The nonbinary identity has opened a new market for carving up bodies in even more surreal and stunning ways than what has already become the insane norm. Expressing a nonbinary identity as a woman who is neither yin nor yang somehow now includes the elimination of nipples. (It could easily justify keeping them.) The resulting nipple-free look disturbingly departs from biological necessities.

Procreation, a huge driving force in many women’s lives, is overlooked in the clinician’s exclusive focus on what is aesthetically desired to appease the nonbinary, which exists somewhere outside the categories of male and female. Are nonbinaries born in the wrong body? And what is the right body they belong in? Is this like tall people trapped in short bodies? I mean, there’s no nonbinary knee or nonbinary nipple.

Enter predatory “yeet the teets” Dr. Sidhbh (unironically pronounced “scythe”) Gallagher, who features herself dancing to pop music on TikTok or appreciatively lip smacking while commenting on her post-op patients’ scars. An Irish immigrant who came here to train for innovative genital surgeries, Gallagher epitomizes the can-do attitude of the archetypal American business leader. 

A “modern day Mengele” by her own admission, Gallagher has described the genital procedures she performs as “Frankenstein surgeries.” She opted for private practice rather than hospital affiliation, where medical oversight and peer expectations would view her social media activity and patient abandonment negatively.

Having gone freelance, Gallagher is one of a handful of American doctors who perform high-risk genital surgeries that are not approved anywhere else. For instance, overweight individuals who are ruled out as candidates can book with Gallagher. But this comes with clear costs. Doing things like having regular follow up appointments does not appear to be Gallagher’s strong suit. Some patients report being met with denial, callously joked with and told to self-treat a bursting incision causing hematoma resulting in blood clots and deadly infection.

Offering nonbinary procedures and suggesting patients book their Miami hotel room in time for beachside fun, Gallagher carries no malpractice insurance. Some have asked why she left her practice to move to Miami, but her trail of injured patients and the state’s insurance loophole no doubt entered into the calculus, as an attorney has speculated.

TikTok and Gallagher’s constant self-promotion unfortunately has helped put America on the map for innovative nonbinary “affirmations.”

The nonbinary category itself is pure innovation, and as a scalable campaign, nonbinary is nonpareil. In America, where license can sneak by as “freedom,” nonbinary surgeries may seem freeing because they go beyond what is seen in nature and toward what trends on the Internet. Nothing is off limits means anything is possible: it’s the ultimate in “affirmation.”

Although the World Professional Association for Transgender Health fails to suggest the possibility, surgeons like Gallagher might not be affirming nonbinary at all. It takes a bit of reflection—admittedly asking a lot of WPATH—to understand how sex abuse survivors and others experiencing trauma might seek to become nonbinary.

Nonbinary has only one rule: to confuse sex classification. No other criterion holds. Even gender dysphoria is optional. For girls, nonbinary is the candy cigarette of the gender industry. Strategically claiming a nonbinary identity can seem a safe harbor away from medicalization; in actuality, nonbinary probably acts more often as a temporary safe zone eventually eroded as the terms of gender shift again. For the moment, nonbinary can feel safe since it can be variously construed according to personal preferences, with the sole caveat that it precludes marking identity as male or female on polls.

Compared to recent polling, this bar graph, which is adapted from Twenge J.M. (2023) Generations, looks at earlier data collected between 2021 and 2022. Stats for Gender posted it with the comment: “Among US adults, Gen-Z women are the most likely to identify as trans or non-binary.” Many view nonbinary identity as primarily a female phenomenon.

Recent estimates are that nonbinary represents more than one million Americans, most of whom are under 30 and female, and that number is rising. The nonbinary concept elevates nonconformity as an indeterminate identity—and that identity appears to be alive and morphing. Nonbinary can be viewed as Trans 2.0, upgraded to amplify identity in a new, edgier way.

For females, evidence of self-destructive impulses such as cutting can accompany the surgical self-erasure of the sexed body. For males, nonbinary may not require any surgery according to pundit Arielle Scarcella. Who knows? One small study showed nonbinary males receiving hormonal treatments; whereas nonbinary females sought surgical interventions. It’s not like anyone is fully keeping score, especially when nonbinary takes on an opportunistic contagion aspect as a “cope,” a way to “fit in” without having to maintain a totally male persona.

It is not a minor issue that the term “nonbinary” distorts empirical reality and confuses human relations. Nonbinary is not a visible thing—why eventually surgeries may feel essential to establish the feeling. In a 2022 study WPATH member Avery Ford, together with colleagues, precisely delineated reported aesthetic preferences in surgical modifications for nonbinary females, concluding, “Nonbinary patients seeking chest masculinization prefer fuller chests with larger, sensitive NAC [nipple placement / Nipple areolar complex] located closer to the chest meridian compared to transgender patients.” Scholarship in this area takes the form of market research.

A Trail of Sexual Dysfunction

While the demand for novelty surgeries may be generated by anything from the desire to stand out to self-hatred, they come with complications, even according to WPATH surgeons. They complain of improper and inadequate training inherent in the American consumer-led affirmation model of treatment. In a 20 year review study, the complication rate was 44  percent, half of which were considered serious. Additional surgeries, called “revisions,” were required in 17 percent of the cases. The already risky practice of genital surgeries can only be made more perilous by the further innovations brought to you by nonbinary.

Violating the sexed body to produce a facsimile of the opposite sex, typical genital procedures cannot fulfill nonbinary aspirations.

Nullification is a genital reconfiguration billed as a nonbinary surgical option. For women, nullification may entail a full hysterectomy accompanied by a vaginectomy—a partial or complete surgical excision of the vagina—traditionally done for cancer patients exclusively. Then the labia can be joined by sutures, resembling the universally condemned act of female genital mutilation, or the destruction of a woman’s genitalia for non-medical reasons. These horrendous surgical manipulations can involve skin grafts as well as reconnecting complicated blood vessels and nerve networks. Only an opening to urinate remains. However, patients can end up with serious bladder injuries and infections, making their ability to urinate painful or otherwise difficult.

Imagine the drafters of the once seemingly legitimate WPATH pausing before deciding to include nonbinary as requiring surgery on demand—I know it’s hard to imagine—but then galloping forward unbridled. After all, their latest “standards” included eunuchs, so they are not overly troubled by the possibility of spurring an uptick in surgeries inspired by porn addictions. In his coverage of these horrors, one pundit reminds his viewers that WPATH President Dr. Marci Bowers is famous for peering down at his celebrity patient Jazz Jennings, comparing him to a porn star.

Self-described kink therapist Laura Jacobs, who helped draft the WPATH standards, sounds like a pitchman for innovative surgeries. Investigations by Reduxx and other pro-woman outlets reveal Jacobs, who talks about not knowing his own gender, is openly fetishistic. Jacobs favors genitals that resemble flowers or abstract sculptures as harbingers of a transhumanist future. In his response, JP Sears emphasizes Jacobs’s view of genitals as “multidimensional” and “amorphic,” revealing a deeply confused individual who is taking a lead role as a gender educator. Gender theorizing is here disclosed as mere paraphilia.

Jacobs’s bizarre overconfidence in technology is also expressed by fellow WPATH member Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy. A surgeon responsible for regularly performing double mastectomies on the healthy breasts of gender-confused girls, Olson-Kennedy likewise displays callous, magical thinking with regard to the possibility of future regret on the part of girls as young as 13, saying that girls she has operated on can simply “go and get” breast implants.

Gender medicine has continually shifted, not just by utilizing robotic technology, but by affirming “identities” rather than gender based on sex. Seemingly made to order for the American approach to identity struggles, medicalizing nonbinary identities requires progressively innovative surgeries for these fantastical identities to be realized. However, continued support of gender medicine is increasingly untenable, and it’s not just because of WPATH’s clear lunacy. Anyone even taking a quick glimpse into the abyss of sexual lobotomy—for that is what these surgeries amount to—is never the same. And the peculiarly American embrace of all things nonbinary illustrates the point.