Trans veteran Natalie Rose Kastner, a combat engineer in the Army from 2006 to 2008 who is now disabled, told The Daily Beast of attempting an at-home surgery herself, having sought in vain to access gender confirmation surgery from the VA and via her civilian health insurance.
On March 5, 2022, Kastner—feeling an overwhelming sense of gender dysphoria—took a paring knife and pair of scissors, went to her bathroom, and cut her right testicle off, without anesthesia or medical training.
“I cut a tendon and artery, and blood hit the wall. The thing that crossed my mind was, ‘Oh, I cut the artery,’” Kastner told The Daily Beast. “I cleaned my bathroom up, and went back to bed. My cat, Gigi, woke me up, and by doing so saved me. I reached down there, pulled back my hand, and there was blood all over it. I went back to the bathroom and saw the toilet paper I had used to clot the wound had not done that. I went down to my car to drive myself to the ER around the corner. The nearest VA hospital was over an hour away. If I’d driven there, I would have died somewhere along that road.”
“Everyone acknowledges the high suicide rates for trans veterans,” Kastner said. “I can’t help but think how many of those were not suicides. How many of those were just another transgender woman like myself, or a transgender male, who just wanted to fix their bodies? To be clear, I did not walk into that bathroom wanting to end my life. I have two beautiful children, and an ex-wife who at that time I was a caregiver for. I was not attempting suicide. I was attempting to fix my body.”
“The surgeries we are asking the VA to provide are life-saving surgeries,” Kastner said. “If I had been able to receive it, or have the hope of receiving one of those surgeries, I would not have done that. I can only imagine how many transgender veterans out there have gone to the same lengths as I have and not been so lucky.”
If testes do not define gender, then how does removing them confirm gender?
“ If testes do not define gender, then how does removing them confirm gender?”
That is the perfect question to something that has no answer for these people.