My salpingectomy is a political act

Yesterday evening my buddy who drove me & took care of me all day for my double procedure on Wednesday came over for dinner with his wife & daughter to celebrate not only the Winter Solstice with me but also my last gender-affirming surgery. It was a lovely gesture and we had a lovely time. 

On Tuesday, ironically, I had my last menstrual bleeding. As I hung out with the younger, gender-expansive gay guy from the chorus and talked about my upcoming surgery, the focus was on “never getting my period again — YAY!”  

Even the original decision months ago of getting a salpingectomy came as an additional procedure that my doctor offered me while I was planning to get the endometrial ablation done. 

So somehow in all these months the focus has been a lot, maybe mostly, on the ablation and the desired result of stopping my menstrual bleeding. 

As I let the effects of this double procedure sink in, though, I’m starting to realize that it’s actually the salpingectomy that means more to me. And it means more to me than “just practically eliminating future risks of getting pregnant” (which is already super important per se). 

My salpingectomy is a political act. It is my way of refusing that some patriarchic asshole in power might rob me of my rightful control over my own fertility.  

I’ve known my entire life that I would never want to bear children and the risk of getting pregnant has always been one of my greatest fears or horrors. The right to control one’s own fertility has been one of the principles and battles I’ve felt most intensely and keenly since puberty. Since my very first sexual experiences a quarter of a century ago, I have been super careful & active about not getting pregnant and living with that constant fear at the back of my mind. But it’s not “just” that. I have also felt at a deep, visceral level that the right to self-determine our own fertility is one of our most important human rights while also being one of our most vulnerable “Achille’s tendons” as one of the most direct ways that persons with a uterus have been kept under the control of others. 

I grew up with the idea that birth-control and abortion were inalienable, almost obvious, human rights. I also grew up in awe of the people who made that possible. The shock and disbelief and fury at seeing that those two pillars could be demolished were intense. And then, a fierce resolution slowly grew within me: in this dystopian world where unfortunately the worst versions of patriarchy might rob us of our human rights, I chose for myself.

For me, it’s not “just” about never getting my menstrual bleeding again; it’s not “just” about not risking an unwanted pregnancy (although those are huge, super important points per se). For me, it’s about saying: “I refuse a bodily function that could make me a pawn in the hands of the worst representatives of the toxic system that is patriarchy. I refuse my fertility. For ever. Irreversibly. By free choice. And thus, I liberate myself”.