Cisgender Affirming Surgeries
The gender binary hurts everyone, but is breaking bones a cure?
Last week, BuzzFeed posted an article that went viral, about men who are shorter than average stature getting surgery to increase their height. The limb-lengthening procedure involves deliberately breaking bones in the patient’s legs.
I had heard about surgeries like this for people who are much shorter than average, who face practical obstacles in a society that is not designed to accommodate short adults. As the BuzzFeed article points out, the surgery has also been used to correct limbs of mismatched length. But I had not heard of people who are 5' 6" or taller pursuing leg lengthening as an elective, cosmetic surgery.
Men shorter than the current US-American average height of 5' 9" are frequently mocked and rejected as romantic or sexual partners. Especially as I’ve always been attracted to shorter men, I consider these judgments ridiculous and offensive, but I can’t deny that they occur. Under binary gender expectations, men are expected to be tall, and women short, and…
