Pumping is often turned to when licensed medicine isn't accessible - typically because of a combination of social, financial and discriminatory barriers in health care. There's a Gordian knot of factors that contribute to why some trans women get silicone injections. "Allowed me to address my deep mental health issues with gender dysphoria." "Having access to an illegal treatment allowed me to have the body that I saw in my mind," Corado says. (Linguistically, the word is an inversion of "euphoria," meant to capture the same powerful emotional experience but on a negative scale.) Being unable to address dysphoria is linked with increased risk of mental health problems and suicide. While cisgender people also get silicone injections, pumping in trans communities is largely done to help address gender dysphoria - a community-preferred term for the anguish of feeling a disconnect between the sex a doctor determined for you at birth and the gender you truly feel you are. "Pumping" refers to a kind of underground plastic surgery. "And the difference between them today and us before is that we didn't have options." "I think the is not: 'Can we stop it?' It's: 'Can we give people options?' "There are people who are still getting it done," Corado says. They help people find housing, navigate immigration services or get the medical care they need.īut more than that, the women who run Casa Ruby are a lifeline for the youth in their community, an adoptive network of aunts who help young people avoid the tough lessons they had to face on their own - including the complications that come with pumping. Her organization is led almost entirely by black and brown trans women. She's 49 now, an age she'd never imagined she would reach. Nearly two decades later, Corado is sharing her story on a couch at Casa Ruby, the organization she founded to help queer and trans people around the greater D.C. And Corado found herself thinking, "You know what? Maybe I won't die." The people who had gotten pumped seemed fine. " 'And if they die - I'm not getting a butt,' " she laughs. "So I'm thinking to myself: 'Well, I'm gonna give it a few years,' " she remembers. Everyone in Corado's circle, it seemed, was getting it done. "Pumping parties" began making their way down from New York to Washington. Meeting those standards can be a boon to a trans woman's self-esteem breaking them can put a target on her back.īut then the first talk of "pumping" slipped into her circles - a procedure where someone will, for much cheaper than a licensed surgeon, inject you with silicone. She says it was like her butt was "erasing." At the same time, she was already contending with the pressures of conventional beauty standards. I can survive the intolerance.' "īecause of complications from her HIV medication, she developed a condition that affects how the body stores and distributes fat tissue. "So a part of me was like, 'Well, I survived bullets. Corado quickly got involved in community activism - while also navigating both her transition and learning she was HIV-positive.
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