Confused

@raspberryApple2302

It's definitely a big decision to make and does need careful thinking, but if it's something you really want then there isn't anything you need to 'prove' or be. You don't have to be a man or specifically ftm trans to get top surgery. I'm nonbinary, I never want to be a man, but one day I want to have top surgery because that's what feels correct to me. Its entirely up to you how you want to present with your gender, and whatever that is, it is ok. There are no rules, just what ever feels right to you and brings you joy. It definitely can be confusing and tricky to figure out though. ❤️

@raspberryApple2302

It is a big decision, but dont make it or dont make it becouse you dont want to intimade trans mans space, you can want a flat chest to feel androgynous, not just to be a man. And you definetly dont have to choose between the two things, if you are non-binary, or any other, that is perfectly valid thing too❤️

@raspberryApple2302

Yes, you can get top surgery without identifying as a binary man or wanting to live as male. Many nonbinary-identified people get top surgery.

What you should feel most sure of before getting top surgery is, as basic as this sounds, that you want top surgery. (Alternatives worth considering include binding and getting an aggressive breast reduction but not full removal--these options may not appeal to you and that's fine, but it's worth taking the moment to consider them even if you ultimately decide top surgery is what you want--better that than getting top surgery and realizing what you actually wanted was one of the others!) While it is possible to get breast implants later, top surgery is technically irreversible, in that you can't get back the breasts you had before. If that's exactly what you want, then top surgery may indeed be for you!

As for the social side of it, the thing is, while many of us (including yours truly) have nonbinary gender identities, the world will constantly be trying to categorize us within the binary. How will top surgery affect your social life? The answer might be, "it won't, I never take my shirt off around others anyway, and flat-chested women exist so who's gonna care," but it's still worth asking yourself the question. If people are perceiving the rest of you as a woman, going topless may still be taboo in the same spaces it was pre-op, because it's the perceived gender that matters, not the size of the chest. (Ask the many heavy cis men with pendulous moobs who nonetheless go unchallenged shirtless in public.) It may still rarely come up. You might get occasional locker room stares, but it might be well worth it to get a body you feel comfortable in the rest of your life.

Will your family be weird about it? Is it still worth it if they are? Do you ever want to breastfeed? Can you live with clueless cis people either classifying you as a flat-chested woman or as a teenage boy? Does life post-top surgery seem better than life now, even if it adds to social awkwardness in some situations?

Becoming "visibly nonbinary" in an irreversible way can be scary. People will hugbox you and say it's your body and you should do whatever you want with it--which is of course all 100% true, but not 100% of the story. When someone is binary trans, at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel, that eventually they will pass and look and be treated the way they feel inside. (Not everyone reaches it, and THAT can be scary in itself, but at least there's a goal, a hope, something to strive for!) But for nonbinary people, the road is murkier. There's no end-state of "passing" to make it to and finally relax. I went through similar deliberations when deciding to start low-dose testosterone. I didn't want to transition all the way to male, and I didn't want to keep living as female, and I was terrified that the more obvious this became, the more I would become a gender spectacle for the clueless cis people of the world. I want to be myself, but I don't want to constantly be in the state of my gender being the first thing everyone notices about me, or being seen as a "freak" by the ignorant, in a way I can't hide from or take back. Yet I don't want to always be hiding in shame, either, never just getting to be myself. Nonbinary medical transition can make you stand out that way at times, and I remember 10-15 years ago when I first started grappling with my gender, the terror of a kind of "Gender No-Man's Land," where I was no longer female enough to exist with women, never male enough to exist with men, and there was no third place for me to exist in. So far, to the contrary, I find people are all too happy to lump me into the nearest category, and I haven't been fully No-Mans-Landed yet. It's not quite an authentic existence, but it allows me to at least barter for bits of authenticity without losing my footing in society. You might find yourself surprised at the extent to which no one is even looking at your chest at all, and the main person to notice your top surgery, in the end, is you.

On the other hand, that's never guaranteed. Hence the rough questions we grapple with. But in the end I still think it's less a matter of whether you'll ultimately want to present as male or not, and just whether you can live with the body you have now sans breasts in the world we have. And that's both easier and more complicated.