Gender-Affirming Surgeries

Gender-Affirming Surgeries
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Gender-Affirming Surgeries
LGBTQ+ have historically faced a situation where their acceptance in society has been contentious. This situation has called for more efforts to integrate and accept them into society. However, authorities should expand these efforts to include government support, specifically through funding, of gender-affirming surgeries for transgender people. A transgender person is one whose gender expression fails to align with their assigned sex at birth: this disparity and a constant fight between their internal and outward selves. The argument for supporting transgender surgeries emanates from a philosophical claim by such individuals as Simone de Beauvoir, who express that one is not born as a woman but becomes a woman (Butler, 1988). Therefore, an individual trapped in a gender they were assigned and wishes to transform into the gender that one identifies with should not face social, political, or economic hurdles.
Due to their condition, transgender individuals face mental and psychological problems as they struggle to gain self and social acceptance. The feelings of anxiety likewise lead to elevated mental disorders, which have recently reached scary heights. A study by Austin et al. (2022) unearthed that 82% of transgender persons have deliberated taking their own lives, and 40% have tried suicide, with suicidality high ranking amongst transgender youth. The highly politicized nature of these issues means that even when transgender people accomplish gender-affirming surgeries, they still face abjection and physical and mental health issues. This paper argues that government should fund or help fund gender-affirming surgeries. However, this position may raise ethical challenges, which the paper will also assess. The paper will offer an overview of biopolitics and abjection as the lens through which the issue of gender-affirmation surgery is viewed. The paper will explore the physical and mental health issues associated with gender-affirmation surgery, followed by an argument for government-funded surgeries and their ethical implications.
Biopolitics and Abjection in Gender
Biopolitics is a term whose origins are difficult to establish. However, the early works of such scholars as Michael Foucault offered the earliest clue of what entails biopolitics: that 'life' and 'living being' have become the center stage for new political battles and economic strategies (Lazzarato, 2002). In this case, biopolitics becomes the political administration and regulation of species' life and localities' population. According to Stryker (2014), biopolitics "describes the calculus of costs and benefits through which the biological capacities of a population are optimally managed for state-like ends" (p. 38). Gender issues have often dominated research and commentaries on biopolitics. Gender stereotyping, forms of erotic expression, and bodily normativization comprise most of the gendering activities. Gender subjectivizes individuals through socially constructed categorization that often becomes accepted as innate and ontologically given. However, the transgender phenomena call attention to the issues of gender normativity. Tran...