Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers
Some walls are fortresses. Each week, new rules, new restrictions, new barriers that make them higher and harder to climb. Some walls need a hero—someone to shatter their faulty logic and malign rigidity. In this episode of The Joy Tuck Club we have a chat with exactly that kind of person.
Dr. Ioannis Ntanos is a surgeon specializing in gender-affirming care, specifically FTM top surgery, operating in London and Athens. He has performed over 980 such surgeries, and is a somewhat unusual counterpoint to the more prescriptive physicians through his emphasis on patient autonomy and shared decision-making.
He is an educator, launching masterclasses and contributing to medical texts, but as you’ll hear in this discussion, he also has a Masters in Ethics and Law, which informs his approach to allyship, and he wields it with surgical precision, scything through the arguments of those opposing gender affirming care. We can only wish there were more Ioannis’ in the world, but alas, there is only one.
Ioannis has a few very important points for anyone contemplating any gender affirming surgery, and it begins with finding a surgeon who is also an ally foremost, and one who won’t put your desired outcome at risk. He says a consultation must always be a negotiation between what is wanted and what is possible. Gatekeeping should never play a part.
But as you can imagine from someone who is also somewhat of a polymath, he has many interesting things to say about many things. He leaves on a poetic note, with the full text printed below.
We hope you enjoy, and if you wish to get in touch with Ioannis, please visit his website at https://www.ioannisntanos.com/ and tune into The Top Surgery Podcast on Spotify.
Walls
by C. P. Cavafy
1863 – 1933
translated from the modern Greek by John Cavafy
Without reflection, without mercy, without shame,they built strong walls and high, and compassed me about.
And here I sit now and consider and despair.
It wears away my heart and brain, this evil fate:I had outside so many things to terminate.
Oh! why when they were building could I not beware!
But never a sound of building, never an echo came.Insensibly they drew the world and shut me out.
—Visit The Joy Tuck Club online at redandfreckles.com and learn more about us and our upcoming book, How To Transition. You can also find red+freckles (Rachel & Phoebe) at:
Instagram: @twodamptransThreads: @twodamptransBluesky: @twodamptrans.bsky.socialTikTok: @twodamptransYouTube: @TwoDampTransSpotify: The Joy Tuck ClubApple: The Joy Tuck Club
The Joy Tuck Club is written, produced, and edited by red+freckles, of Two Damp Trans Ltd, UK.