Editor’s note: The image by Prims de Vos linked in the article below is very graphic.
(LifeSiteNews) — The World Press Photo Awards is an annual prize in which the jury chooses the most powerful journalistic photos for the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year. The photos are chosen for political purposes as well as technical brilliance; the top photo this year was of a 9-year-old child injured in Gaza, and the finalists included a photo of a group of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and a depiction of droughts in the Amazon.
But one of the European winners, a photo taken by Dutch photographer Prins de Vos, is truly horrifying. It depicts a young woman, identified as 21-year-old “Mika,” with two ugly red gashes across her chest spanning nearly from armpit to armpit. The vivid mastectomy scars are held together by pieces of tape.
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The photo recently went viral on X, posted by people who had the same instinctive reaction that I did: this is an injustice. A physically healthy young woman was badly mutilated, and this powerful but gut-wrenching photo revealed the results. But the intent of the photographer – and the jurors who chose it – was the opposite. For de Vos and those who selected the photograph as a winner, the real injustice depicted by this photo is the long wait times faced by gender-dysphoric young women seeking so-called sex change surgeries.
“Mika (21) has been waiting for 22 months for a first consultation at a gender clinic, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands,” the World Press Photo gallery website explains, identifying Mika as male. “Meanwhile, he has personally covered the costs of top surgery [double mastectomy] and hormone treatment. Mika finally had his first consultation in May 2024.” The site includes what is essentially an advert for sex change “treatments,” without a single mention of the fact that the medical consensus is moving steadily toward condemnation of such “treatments”:
Gender affirming care (supporting a person in being able to live as the gender they identify with), including psychological, medical, and surgical aspects, is key to the quality of life of trans and gender diverse individuals. Yet prolonged waits for first appointments for gender affirmation are a reality both in the Netherlands and globally. Waits are often due to systemic factors, such as increasing demand, limited resources, and complexity of care, but can also be due to discrimination or lack of awareness.
World Press Photos goes on to claim that the “toll on trans and gender diverse people’s wellbeing can be profound, causing frustration, isolation, and despair. Studies have shown that trans and gender diverse people are more likely to have mental health issues, such as anxiety, internalized stigma, and depression. Excessive waiting times for consultations, together with lengthy psychological assessments, means that people are at higher risk from the hazards of self-medicating with hormones, or have to bear the burden of seeking and paying for private care and surgery. In addition, trans people are more at risk of being victims of hate crimes during transition.”
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Prins de Vos, predictably, appears to be as much of an activist as a photographer, going by the pronouns “they/them” and stating that his work “touches on themes such as intimacy, sexuality, and gender.” De Vos’s photo, however, is something of a Rorschach test: those who see sex change surgeries perpetrated on healthy bodies as an injustice have reacted with horror; LGBT activists believe that the injustice is not a mentally ill but physically healthy young woman having her breasts removed, but the fact that she had to wait so long to have the surgeries in the first place.
I have interviewed several young women who underwent precisely the same surgeries as Mika. Their stories are both heartbreaking and almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press. I will never forget the angry grief expressed by Chloe Cole during one conversation, as she detailed her “medical transition” between the ages of 12 and 16, and the double mastectomy perpetrated on her at age 15.
Stories like Cole’s are ignored by photographers like de Vos, although surely her journey is as unique to our culture in this time and place as any. Her interview with Jordan Peterson detailing that journey is simultaneously one of the saddest and most powerful I have ever seen:
