I am not a fan of pumping parties much less the pumping procedures, but that's on y'all if you peeps want to trade beauty now for health problems in middle and old age or die to look like Nicki Minaj or Kim Kardashian.
Some of the people doing the pumping are transwomen themselves.
Had to shake my head about the latest instance of pumping gone bad and a transwoman making the news because of it. After a year on the run, Oneal R. Morris was finally caught, arrested and charged with practicing medicine without a license with serious bodily injury.
The incident happened in May 2010 with an unidentified woman paying $700 to have Morris 'pump' her behind so that she could have a curvier body in order to work at a nightclub. Morris was referred to the woman in question by a friend.
The 30 year old Morris used tubing to inject the woman at several spots in her buttocks with a pumping cocktail comprised of cement, mineral oil and flat tire sealant.
The woman went to two South Florida hospitals after experiencing severe abdominal pain and infected sores at the pumping sites on her buttocks accompanied by flu like symptoms but was too embarrassed to tell the medical personnel at those hospitals what she'd done.
Finally after being taken by her mother to a hospital on Florida's west coast, the medical staff there pressed the woman for information that they reported to the state Department of Health.
Florida has been cracking down on the pumpers after a publicized wave of people doing pumping back in the early 2k's. One well publicized incident led to the 2001 death of a 53 year old cis woman named Vera Lawrence and a subsequent toughening of Florida laws against the practice.
But pumping is so lucrative and sought after that Donnie 'Viva' Hendrix, the person convicted along with her then lover Mark Hawkins in the Lawrence case, after being released from prison in November 2005 moved to North Florida, got back in the pumping business and was busted again in 2009.
Morris is out on bail as the authorities look for the other people that were pumped. The woman in question has paid far more than the $700 dollars for the initial procedure. In addition to the surgeries to reverse the procedure, she's racked up medical bills and is dealing with the pain caused by it.
One of the issues I don't talk about enough is the prevalence of pumping amongst POC transwomen. It's a subject that is guaranteed to start a vigorous discussion amongst us because the trans women who have resorted to it get defensive about pumping when we talk about the people who weren't so lucky.
Talking about the risks of pumping is not by extension those of us broaching the subject engaging in making moral judgments about their choice to do whatever they wish with their bodies.
While its a major issue amongst POC transwomen, our cis sisters are also getting pumped too and paying the price.
In February 20 year old college student Claudia Aderotimi flew across the Pond from London along with two friends to Philadelphia to get butt enhancement via silicone injections. She and her friends had done some treatments before with no complications but on this trip something went horribly wrong. Twelve hours after being injected on February 7 at a Philly hotel near the airport, Aderotimi was complaining of chest pains, struggling to breathe and died in a local hospital.
The case got even more ironic because transwoman Padge Victoria Windslowe, a music artist who goes by the name of Black Madam, is considered a person of interest in this case. She is accused of being the person who administered the fatal injections and is facing 10 years in prison if arrested, proven guilty, and sentenced for involuntary manslaughter..
The Aderotimi case is similar to what happened in 2001 to Vera Lawrence in Miami, another ciswoman who died after a silicone pumping injection gone wrong.
What's making me ponder this subject again is a recent New York Times article that chronicled the story of transwoman Zaira Quispe who is now dealing with the medical consequences due to the pumping she did from 1989-2000 to make herself look femme and curvy.
It also interviewed 'S', a transwoman who is making a nice living as one of the people doing the pumping.
Whatever your opinions about pumping be they pro or con, pumping is basically the fast, low cost route to a feminine body that gives you the quick feminization results now. Some people who have pumped claimed they have done so with no ill effects, but I'd like to check back in with those same people when they reach AARP membership card age and see if they're saying the same thing they're espousing right now..
The one certainty about silicone pumping is that you will pay dearly for it either sooner or later. Some people have paid the ultimate price like Claudia by forfeiting their lives because a pumping procedure went horribly wrong. Others find out later that the pumping shot they shared with one of their homegirls resulted in them contracting HIV.
Silicone also has a tendency to migrate from the place it was initially placed, and if the pumpers used the industrial type that's used for caulking your bathtub instead of the medical grade, the industrial type contains ammonia and other chemicals that wreak havoc on body tissue and will cause you medical issues as you age.
I understand why people do it. Trans women want to look as femme as possible, and in many cases they impatiently wanted it yesterday after being stuck in a body they didn't feel comfortable in.
I've felt their pain because I was just as impatient in the early stages as well. But my overriding concern was to do it safely, so I chilled out and let my hormone regimen work its magic.
Many transwomen of color don't have the finances to be able to afford plastic surgery work that can cost upwards of $70-100K. We transwomen also have it in the back of our minds that blending in
as seamlessly as possible with the cis femme population equals less
drama in our lives and ratchets down the level of violence we face for
being who we are.
We have it in the back of our minds that it's either look femme or die None of us wants to be on that depressingly long list of names read at the next TDOR ceremony and will do whatever it takes to ensure that when it comes to looking the part, we are as close to indistinguishable from our cis sisters as possible..
But think for a moment about your mom, sisters, aunts,
cis female friends, cis females you admire and other female relatives you are surrounded with in your life.
When they started morphing into their adult bodies it was approximately a
decade long process. It wasn't akin to one morning they were in their
prepubescent phase and the next day they had their adult feminine
curves. It took time for them to get adjusted to their body and the
changes and remember they had the encouragement of society and their families while doing so.
I have to agree with what Cydne Kimbrough said in a discussion we were having on my FB page concerning the New York Times article:
When will we learn that transitioning is a slow and beautiful process when you allow your body the chance to mature into it.
Amen sis. Some of our sisters are aware of that, some aren't. We transwomen will have to learn and accept the fact that our transitions at the start are in a sense a second puberty that begins our slow and beautiful evolution into womanhood.
But the impatience of youth, desperation and other factors take them down the pumping road for the quick fix beauty now that they'll pay dearly for later..
I've written about the dangers of silicone more than a few times on this blog and posted articles about what has happened to the girls who 'pump'.
It's an issue I haven't covered as much this year and I really should be doing so more frequently.
I know we transwomen want to look as feminine as possible and in some cases we want it to happen like yesterday once we make the decision to transition .
But beauty is not worth dying for , causing permanent long term damage to yourself or risking contracting HIV from sharing needles either because you want to look 'fishy' now instead of letting hormones do the job over time. Medical costs are also a factor as well as the impatience one in sending low income transwomen of color scurrying off to pumping parties.
Here's a film that also drives that point home called 'Silicone Me, Please' that talks about the dangers of silicone pumping.
