Genderqueer massage therapist helps with chest binding pain

[QuietContraryMary]

Yes, it's perfectly normal guys. (Also in the pipeline, foot binding and neck stretching.)

"The class is a workshop for people who bind — a practice that involves wearing a tight sports bra or other constricting undergarment to help flatten the chest, sometimes for extended periods of time. For people who identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming and were assigned female at birth, binding can be essential to appearing more masculine — or simply feeling more comfortable in their own bodies.

But for some people, especially those who constrict their chest for many hours a day, sometimes over several years, the practice can take a serious physical toll, leading to sharp muscle pain, shortness of breath and bad posture.

That's why Reed, a massage therapist who identifies as genderqueer and uses the pronouns they and them, started teaching these classes about six years ago at Freed Bodyworks, the Capitol Hill wellness center Reed founded that caters to the LGBTQ community, including gender-nonconforming people."

""We provide a place where, for two hours, people are in here only with others experiencing the same thing," Reed said. "They find out other people are in as much pain as they are. There's just this instant sense of relief of not being alone.""

"Connor Cory first started getting massages from Freed Bodyworks a few years ago, when he had just started law school and had recently begun openly identifying as a transgender man. Through one-on-one massages and group binding classes, Cory has learned how to mitigate extreme back pain and poor alignment after years of binding, he said. Massage therapists at Freed Bodyworks have also helped him loosen up scar tissue from undergoing chest surgery about two years ago."

"Reed has seen clients who have traveled from rural areas hours away. Some don't have the resources to pursue top surgery in their communities and rely on binding for up to 12 hours a day to "pass" in their places of work, in industries such as construction. Reed described another client, a 17-year-old, who suffered such excruciating rib pain from binding that he sometimes had to go home from high school."

"Minimal research has been conducted on the health impacts of binding. But one survey published in 2016, the Binding Health Project, found that physical discomfort was almost universal among transgender adults who bind. More than 97 percent of the 1,800 survey participants said they had experienced a negative health outcome, including back pain, overheating, chest pain, shortness of breath, itching and bad posture."

"It wasn't until after Reed had started teaching binding classes that the practice took a toll on their own life. After working as a massage therapist in a binder every day for years, Reed developed such a severe shoulder injury that they were unable to lift their right arm and were forced to take five months off work as a massage therapist.

"I couldn't wear a binder at all for those five months. I couldn't even wear a traditional bra because the pain was so severe," Reed said. "The gender dysphoria that caused for me was huge.""

I think you may be getting a bit confused about the difference between "I do not approve of this thing" and "this thing should be illegal".

Perhaps... But if these people are adults...

December 2018 Sanchez Manning article, Mail on Sunday:

'Trans activists send out free breast binders to 13-year-olds in unmarked packages... so their parents don't find out'

(extract)
"A transgender charity is giving girls as young as 13 potentially dangerous breast-flattening devices without telling their parents.

The ultra–tight garments can cause ‘horrendous’ health problems including breathing and breastfeeding difficulties, chronic back pain and broken ribs, increasing the chance of a punctured lung.

They are used by a growing number of girls who believe they are the wrong sex to disguise their breasts and make them look like boys.

Now a Mail on Sunday investigation has exposed how a publicly funded organisation is secretly sending the controversial chest binders to schoolgirls in unmarked packages so that parents are kept in the dark.

An undercover reporter posing as a 13-year-old schoolgirl contacted Manchester based MORF, part of the LBGT Foundation, after an angry mother told us that the group had sent her 14-year-old daughter a chest binder without consulting her.

After two short phone calls to the helpline number on its website, our investigator was told a chest binder would be sent in the post free of charge and with no indication of what the package contained." (continues)
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6450485/Trans-activists-send-free-breast-binders-13-year-olds.html

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3440120-Mail-online-criticises-Manchester-MORF-charity-for-distributing-binders-to-young-teens

Taking oestrogen is comparable to taking testosterone - not binding. Binding causes actual pain and damage to breast tissue.

There's so much wrong there that it's impossible to know where to start.

And to the ribs also. And can in some cases result in a broken rib puncturing a lung. But hey ho, those of us who have concerns about all of this clearly just aren't being understanding enough.

Good and I would rather safer binding for a few years and then cut the binder up than having an irreversible mastectomy

Harm reduction models can be very effective in many circumstances but they always involve support, information, encouragement and enabling the possibility of exiting.

Yam
Re: Emmerdale - The whole thing so far has been handled quite well for a tv drama, will be interesting to see where they take it
It will be sympathetic to the transborg cause, I'm sure.

I'm utterly convinced soap writers have been directed by Stonewall since the eighties.

-Prime time tv, children watching
-Diverse subjects, rightly so
-Children permanently estranged from their parents
-Endless, just endless numbers of females being sent to prison. (Try counting them in Corrie.)

And now a trans man: everyone can see, this won't end well.

I wonder what fate they have planned for him?

As I explained, it’s about offering support. Taking heroin is one of the most dangerous things you can do to your body. I still support a clean needle exchange to make sure that those who do take it don’t unnecessarily subject themselves to even more harm. We’re talking about people with a serious psychological condition. If you think ‘just don’t do it’ will help, fair enough. We will agree to disagree on that one.

I suppose as usual the poor old taxpayer (via the NHS) will have to pick up the bill years later for all the damage this nonsense is causing.
Not just rib, lung and breast injury, but all the surgical costs of transition, de-transition, and the post op infections and complications of same. Not to mention the legal bill for compensation to people who were wrongly diagnosed as trans when children and pushed into puberty blockers, hormones and sterility.
When will this shit storm end, and society ditch all gender stereotypes, so everyone can just be themselves, without trying to shoehorn into some rigidly defined role?

This stood out for me:

We provide a place where, for two hours, people are in here only with others experiencing the same thing," Reed said

That was what women used to have, before it was decided that talking about our bodies was exclusionary and hurtful.

I love it when people "explain" things to me, it makes me feel so validated as a woman.

Fine. It’s a disagreement on a point. I see your viewpoint but have a different one, that is all.

People who cut say it makes them feel better too, Funky. It provides them relief. Would you support cutting?

That's the irony, isn't it, NotMe? That the very same people who feel that they benefit from having that space would argue that women as a group shouldn't be allowed to have the same experience, and that our desire to have spaces like that is bigoted.

Angry if you read my other posts (and I have NC from a regular name on here) you will see that is not what I think at all about women having their own spaces.

The cutting example is difficult but I would certainly support information about sterilisation of what is used. The drug example I gave must be adequate though? I don’t support heroin addiction but I do support giving addicts clean needles so that they don’t cause themselves even more harm. How is that different to the binding example here?

I'm not sure why I'm the only person you're addressing directly, Funky, but it's a bit creepy.

You can’t compare heroin addiction with impressionable youngsters trying binding during puberty.
I would also add that addicts are encouraged to withdraw from heroin, is there any support offered at these binding sessions to help attendees understand why they are so desperate to needlessly alter their bodies? If not, it is highly irresponsible.
As an aside I just had to look up labiplasty - wtf??

What? Why am I addressing you? Because you addressed me and made suggestions that I didn’t think women deserved their own space. How is that creeepy? I was responding to your points. I am not spoiling for a fight- just stating my viewpoint. I have responded to others too.

Okay Chewy I take your point although I don’t wholly agree with it. I guess the distinction is whether one views this is as promoting binding or just offering support for those who already do. But obviously I would never want it to be promoted to someone who would not otherwise see the need to engage in it.

Well quite - nobody's called stunning and brave for coming out as a heroin addict. Nobody's trying to tell us that a person is being their true authentic self by injecting heroin.

I do have a lot more sympathy for young women caught up in this madness than for the older men who're driving the TRA train, but as much as I can see the thought process by which they deny their own femaleness, which means that it's hard for them to accept that other women see ourselves as part of a group (that still includes them, how dare we, etc), it's still fundamentally not acceptable for them to be allowing their own mental health issues to harm women as a group, which going along with the efforts of male TRAs to shut down all women spaces and rid the language of its ability to describe thing that happen to women most definitely does.

Medical capitalism is spot on, ECummings. I couldn't agree more.

Generating a market for medical procedures/body-altering drug therapy from gender dysphoria. Sometimes, having a read of twitter or tumblr, you could be forgiven for thinking gender dysphoria is fashionable.

But it can only be classed as support to existing users of binders if it also addresses their reasons for mutilating their bodies, otherwise it is promotion as it is not providing a balanced viewpoint.
Young, impressionable people need sensible guidance including opportunities to chat in a non judgemental environment not one which encourages their confusion.