Breastbinders, the new corsets for women

[Driechdrizzle]

Not going to call them chestbinders, because that hides what they are and what they are doing to women's bodies. They're for flattening and disguising women's breasts.

So many things to question about the trans movement, but why are none of these "woke" people noticing the glaring misogyny in women/female people using painful and harmful contraptions on the female parts of their bodies to modify or reshape them? I'm sure they'd disapprove of "cis" (their word) women getting plastic breast implants to fit a pornified ideal, so why is there this acceptance of erasing or removing breasts?

This article is a case in point. The writer it is planning a double mastectomy which the writer is dreading unsurprisingly because the chest binders are causing injury. They caused shoulder dislocation which the writer is claiming it's because of an autoimmune disorder. The binders were also making the writer's hands go numb.

There's also this:

This is the binder that comes out on days where I’d normally have to force myself to leave the house in a sports bra and a baggy shirt because my whole body hurts. This is a step up from that and it allows me to take breaks from the more intense binding I usually engage with while mitigating the feeling of wanting to give myself to the sea.

www.autostraddle.com/shapeshifters-bespoke-binders-put-fun-on-your-chest/

Old school feminism, radical feminism was in part about helping women/female people accept and love their bodies. How is this attack on breasts and female bodies progressive? It's no different from Victorian women being laced into corsets to give them 17 inch waists, dislocating their ribs and shifting their internal organs in the process and causing them to faint. I do not get it in the slightest, apart from the fact that patriarchy wants female humans to be in pain the whole time and some of us are only too happy to comply.

OK. That's it.

I'm going to have to step away from the whole issue. Thank God I'd already taken a spade to the lgballiance hole.

Women self harming for the patriarchy. Women in pain because the patriarchy tells them their bodies are evil and provocative and they have internalised that pain until their joints literally come to pieces. Women wearing pretty sparkly Iron Maidens until the kind doctors come and put them to sleep to amputate their breasts.

Christine Burns, Katie Montgomery, you feel A-OK about this? You've got tits, you like that women want to get their tits cut off and thrown in a bin and will keep themselves in straitjackets until that happy day comes? This is autonomy, health, human rights? This is what 'kindness' 'inclusivity' 'love wins' really means, when it comes to women's bodies? If you're a woman, where the fuck is your sisterhood?

You know this is misogyny. You know it. It's always been misogyny. Misogyny and oppression. Show me how this is FIIIIIINNNE.

sometimes I’m flat and boy-like and sometimes I want to dress up sluttily.

So there's either boy (male, good) or slut (female, bad)? Regardless of your belief that you are reclaiming that word, it is still pejorative. Both the word and the implication.

I think it’s probably hard to understand if you haven’t experienced gender dysphoria and/or depression/self harm.

Do you realise what you are claiming about us?

@LoveMySituation It is very sad that you hate your female body so much, I wish there was another way to resolve that without major surgery.

I do wonder whether it will resolve your feelings of dysphoria towards yourself or they will be transferred elsewhere?

I do get it, I struggled with developing breasts and periods and developed eating disorders in my teens. The breast issue got better on breastfeeding but I still hate periods.

Does anyone like periods though Ginger?

I mean female people, not fetishists.

I am flat-chested as I was somewhat neglected as a child/teenager and wore the same too-small bras for several years. But I am female, not boy-like.

Argh posted too soon

ACat

I am always curious to hear more from non-binary female people about what “being a girl/woman” means to them?

For many of us, “being a hugely/woman” meant being hopelessly unhappy with our bodies, to the point of suicide. Many of us also do not identify with many/any aspect of what men/society seem to think women are. For example the concept you raised that “slutty” is the opposite of “boy mode”. So many of us do understand where you are coming from. However we have found it to be healthier to eat whatever we want but not to wear clothing that can damage our bodies.

The medical consequences for binding do appear to be quite drastic for many young female people. Maybe you can claim they are “doing it wrong” but that somewhat easy for you to say if you are only doing so occasionally. There’s also a lot of pressure on women, always, to keep their pain about performing femininity properly to themselves. so If you are in pain please realize this is a safe space and it is OK to say something. Name switch if you have to to preserve your pride, that is OK as well.

I wish you luck on your journey.

“eat whatever we want” should have said “wear whatever we want”

We know a girl who has just had her breasts removed. She is 17. I find it utterly heartbreaking.

That's so sad, Vix. I honestly can't even look at the photos of young women who've had it done for long because I just start crying.

Being a woman does not equate to being "slutty", ACat. Humans are not divided into boys and "sluts", and I really think you ought to think about what you're doing to other women and girls by framing things that way even if you aren't willing to do so for your own sake.

Also there’s a doctor on cbbc who binds just what ?

Say what lovemysituation

Are you saying just chop bits of your body I mean really saying that

I can’t belive a person just said that

"sometimes I want to dress up sluttily"

Really? Do you know you have an extremely bad case of internalised misogyny? If you want to talk about it, this is the place.

If people were cutting their legs off SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT IT. A woman's breasts - no problem.

FFS.

All women have breasts barring radical surgery because we're mammals.

Agree. Other body parts would cause an outcry, yet a seventeen year old girl, who is too young to even GET A TATOO FFs, can have her breasts amputated. She was put on cross sex hormones a year ago. All stupidly rapid.

AFAIK most mammals grow them when needed. I could have coped with that

It's the speed of it that's so upsetting too. If a person that age decided that she wanted to have her tubes tied it would probably take her 20 years to get a doctor to agree to do it, and we all know how often teenagers change their minds, but hey ho, "gender" so it's fine.

Legs are kind of essential Vix/Kitten.

What are you saying love my situation

That
Actually I don’t know how to reply to your post

So chilling

Then don't. Wish I hadn't said a word

People do manage to survive without legs, you know. That's almost as inconsiderate to others a comment as the "slutty" one.

Well yeah why would you hate your body so much you want to chop bits of it off then justify it by saying by handwringing and breasts don’t make you a woman