Something I’ve seen a lot of recently is people comparing detransition, surgery regret, and transition-related medical complications to regretting tattoos and piercings. “Sometimes people regret a tattoo/piercing, but you don’t see them opening their mouths about it online or criticizing the practice as a whole,” etc and so on.
As someone who is both a detransitioner with medical complications & regrets, and someone with retired piercings and regrettable tattoos, I think it’s a really poor comparison. Piercings and tattoos have had nowhere near the same risks or impact on my life, body, and health as medical transition.
I’ve had 12 piercings done over my life thus far; I kept most of them for many years, but have all been retired by now.
I had lip piercings that I got rid of because they wore little chips into my front teeth, and I couldn’t risk further dental damage.
I had nose piercings that I got rid of because I disliked the occasional smell (and how they got in the way of picking my nose, hahaha).
I had genital piercings that I got rid of because they pinched me in weird ways when I sat down; I was especially disappointed with those!
I had ear and cartilage piercings that I got rid of when I got assaulted on the street and learned that getting punched with jewelry there hurts especially bad (as if getting boxed in the ear isn’t painful enough on its own). Was also tired of the ear discomfort while sleeping on my side; never found jewelry that totally worked for me.
In all cases, my retired piercings have left me with little to no long-term impact. Most of them, you can’t even see anymore; the main exception is the lip piercings – there are little dots left behind under my lip, scars where the holes used to be. They’re so subtle that nobody even notices them.
There is no pain, no health impact, and no change in how people treat me. It was no big deal; I could take the jewelry out and walk away.
I have a few tattoos, and I’m not super fond of the first one I got when I was 18. It’s not the worst tattoo ever, but it’s a little dorky, in a noticeable place, and nobody knows what it means, so it invites questions from (well-meaning and curious) strangers. I hate receiving attention from and explaining myself to strangers.
Sometimes I feel annoyance at my past self for having gotten it, and consider trying to cover it up with something else, but I generally fall back to the same solution I use for other body issues – live and let live, don’t keep building on the expensive “keep changing things and one day I’ll finally be happy” snowball.
But, even if the tattoo is cringey and annoying sometimes, it doesn’t radically change how people treat me, doesn’t cause me any pain, and has had no major impact on my health.
The effects of my transition are different. My life and how I’m perceived by strangers is radically changed. People don’t notice my tiny piercing scars, or ask about my tattoo beyond a curious, “Cool tattoo, what does it mean?”. What they do notice is my combination of full beard, curvy body yet lack of breasts, deep voice, short stature, small features, and female name & sex marker. They do see the weird little creature that they can’t auto-assign a sex/gender on first glance and thus feel unsettled and uncomfortable about. Transitioning is effective and permanently changes how people see you based on their notions of sex and gender, and in ways you can’t always control or change your mind about.
Between the top surgery and the hysterectomy, my body will never be the same in really big ways. It’s not like taking out body jewelry and having a tiny scar. Transition is a full-body experience.
When my regrets about transitioning started amping up, I couldn’t just walk away and have things mostly go back to how they were before. I have to stay on some form of HRT indefinitely. I have to monitor my bone health. I’ve had to go to physical therapy for pelvic floor dysfunction. I still have severe nerve pain in my chest, nipples, and ribs.
Every year I discover something new about how I’ve been impacted by my transition. I’ve incurred actual losses that I’ve had to grieve. (And I haven’t even mentioned the sheer financial cost of medical transition; a <$100 piercing or <$500 tattoo simply doesn’t compare!)
Also consider the interactions with the practitioners themselves. I have fond memories of conversations with piercers and tattoo artists during consultations and while they were doing their work on me – generally cool people, and were always very respectful of me! My interactions with medical professionals during my transition aren’t so warm and happy; I’ve been through years of dehumanization and/or negligence at doctors’ and surgeons’ offices, and these are professionals who should be held to a higher standard. (I wonder if they could learn a thing or two from job shadowing a tattoo artist or piercer.)
Even though I retired all my piercings and have a cringey tattoo, and have evolving opinions on body modification, I still geek out about tats & piercings and happily recommend them to those who are interested.
Meanwhile, transitioning isn’t something I casually recommend. I don’t geek out about it. I don’t have the same fond feelings about it. I’ve even discouraged people from getting top surgery altogether, because it was just that bad for me.
Medical transition isn’t “just another body mod”. Comparing it to getting a piercing or a tattoo is a false equivalence. It’s a different experience entirely.
