Meet Me in the Yes: Transition After Sexual Assault by Dominic

MEET ME IN THE YES:

Transition After Sexual Assault

BY DOMINIC BRADLEY (THEY/THEM)

Dominic Bradley decided to pursue gender-affirming surgery after considerable time distinguishing between body dysphoria, gender dysphoria, and assault trauma.

I am unapologetically non-binary. I am unapologetically a survivor of sexual violence. After considerable time distinguishing between body dysphoria, gender dysphoria, and assault trauma, I decided to pursue gender-affirming surgery.

On August 30, 2021, about a year before my 40th birthday, I had a radical chest reduction. Prior to the big day I wrote in an online support group “I need a place to put some difficult feelings. I’ve seen lots of posts about how amazing their surgeons and support teams were. I don’t think I will have that experience…I think I will feel good after it’s all said and done, but I’m already

experiencing grief about the process not being particularly affirming.” The first time I was assaulted my chest was involved. I froze. The psychiatric treatment I received afterwards made the bottom fall out of my appetite. My chest grew and grew. In a matter of months I was unrecognizable to myself. I had made a couple of half-hearted attempts to pursue surgery, but I was stopped by money and insurance issues. Last year, I realized I deserved to inhabit the body I wanted to inhabit. I refused to go into my fourth decade of life with a body that caused me physical pain, did not reflect my gender identity, and served as an unwelcome reminder of what happened to me. I recall something I wrote pre-transition for a now-defunct online publication: “I deserve to modify my body as I see fit.” My transition goals are valid even if they are partially inspired by my SA history. People modify their bodies for all sorts of reasons including aesthetic reasons.

During this journey I was told that my transition goals were too permanent and that I would live with regret. Some people believed that I had not done enough healing work to make a clearheaded decision about this, and wondered if I might be able to make peace with my body without going under the knife. Many people, working from their own biases, mourned a grave for my femininity they’d dug themselves. I had to tune it all out. I wanted to be more open about how my survivorship played a role in my transition. I wish it wasn’t minimized or met with expressions of doubt.

Money, insurance, and backlash weren’t the only barriers. I have significant medical trauma, not only from the time of my assault, but also from subsequent psychiatric intervention that included forced drugging, and unfortunately, additional assault. Pursuing gender-affirming surgery can be a lengthy process that involves interacting with a number of different healthcare workers. Also, limitations imposed by my insurance led me to a surgeon who, while good at his craft, was not trauma-informed. I was thrust back into an environment that could trigger feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, numbness, and fear, but I needed to maintain my momentum.

I remembered I could advocate for myself and used my past successes to encourage me.

When talking with the surgeon in my consultation, I stated I wanted to go down to a small A cup with no nipple grafts. This felt like the most authentic choice for me as a non-binary person. He paused, scrunched up his face, and asked me, “Wouldn’t that look weird?” I took a deep breath and reasserted myself. He was also fatphobic, but having seen beautiful post-op pictures of larger folks, I refused to be deterred. He eventually agreed to do what I asked.

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AUTHOR BIO Dominic Cinnamon Bradley (The Johns Hopkins University BA | Columbia University MSW) is a Brooklyn-based Black, disabled, nonbinary artist reared in the crunk-era “Dirty South.” A former Roots. Wounds. Words. storyteller, Dominic writes primarily creative nonfiction. They are also a freelance sensitivity reader who has reviewed author manuscripts for various publishing houses. Dominic recently completed the inaugural RiseOut Activist-in-Residence Fellowship (2021) at The Center and focused on creating mental health resources for the LGBTQIA community. Currently, Dominic is an editor and disability justice reader for an upcoming book project on disability artistry. Dominic’s writing appears in such publications as Color Bloq, Rest for Resistance, HuffPost, and The Guardian.