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.""