Help Victor Get Top Surgery
Donation protected
My name is Victor Manuel Markhoff. I’m 20 years old. I’m a transgender man, and I need your help to get rid of my chest.
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I can remember the day my chest first started coming in. I was 10 years old, and no one had given me the puberty talk. When I came up to my parents to ask why my chest was getting sore, they threw me in front of the family doctor.
“You’re becoming a woman!” he told me. “You’re growing breasts!”
I felt so crushed. Me? Breasts? That couldn’t be. That was a woman problem. Besides, I loved being shirtless. I loved my flat chest. I often went around the house shirtless. I swam with just pants. I was completely crushed.
Still, I collected myself. Yes, this was an unexpected deviation of my life plan, I thought. But surely, this was a temporary predicament.
I responded, in all earnestness, “When do they go away?”
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That was 10 years ago. I’ve lived half of my life with these things attached to me. Half of my life with these blobs of fat I hate so much. I didn’t always have the words to understand or explain why my chest was so uncomfortable for me. In my high school years, I found out that some people are transgender; this means that their gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth.
Soon after, I learned that the way I felt about my breasts, among other parts of my body, is called gender dysphoria—distress experienced because my gender assigned at birth does not match my true gender. The only way to relieve dysphoria is to transition—to affirm your gender by accepting yourself and pursuing changes.
One of the ways I’ve alleviated my chest dysphoria is by wearing something called a binder. Binders are amazing because they compress your chest to make it look flat. I remember the first time I tried on a binder, in early 2017, on a late night journey to a sex shop (sex shops are surprisingly trans friendly!). I broke out into sobs when I looked in the mirror and, for the first time since I was 10 years old, saw my chest.
Unfortunately, binders also happen to suck. There is no safe way to bind, only safer ways (although it’s still safer than killing yourself from your dysphoria). They’re tight. You have to keep good posture or you risk bruising your ribs, hurting your back, and causing fluid buildup in your lungs. You can’t lay down. You have to change the way you breathe to get enough air. And you’re not supposed to bind more than 8 hours a day.
There are ways to change your body on a more biological level to affirm your gender. In July of 2017, I started taking testosterone to give my body the secondary sex characteristics that matched my male gender. My voice dropped, I grew more body hair, and my body fat redistributed to create a more masculine appearance, among other things. Unfortunately, testosterone can’t get rid of breasts if they’re already there.
In order to alleviate my chest dysphoria, I need to get a double mastectomy—or, as we in the trans community refer to it, Top Surgery. Because even the safest binder causes damage given enough time, and because chest dysphoria simply can’t go away without it, top surgery is medically necessary.
My body has presented me with additional challenges in getting my top surgery. I have a rare connective tissue disorder condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). EDS can cause not only abnormal scarring, but also many different types of surgical complications. I had to be very thorough in choosing my surgeon; having a surgeon with knowledge and experience with EDS patients is absolutely crucial for my health and safety.
I’ve chosen Dr. Scott Mosser in San Francisco, because he has experience with patients with EDS. I’ve done a lot of research and consulted with many doctors, and I believe him to be the best choice for aesthetics, general patient-doctor relations, and my health.
Because he is out of state, he is not covered by my insurance. And unfortunately, he’s expensive. I have some savings, which I am using for a portion of the surgery costs, lodging, flights, the surgery deposit, and other miscellaneous travel costs. The number I have on my go fund me is the cost of my surgery minus the deposit I already paid. That's $9,050.
The full cost of my surgery is due on December 16, which is soon.
I’ve been putting off creating this GoFundMe because, in order to truly communicate how much I need your help, I need to include details of a very personal and painful situation I’ve been in for the last year. Speaking out may be terrifying, but I need to so I can live my life to my fullest potential.
I came out as transgender in 2017, and to put a long story very, very short, it didn’t go well. As it became increasingly clear that my household was not a safe place to transition, I had no choice but to leave. Before I turned 19, I found myself without financial or medical support, and without a home.
To put it bluntly, this surgery is expensive. I’ve struggled greatly financially over the past year. At times, I haven’t been able to afford to eat. I’ve come within hours of being on the streets. At one point, I was couch surfing. At my worst, I slept in a Walmart parking lot. I made incredible sacrifices to scrap together the savings I have, and I’m incredibly proud of myself for that. I wish that I could say that I can do it all myself, but I can’t. I’m not superman.
My surgery is scheduled in early January 2019, and I have every intention of being there. I need your help. Anything you can spare would mean the world to me.
In 2008, a 10 year old boy seemingly doomed with a life sentence of the wrong body asked when his breasts would go away. Today, please help me answer the question.
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I can remember the day my chest first started coming in. I was 10 years old, and no one had given me the puberty talk. When I came up to my parents to ask why my chest was getting sore, they threw me in front of the family doctor.
“You’re becoming a woman!” he told me. “You’re growing breasts!”
I felt so crushed. Me? Breasts? That couldn’t be. That was a woman problem. Besides, I loved being shirtless. I loved my flat chest. I often went around the house shirtless. I swam with just pants. I was completely crushed.
Still, I collected myself. Yes, this was an unexpected deviation of my life plan, I thought. But surely, this was a temporary predicament.
I responded, in all earnestness, “When do they go away?”
-------------------------------------------------------------------
That was 10 years ago. I’ve lived half of my life with these things attached to me. Half of my life with these blobs of fat I hate so much. I didn’t always have the words to understand or explain why my chest was so uncomfortable for me. In my high school years, I found out that some people are transgender; this means that their gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth.
Soon after, I learned that the way I felt about my breasts, among other parts of my body, is called gender dysphoria—distress experienced because my gender assigned at birth does not match my true gender. The only way to relieve dysphoria is to transition—to affirm your gender by accepting yourself and pursuing changes.
One of the ways I’ve alleviated my chest dysphoria is by wearing something called a binder. Binders are amazing because they compress your chest to make it look flat. I remember the first time I tried on a binder, in early 2017, on a late night journey to a sex shop (sex shops are surprisingly trans friendly!). I broke out into sobs when I looked in the mirror and, for the first time since I was 10 years old, saw my chest.
Unfortunately, binders also happen to suck. There is no safe way to bind, only safer ways (although it’s still safer than killing yourself from your dysphoria). They’re tight. You have to keep good posture or you risk bruising your ribs, hurting your back, and causing fluid buildup in your lungs. You can’t lay down. You have to change the way you breathe to get enough air. And you’re not supposed to bind more than 8 hours a day.
There are ways to change your body on a more biological level to affirm your gender. In July of 2017, I started taking testosterone to give my body the secondary sex characteristics that matched my male gender. My voice dropped, I grew more body hair, and my body fat redistributed to create a more masculine appearance, among other things. Unfortunately, testosterone can’t get rid of breasts if they’re already there.
In order to alleviate my chest dysphoria, I need to get a double mastectomy—or, as we in the trans community refer to it, Top Surgery. Because even the safest binder causes damage given enough time, and because chest dysphoria simply can’t go away without it, top surgery is medically necessary.
My body has presented me with additional challenges in getting my top surgery. I have a rare connective tissue disorder condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS). EDS can cause not only abnormal scarring, but also many different types of surgical complications. I had to be very thorough in choosing my surgeon; having a surgeon with knowledge and experience with EDS patients is absolutely crucial for my health and safety.
I’ve chosen Dr. Scott Mosser in San Francisco, because he has experience with patients with EDS. I’ve done a lot of research and consulted with many doctors, and I believe him to be the best choice for aesthetics, general patient-doctor relations, and my health.
Because he is out of state, he is not covered by my insurance. And unfortunately, he’s expensive. I have some savings, which I am using for a portion of the surgery costs, lodging, flights, the surgery deposit, and other miscellaneous travel costs. The number I have on my go fund me is the cost of my surgery minus the deposit I already paid. That's $9,050.
The full cost of my surgery is due on December 16, which is soon.
I’ve been putting off creating this GoFundMe because, in order to truly communicate how much I need your help, I need to include details of a very personal and painful situation I’ve been in for the last year. Speaking out may be terrifying, but I need to so I can live my life to my fullest potential.
I came out as transgender in 2017, and to put a long story very, very short, it didn’t go well. As it became increasingly clear that my household was not a safe place to transition, I had no choice but to leave. Before I turned 19, I found myself without financial or medical support, and without a home.
To put it bluntly, this surgery is expensive. I’ve struggled greatly financially over the past year. At times, I haven’t been able to afford to eat. I’ve come within hours of being on the streets. At one point, I was couch surfing. At my worst, I slept in a Walmart parking lot. I made incredible sacrifices to scrap together the savings I have, and I’m incredibly proud of myself for that. I wish that I could say that I can do it all myself, but I can’t. I’m not superman.
My surgery is scheduled in early January 2019, and I have every intention of being there. I need your help. Anything you can spare would mean the world to me.
In 2008, a 10 year old boy seemingly doomed with a life sentence of the wrong body asked when his breasts would go away. Today, please help me answer the question.
Organizer
Victor Markhoff
Organizer
New York, NY