Breast Binding

Terf I wasn't trying to take teh mickey I was trying to say I had misunderstood you.

Seems to be we all got a bit at cross purposes yesterday.

"The huge increase in girls seeking help regarding change of gender would suggest that this chest binding is at least mostly about transitioning."

Disagree.

Girls often don't explicitly make the link between the way they are treated and their desire to hide their bodies / change their bodies.

All they know is they hate their size / shape / breasts / whatever and don't want them any more. So, eating dosorders, binders, I must really be a boy (as everyone knows how proper girls look and behave and that's not me).

For sure some girls will have gender dysphoria - if that means an intense feeling of hatred towards their sexed body and a knowledge heartfelt that they should be a man - but for most of them, it won't be that. It just won't.

It is well known the issues girls have around their bodies, the expectations due to their sex, the way they are treated, seen as sex objects. It's a very unpleasant process turning from person (child) to sex object. Obviously girls attempt to navigate this any way they can. Saying "I'm not a girl" is a very sensible solution in a society which is often pretty unpleasant for girls.

I also couldn't get away with not wearing a bra for work, it would be unthinkable TBH.

I also think that if I went out in public without a bra I would get a lot of staring / weird looks / comments. I mean it's just not done is it, if you have larger breasts. Bras are both sexist and ageist, at my age one of the functions they perform is to pretend that my tits live somewhere up around my chin. With it off - they live somewhere around the waist region and I struggle to imagine that people wouldn't be a bit gobsmacked if I started wandering around with them lowslung and untethered...

It is good you are able to do this though. I must admit I find it super hard to imagine - and I wouldn't fancy trying it myself. Even though I find them fucking uncomfortable.

@aurorafloyd I would not wear shoes that are uncomfortable and yet to go braless is considered inappropriate with my breast size and job.

That's awful. Why are people looking at your boobs at work, I wonder? Maybe they shouldn't pay so much attention to them?

One of the things I like about my job is the casual dress code and no need to wear a bra. I usually don't, or at most wear one of those Belvia soft things in case I need to run for my train. Something I have noticed is that, even though I have something ludicrous like HH cups, after not wearing a bra for a few weeks I can walk around and use stairs comfortably as long as I don't run.

The huge increase in girls seeking help regarding change of gender would suggest that this chest binding is at least mostly about transitioning.

"Reports from the United Kingdom of huge spikes in the rate of child referrals to transing centers also show far more girls than ever before. The most recent of these papers from the UK suggests that from 2009-2016, the average year-on-year increase in referrals for children under age 12 was “only” 48.6% for boys, while it was 92.7% for girls; in adolescents the corresponding rates were 54.9% and 88.6%." 4thwavenow.com/2018/05/05/detransitioned-man-blasts-transworld/

There's also the fact that bras are (to some women) horrifically uncomfortable. How many memes and jokes are there about the relief of taking your bra off when you get home? I have properly fitted bras and they're still uncomfortable in comparison to no bra!

I would not wear shoes that are uncomfortable and yet to go braless is considered inappropriate with my breast size and job. I have to spend circa £50 per bra to stock up on the one brand of sports bra which is actually bearable to wear all day.

This study reported on the negative health effects of breast binding.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2016.1191675

It is paywalled and I don't have access to the full study, but the following link has some more details.

janitorqueer.com/2016/06/21/28-risks-of-chest-binding/

No problem Terf. Posts written on the fly are ripe for alternative readings and we wouldn’t have had Fermat’s excellent summation without the misunderstanding. Peace ‘n’ love and all that jazz.

Good morning and good summary sardine.

I'd like to apologise to boat as I think I over interpreted her comments and went off on one after watching a video. I'm very sorry about that boat.

On a lighter note, it was a wonderful thing to become a breastfeeding mother (apart from the initial difficulties of course).

I wonder if teenage girls could be given a lot more information about that particular function of their breasts. To show them that their breasts can be a source of such usefulness, joy and pride: how completely a nursing baby depends upon them for nourishment, not to mention the key role of breastfeeding in developing the first relationship a baby has with another human being (obviously this goes for bottle feeding too but I'm trying to encourage girls to respect their breasts here).

I suppose if you gave girls talks about the wonders of breastfeeding it would be seen (perhaps rightly) as encouraging early pregnancy and discouraging career-type pursuits. You can easily spend 5 -10 years of your life as a nursing mother, and it does often have an impact on your career. Much more should be done to even things out for mothers in the workplace regarding this.

Anyway, my main point here is that the sexual aspect of women's breasts is the only angle teenage girls get exposed to really. If this was balanced with information about breastfeeding then maybe it would help girls to appreciate their breasts a bit, and make them less likely to be dysphoric about them - whether that dysphoria arises from awareness of inappropriate male oggling (most/all young women) or simple hatred of one's femaleness (true gender dysphoria as opposed to rapid onset).

It certainly seems like rapid onset, including breast binding, is simply an extreme reaction to the porn culture and high demands placed on girls for a feminine hypersexualised appearance.

Sardine

I completely and utterly get what you are saying. I was the tallest girl in my year. I'll never forget the shame in year 7 when a boy laughed in a crowded playground that I needed a bra.

When men reacted to me, in exactly the ways that you describe, when I was 13/14 what else am I to describe it as other than dysphoria of the body? My dad raised me as a pretend boy and called me a male name. He wanted a boy after two girls. I would have been another easy target for Mermaids.

'Ah Terf', you say. You are mocking me. I've been mocked all my life. Because I am different. I was only saying what I thought and felt. Evidently I should zip up and do one.

Ah Terf -

When you said "This thread is about breast binding, which is a particular form of self harm resulting from gender dysphoria" I thought that you meant that was the only reason.

I think that there are other reasons which are probably more common but have seen you think so too so there's no disagreement.

I wouldn't agree that all the girls who bind though as dysphoric - whether gender or the more minor body dysphoria you mention.

I think that girls trying to hide their developing bodies is an understandable reaction to the way society views girls once their bodies start to look more adult & especially the sudden interest from men which lots of girls find disconcerting and hard to deal with.It bothers me that this link is not being made between the high levels of distress amongst teenage girls, and the fact that they are the fastest growing group of referrals to gender clinics. The question around why trying to opt out of being female is so appealing, is not being asked. A lot of old school feminists can provide some pointers but we have been deemed irrelevant / out of fashion / evil.

Society has always preferred to look the other way when it's teenage girls who are struggling.

I can understand your criticism of my comments but the phrase "you can understand their intent" used by boat, to me, is a paraphrasing of justification

Whereas to me, it's empathy with a horrific decision these women make, whilst not condoning it at all.

Sometimes you don't get to opt out of making a decision, and neither choice is a good one. It's that boxcar philosophy problem isn't it - which path do you choose, given two terrible outcomes.

A while back someone posted an horrific picture of the long-term effects of breast binding.

Terf - what would I do? I don't know, is the answer. It is easy for me to sit here comfortably in my middle class existence and fantasize about being the brave, awkward individual who bucked the social norms around me and made a stand against the familial and social pressures surrounding me and refused to iron my daughter's breasts. I'd like to imagine I'd be a hero. Whether I would be, I don't know.

The practice is at its most prevalent in Cameroon, and interestingly, there's conflicting reports on where it takes place. A lot of reports presume that it's confined to poor, rural areas with low education levels, but I've also read one report suggesting it's more prevalent in cities, driven partly by higher levels of sexual violence in crowded cities, and partly by desire to ensure your daughters stay in education. Cameroon has one of the highest rates of female literacy in Africa, but also has high rates of child marriage (something like a quarter of girls are married before they're 18) and teen pregnancy (about 20% IIRC give birth while still teenagers).

It is a horrific practice, with long-term after effects (abscesses and destruction of functional breast tissue).

Back on the topic of the thread though - I simply don't get how schools and youth organisations can condone breast binding when it is so obviously damaging. I presume it's because the likes of Mermaids send round endless literature telling teachers that kids will commit suicide if they're not allowed to bind their breasts - which for me rather suggests we need much, much better mental health care for adolescents, not turning a blind eye while they mutilate themselves.

It’s probably a spectrum (just like gender ) from minimiser bras on one end, to binding in the middle, to double mastectomy on the other. It’s all part of the same problem, that women don’t generally particularly enjoy (understatement) being constantly ogled by men everywhere they go, and having (big) breasts seems to invite this. I think that quite a large chunk of the motivation to be a transman probably comes from a desire to be treated like and seen as a person, rather than as a woman and therefore a sex object

These girls are chest binding with a view to being transmen, though.

If you have a big bust you go through life with men talking to your breasts, not your face.
With them "accidentally" brushing against them, making unwanted comments, if I had to count the times a version of "not many of them to the pound" or "don't run love, you'll get a black eye" I wouldn't need to win the lottery.

I want bras that hold them in, not stick them out, that stop them bouncing, not thrust them up and out. Minimiser bras might have squeezed them sideways, but they did keep it under control.

I also know a young woman in her 20's who has had breast reduction surgery for all the above reasons.

If breast binding had been around in the '70s, I would absolutely have tried to get one.

Lots of women and girls dislike their bodies, not because there is anything wrong with their body or because they don't know what 'gender' they should be, but because of the unwelcome attention of males.

Minimiser bras should have been called redistribution bras. They just squished them sideways into your armpits so you couldn’t put your arms down properly. Uncomfortable and useless.

I know of at least 2 adult women (both married to men) who had breast reduction surgery in their 20's. Both of them were fed up with the weight and discomfort but also, very tellingly because of the unwanted male attention they got.
Neither have regretted their surgery, despite the pain and scarring. Both were happy still to have breasts, just smaller ones.
Both of them previously dressed to minimise their breasts. Both complained about how men talked to them/looked at their breasts - especially at work.

I used to wear a minimiser bra because my breasts were too big to be in fashion in the 90s 😳

FermatsTheorem

I can understand your criticism of my comments but the phrase "you can understand their intent" used by boat, to me, is a paraphrasing of justification.

Why include the phrase at all if not to justify the action.

Are there really only two choices open to these mothers? Are you actually saying that you would do this?