Help Mitch Get Top Surgery

Hello friends and family (and those of of you referred here by our wonderful mutual connections),

 

I'm raising money to help my friend Mitch pay for chest masculinization surgery, a prohibitive expense for someone with no health insurance or family support who has to work several jobs to make ends meet.

 

Let me tell you a bit about Mitch. He was born in a small, conservative town in Nebraska in the early 1970s. His family were Jehovah's Witnesses, a religion that discriminates heavily against LGBTQ+ people. Mitch knew at a very young age that he was a boy. In fact, he assumed he was - until being told otherwise.

 

"I was six when I was told by my mom that I was a girl," he says. "It was while outside playing football with my brother. I was on the skins team...no shirt on, and a group of guys in a car whistled at us. I went inside explaining to my mom that there were guys outside like Liberace, the only known gay man at that time. I thought these guys were attracted to boys. It was then that my mom informed me that I was a girl. My response? I am Superman, Batman, the Fonz! My mom insisted that day that I was a girl. That never ever registered."

Mitch's family would take him in for blood tests every month throughout his childhood. They told him it was because he was diabetic. Much later, he found out that was a lie; the real reason for the blood tests was to keep an eye on his hormone levels.

 

You see, Mitch had been born intersex, with XXY chromosomes. He suspects, but doesn't know for sure, that his male genitalia was surgically removed as an infant. This has been the standard medical practice for decades when intersex babies are born, and it's horrific. The child, regardless of their chromosomal make-up, is forced into a female-assigned life, through genital mutilation and hormone therapy - typically without the child's knowledge or consent.

 

By the time Mitch was ten years old, the monthly blood tests were showing testosterone levels that the family's doctors apparently weren't comfortable with, so they began injecting Mitch with estrogen to feminize his body as it began entering puberty. The shots, though he didn't know what they were at the time, caused terrible crying fits and made him immediately start growing breasts. He didn't know what was happening to him, but he knew he hated it.

 

By age 15, Mitch had come out as gay. He was a person in a body with breasts, and even though he still felt like a boy, the world saw him as as girl. He was attracted to girls, so the label "gay" was the only one that seemed to fit.

 

"At that time there were no other words for it," he says. "I was of the mindset that I was a man trapped inside of a woman’s body."

 

Mitch's stepfather, who raised him, had always been physically abusive towards him, particularly when faced with Mitch's refusal to embody the female gender. Over the course of Mitch's childhood, his stepfather broke his nose five times, broke ribs, chipped his teeth, and left bruises all over his body. Beatings were a normal part of his life.

 

When his stepfather found out that Mitch identified as gay, he delivered the worst beating to date and kicked his teenage stepchild out of the house. Mitch's mother either wouldn't or couldn't do anything to stop it.

 

Again, Mitch was just 15 years old.

 

He got by with the help of his high school girlfriend's father, who gave him a job working night shifts as a janitor and allowed him to rent a basement room in the family's house. He didn't have much time for sleep, but this allowed Mitch to graduate from high school.

 

As an adult, Mitch identified as a dyke, which in his circles at the time meant a lesbian who was really more like a man - a "boy girl," as he put it. Butch lesbian culture allowed him to have a place in society where he could at least be himself, even if everyone still called him a she. It wasn't until trans rights became a visible part of the mainstream cultural conversation, around 2005, that he even had a word for what he was.

 

He spent several decades working his way up the ranks of the restaurant scene in Nebraska, eventually becoming a chef for a top restaurant. Then, in 2007, he slipped on a slick kitchen floor and broke his back, an injury that is sending shock waves through Mitch's existence to this day.

 

Because of the residual pain from the accident, as well as the knowledge that another trauma like that could leave him paralyzed for life, Mitch can no longer work as a chef, the only profession he has more than entry-level experience at. His savings were wiped out in his divorce from his first wife, a split he attributes to his lack of ability to bring in income after his accident.

 

He now works primarily as a delivery driver for several apps, and secondarily as a personal caregiver for elderly and unwell patients. The nature of his work means that the cost of health insurance is more than he can safely afford, but he makes too much to qualify for Medicaid.

 

He has exhausted every option to get financial assistance to cover his top surgery, with all the available options coming up short or forcing him to go to a doctor he doesn't feel safe with.

 

That's where we come in, folks. Direct assistance is one way that we normal people can subvert the broken systems we find ourselves in and do some real good for real people who need it.

 

I asked Mitch how top surgery would impact his life, and he said, "It would change everything. It would allow me to be seen by the world as the man I've always been."

 

He has spent his life being harassed by bigots on the street and enduring strange looks and nasty comments in women's bathrooms. He's even been followed by men who thought he was going into the women's bathroom to harass women, only to be ridiculed and verbally assaulted when they saw his chest. He has been discriminated against when looking for work, and to protect himself, he sticks to work that allows him the bare minimum of human interaction with coworkers. He has a very small social circle of accepting friends, but the rest of the world seems to have a hard time recognizing his humanity.

 

Not being able to afford top surgery has held Mitch back in every way imaginable, and even though he's made the best of things and refuses to see himself as a victim, it's NOT okay.

 

Help me raise the money to pay for the surgery (~$11,500) and cover living expenses during his recovery (~$3,500), and we can permanently change the life of a person who deserves a fairer shot than what he's been given.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to read all this, and for your generous donations. You're directly impacting someone's life in the most transformative way imaginable, and you forever have my gratitude and appreciation.

 

Warmly,

Samia