How I got a hysterectomy at 24

If you need to get around the paywall, you can read this story here.

Long before I knew I was trans, I knew that the possession of a uterus was incompatible with my quality of life. I also knew, deep down, that this was something positivity, destigmatization, or even plain body neutrality couldn’t fix.

I don’t think you have to be trans — or even in terrible health — for this to be your reality. So I wanted to share what my hysterectomy experience was like as a 24 year-old, childfree “woman” — and how it changed my life unequivocally and almost instantly for the better, a whole four years before anything particularly dramatic about gender ever crossed my mind.

Early days

I was an unusually late-blooming child and still had no signs of menarche by age 15. In fact, it didn’t actually happen until I was 17, but anorexia happened at some point in between and may well have pushed the dreaded day out further.

At any rate, I grieved life before menstruation. The endless planning, the awful sensory sensations of the various fluids, the reminder that pregnancy could happen to my body — all of it was horrible.

Putting up with it

From my late teenage years to my early 20s, I resigned myself to reality and reveled in the various stints of anorexia relapse-induced respite I got from an otherwise unremarkable cycle. Though I understood myself to be a woman, hormonal birth control was a no-go (which…