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Dear Legislators, Gender Transitions Are Not One-Size-Fits-All

The Establishment
The Establishment
Published in
9 min readApr 8, 2017

By Lonna Dawson

Monique Fontaine. (Photo credit: Jessica Bal)

This story originally appeared on Narratively, a digital publication and creative studio focused on ordinary people with extraordinary stories — get thee to more amazing tales on the new face of adoptive parents, a series on paperless people, and clandestine love.

As laws change, legislators must recognize that not all trans people want the same thing.

NNew York State’s new law requiring coverage of gender reassignment surgery sounded like a game changer. The problem: not all trans people want the same thing.

Monique Fontaine eyes her cellphone screen as she records a video from Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in New York City. Flanked by cords and containers and a copious amount of beige, she and her doctor have agreed to enlarge her breasts, so she can look more feminine, from a B cup to a C cup, with implants surgically placed above the pectoralis muscle and filled with 425cc’s of saline. It’s not her first such procedure, but it is the first one performed in a medical facility, a far departure from the other locations — a Times Square hotel room, someone’s living room in Brooklyn — where she’s had work done before. “See ya on the flip side,” Fontaine says to her social media followers…

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The Establishment
The Establishment

Published in The Establishment

The archives of culture + politics site, The Establishment. Media funded and founded by women — Nikki Gloudeman, Kelley Calkins and Katie Tandy with Ijeoma Oluo, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jessica Sutherland. The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice.

The Establishment
The Establishment

Written by The Establishment

The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice. Media funded & run by women; new content daily.