Binding

I've been using a binder for the past month, and it's been absolutely fantastic.

I had been worried about binding because I have a rotator cuff injury in my left shoulder which makes getting dressed quite difficult and painful, let alone putting on something as constricting as a binder… but I just got to the stage where I had to bite the bullet. I have had severe dysphoria ever since I started to hit puberty (34 years ago!) and have tried to cope by simply not looking down. I had resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't do anything about my equipment and so since the age of about 10, I have felt a bit like Rapunzel: trapped in the highest room (my head) of an inaccessible tower (my body) that stands between me & my freedom. How's that for an analogy? (If only Rapunzel wasn't a girl it would be perfect).

So I did some research and found a decent-looking gynaecomastia vest on Amazon - the Underworks 997, which incorporates both chest and abdominal compression - and placed my order. It arrived a couple of days later in a very discreet package - the small, brown package that Amazon usually uses if you order a music CD - and I gave it a whirl.

Well, it's brilliant.

It's not as hard to put on as I feared it might be, and it's not uncomfortably tight either. I put it on by stepping into it (like a skirt) and pulling it up to waist level, then I put my arms in the armholes (starting with the injured one). Once I've repositioned The Girls by pushing them downwards and towards my armpits it leaves me looking almost completely flat-chested, to the extent that people are treating me differently in public. Unfortunately for me I'm rather short and quite 'pretty' and I'm a 34D so I don't pass very well, but this vest is definitely causing confusion amongst people I deal with. They seem uncertain as to my gender and they tend to address me generically rather than by gender. Which is about as good as I can hope for at the moment, so it's great to have a tiny bit of freedom from femaleness.

I try to give myself a break from wearing it over the weekend for two reasons: 1) I'm at home so I can just lay around in comfortable clothes without worrying about how I'm presenting; and 2) my hubby & kids still a bit uncomfortable about my GID so at present I try to leave my binding for when I'm out in public.

So this weekend I went without my binder for two days. Saturday was fine - I stayed indoors and just wore a very baggy shirt - but on Sunday I wanted to go to the supermarket but the binder was in the wash, so I simply popped on the sports bra I was using before I bought the binder, thinking that that would be good enough to get me round Sainsbury's.

It wasn't. Not at all.

I've become accustomed to looking down at a relatively flat chest and masculine profile, so when I looked down and saw those two enormous mounds on my chest (yet again) I felt badly dysphoric in a way I haven't done for the past month. Those familiar but unwelcome lumps made me look 'female' again and I hated every minute I was out of the house. I also got 'madamed' everywhere I went; clearly people aren't confused about my gender if I'm not binding.

So. Clearly I can't make do without binding in public. And clearly I'll feel a lot better once I get top surgery - I just wish it wouldn't take so damn long to get there. But it was an interesting (and enlightening) experiment to see whether I could cope with going binderless in public after binding for only a month. And the answer is: I can't.