On TikTok, a preferred meme development present post-op trans mastectomy sufferers shouting on the digital camera, “Holy sh-t, I’ve simply had a transgender operation!”
“Should you go on GoFundMe proper now, there are such a lot of women attempting to get their prime surgical procedure,” Sousa mentioned. “It’s extremely disturbing. These women are mimicking one another. They’re following one another. And so they’re creating this as a development. I see this as a social contagion.
“They’re within the hospital after these radical double amputations, smiling and posting footage whereas they’re displaying their followers their chests which are nonetheless leaking blood,” Sousa added. “However if you happen to go to a most cancers web site and take a look at the ladies who’ve gotten a double mastectomy due to most cancers, you’ll see a a lot totally different look on their faces. They’re speaking about how laborious the restoration is and the way they’ll’t carry something and the way a lot ache they’re in.”
Sousa, who graduated from NYU’s Tisch Faculty of the Arts and as soon as deliberate a life within the theater, has lengthy lobbied for girls and women to have entry to single intercourse areas in sports activities
A turning level in her activism got here in 2018, whereas attending ladies’s marches and different so-called “Pussy Hat” occasions. She encountered what she described as about 5 “males who known as themselves ladies” on a website online who have been accusing her and others of transphobia due to using the “pussy hat” phrase.
“I remembered I requested one among them is it transphobic to speak about my vagina, and he mentioned sure,” Sousa recalled.
Sousa mentioned the group doxxed her on-line, giving out her previous addresses and her father’s telephone quantity.
“I used to be genuinely scared,” Sousa mentioned. “I assumed I used to be simply arguing with a bunch of jerks however once I did extra analysis I noticed what number of ladies have been being silenced by these [trans men].”
Sousa began her Identified Heretic model on X at that time and her substack shortly thereafter. She’s organized a number of protests in opposition to organic males in ladies’s sports activities and in opposition to little one gender clinics in Seattle and in opposition to housing organic in ladies’s prisons.
However now her hardest combat is to regain her personal well being.
“Amy is battling to avoid wasting her personal life,” her shut good friend Ok Yang, a former LGBT non-profit coordinator turned anti-trans and anti-woke whistleblower, informed The Publish.
“I’ve witnessed her journey by breast most cancers and remedy with shock and awe on the grace and dignity she has carried herself with. Amy’s inspiring ladies all all over the world to face up for themselves and discover braveness to brazenly resist the destruction of girls’s rights within the title of trans and gender ideology.”
Since April, Sousa’s tumor has decreased from 10 centimeter to 2.5 centimeters with chemo and a strict Paleo keto weight-reduction plan.
“I hope that I’ll be capable to save my breast and maintain my physique intact and entire,” Sousa mentioned. “But when my breast needs to be eliminated, it gained’t be as a result of I didn’t attempt every little thing.”
Dr. Gallagher and Dr. Hanna didn’t return telephone calls from The Publish.
