The government is considering an application from the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons to make the taxpayer fund the mutilation of perfectly healthy body parts.

They are wanting Medicare to cover double mastectomies, even when there is nothing wrong with the breast tissue, and castration on perfectly healthy males.

These are very serious surgeries with major risks and are being requested by people confused about their gender.

These surgeries will never change the recipient’s sex or deal with the underlying issues.

The Orwellian language employed by The Age in this news article is staggering. Instead of using accurate terminology such as mastectomies and castration, they are using euphemisms to soften the reality of harmful surgeries being done on perfectly healthy bodies.

Gender-affirming procedures such as chest surgery and genital reconfiguration would be subsidised by Medicare under a push to improve mental health and quality of life for transgender people.

If gender and sex are not the same thing – as gender ideologues insist – why are they going to such great lengths to mimic the sex of who they wish they were but can never be?

It estimated there would be 64,101 transgender people who were born male and 64,044 transgender people who were born female who could be candidates for the procedures in Australia.

The procedures pitched for Medicare coverage include feminising chest surgery, which may involve inserting prosthetics or fat grafts, and masculinising chest surgery, which may or may not require repositioning nipples.

There are also proposed Medicare items for genital reconfiguration surgery, which could involve removing genitals or constructing a neo-penis or neo-vagina, as well as feminising or masculinising facial surgery and voice surgery.

All of these procedures are about mimicking the opposite sex. Not one of them will succeed in making a person become the opposite sex. It is cruel to lie to people. It is cruel to perform irreversible procedures on people that will render them sterile, unable to achieve sexual function and still not deal with the psychological issues that cause people to reject reality in the first place.