"It's binding or suicide": New York Times article on chest binders

[RoyalCorgi]

Young women share their experience of using breast binders. It's a sad and shocking read.

www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/reader-center/chest-binding.html?

Two stories from 17 year olds and one from a 19 year old, amongst the others.

So sad for these young people and no stories from anyone who had anything negative to say about binders.

If my child said to me, or stated it publicly, that it's a choice between binders or suicide I'd be seeking mental health support not shopping for binders.

Several detransitioners/desisters on Reddit said they submitted negative comments for this piece but were not quoted.

The tape sounded the least appalling of all those options.

The misogynist nature of this movement is seen once again. Nobody is saying "I'm a man and these are my male breasts." (Even though man-boobs, unlike female penises, actually exist). No, women have to mutilate themselves.

Binding is not fun, and it’s not a trend.

Except teenagers and young women weren't doing this ten years ago. What else can it be apart from a trend?

The longer I used binding, the more I could feel my body deteriorating. The physical pain got worse but so did the emotional. Slowly I began living a life where I couldn’t not bind. The initial euphoria of flatness turned into never being able to get flat enough. My body aches every day, I no longer have the lung capacity I once had, and my ribs have inverted. I fear breaking one when I sneeze. I am getting surgery this year and it can’t come soon enough.

Horrific. And yes, where is the male breast?

I can’t believe that with intensive long term affordable mental health support that these women would feel the same distress and feel obligated to act it out so punitively on their own body. Noticeable that they were not talking of embracing maleness- they sounded desperate to be freed from their femaleness.
The women being hand-me-downed for free with (painful) second hand binders from those who were having ‘top surgery’... the emotional manipulation there is horrible. Like pyramid selling or something.
I can’t even comment within the guidelines on the 16 year old soon to be having a double mastectomy (mentioned in the comments.)

@Erythronium teenagers and young women WERE doing this ten years ago and more. It just wasn't as publicised maybe? I remember seeing loads of them at Pride in New York, it must have been nearly 25 years ago now.

Also I saw this: www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2019/june/student-creates-product-that-may-transform-lives/ being celebrated on the Gendered Intelligence Twitter. mobile.twitter.com/Genderintell/status/1139515991434629120
How is this type of invention helping to resolve the clearly very real and awful experience of living long term mental distress?
Why is the third sector’s advocacy not around getting such highly distressed young women a timely offer of skilled professional NHS psychological care?
What next gadget will be developed in improving the experience of long term self harm..?

Reminds me so much of eating disorders.

I was struck by 2 things.

One- the very young ages of some.of them. 17..19.. eagerly awaiting a double mastectomy. Please let's not call it top surgery. Make's it sound like getting a mole removed as opposed to major surgery to chop of healthy breasts with risks involved.

And 2- the one who said said it stopped being about getting a flat chest when they had one. It then became about getting flat enough

Sounds just like anorexia or bulimia where someone is skin and bone but on their head they are not thin enough

All of them are still young enough to wake up in ten/fifteen years time and wonder what the hell they have done and be deformed/scarred for the rest of their lives.

Its tragic it really is. And who are they talking to that's advising them.Only one.mentioned a dr.

"I’m currently training to run the New York marathon for the second year in a row, and I’m starting graduate school at Columbia University in the fall. These are things that I would not have been able to do without a binder."

I was unaware that women with breasts are not able to run marathons or go to university.

I once wore a sports bra that was too tight to go running and it really hurt and made it hard to breathe. I can't imagine what wearing a binder during a marathon would be like.

One thing I have been wondering is that it used to be a thing and I think it still is, in that girls have for decades starved themselves, to stop their breasts developing, maybe to try and cause a miscarriage if they were pregnant and didnt want the baby, or to stop their periods from starting.

Now alot of pictures I've seen of transmen /biological females that bind it seems to be the other way . They often seem to be over weight or bordering on it. Now I'm not saying that to be cruel. I'm a fat person myself. But that's more down to adulthood shift work and pregnancy and tiredness etc. Not when so much when I was at home having my meals cooked for me and cycling to school etc.

Is that an affect of the testosterone? A symptom of being unable to exercise properly or even maybe walk to school, disordered eating due to mental illness, or a combo of all of them? How do you work out if they have an eating disorder and stop it if it's a side effect of medication? How could you know.? Its a heck of a chance to take on someone so young

How can kids be sent on this path way in good conscience?

And If kids were in regular contact with people who sent them stuff or talked to them.on a daily basis and parents had never met them.and it was all so one sided then people would be worried.

But school girls calling adults, talking about their breasts and their bodies and wearing something so potentially damaging sent by these over I
Nvested adults , why is that seen as ok?

This is a great article that argues that breast binding is a response to sexual objectification akin to self harm. She looks at how it can make grooming easier.

www.transgendertrend.com/breast-binding-sexual-objectification-grooming/

To those not in the know, binders can seem a tolerable way to help a dysphoric young woman cope with overwhelming and difficult feelings.

Many believe that binders are a form of 'treatment' to help crippling feelings that can't be addressed any other way.

My own daughter started binding without telling me. I found out. She minimised it, telling me scornfully that they were not a problem at all as long as you wore the correct size. Nothing to see here, move along.

I tried not to worry too much about the binder, as there was so much more to deal with - her insatiable need to start testosterone and the fact that she was slipping further away from us every single day.

However, binding acted as a gateway. Doing it 'confirmed' and signalled her trans status; it confirmed her 'hatred' of her breasts; it bound her thinking; it increased her dysphoria because it alienated her from her female form and made her feel that her body had to be fixed permanently to avoid the pain and difficulty of binding; having to bind was a constant physical reminder that there was something 'wrong' with her.

There is only one direction of travel when a young woman starts to bind her breasts. And the fact that society is sleepwalking into affirming double mastectomies as the remedy is truly appalling.

When girls are in this state of mental distress and anguish, they will do anything to convince themselves and society that they really are boys trapped in a female body. That the only way to help them is to affirm and collude. Or else.

Their desire to have autonomy over their body becomes so urgent and all consuming that they will lie and do almost anything to achieve their ends. I know this to be true.

This is a mental health crisis, increasingly affecting our young women. We have to stop this juggernaut before it gains any more traction.

What we can do about it is the question that haunts me every single day.

I want parents and doctors and therapists and teachers to see what's really going on. I want them to open their eyes and actually think properly about what's happening.

When it comes to issues of health and welfare and safety, we simply have to stop being afraid of accusations of 'transphobia' and stop prioritising self-diagnosis.

We have to provide proper help and counselling and support that isn't in thrall to an ideology.

Do we value our young women enough to do this?

This is a mental health crisis, increasingly affecting our young women.

Yes. Absolutely. The parallels with eating disorders are striking. Except we try to treat eating disorders but have somehow decided that a gender identity disorder should be nurtured and encouraged. It's frightening.

sister

Tha sounds utterly terrifying. You have summed it all up really. All the fears and discoveries we are told dint happen or that everything's reversible its just a pause etc blah blah blah

Body modification is always "addictive" how many people have just one tattoo. Just one piercing. Have just one cosmetic surgery etc

I am so sorry for what you and your dd are going through. And thank you for sharing what must be an awful experience for you all.

Sorry I'm not trying to compare binding to a nose ring. I just meant that alot of these things are are never just done once and no one just stops either. You pick out your next one while you wait for the first one.

sister

Genderism itself makes clear how little contemporary Western society thinks of women — that men can rule on who IS one — and then offers the girls who take on the burden of this disempowering the way out: to become men.

Not that the men actually accept them as men. Instead they serve to make clear that the girls who don’t strive to become men must therefore be happy with their lesser status as beings defined by men.

I have a niece who is in the grip of bulimia. I don't see gender dysphoria as any different. The difference between how she is being treated and these poor girls is night and day. No one is telling her she's right to binge and purge FFS.

Anyone who helps a young woman get a double mastectomy should be bitterly ashamed of themselves.

And the claim that it's binders or suicide? Yet another unsupported claim/threat of suicide, a la Mermaids. There's no evidence that gender dysphoria is linked to suicide more than any other MH issue. The Tavistock has been very clear on that.

@SarahTancredi I don’t know whether testosterone causes weight gain. I suspect that the weight pre-dates the testosterone, leading these girls to hate their bodies because it seems impossible for them to achieve the type of body they are constantly told they should have.

Fat boys get bullied, but probably not as much as fat girls.

sister that sounds so hard for you and your DD. Is there light at the end of the tunnel for you both?

With binding I think it is akin to self-harm and eating disorders. Could imagine the narrative 'if you don't let children cut themselves a little bit then they will commit suicide' being pushed? I would like to see headlines about 'binding and body image'.

I believe on top of this that it is a response to porn culture, an attempted opt out of sexual harassment and objectification without becoming totally invisible.