Let’s talk about titties. Transmasculine folks seem to spend a lot of energy wishing they were gone, trying to find the best way to hide them, or feeling relieved when they finally attain the ever coveted top surgery. Boobies occupy a lot of mental space in transmasculine communities. How “trans” we are seems to weigh heavily on if we want to hide our chests, get surgery to remove our breasts, or if we proudly wear our boobies out.
My first time wearing a binder was transformative. I remember looking down and being shocked at how “flat” my chest looked- not an easy feat with 38D breasts. I wore the binder when I dressed as a drag king, and then started wearing it daily when I started identifying and presenting as trans. That fucking binder never stayed down, made me sweat in uncomfortable ways, and dug into my shoulders and hips. It restricted my breathing, didn’t help me pass, and in no way made me feel less dysphoric.
So why the fuck did I wear it for four years? Coming out trans surrounded by trans guys who were always talking about saving up for top surgery, or which binder was best, made me feel like I had to want to hide my chest if I was going to fit in with the trans dude crowd. And as I came out as trans in queer communities, I felt that I would be more likely to be “read” as trans by my queer and trans peers if I bound. It didn’t matter that I was totally ok with my chest- I bound because I saw it as a dominant part of transmasculine culture.
Two years ago, I joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. I was drawn to the Sisters for their amazing activism and presence in the queer community. Getting any new group of people to read me as trans is hard enough, but it gets even more difficult when you spend most of your time with them in makeup and jewelry. The first few times I dressed in drag, I kept my binder on beneath my outfits, and never wore dresses or skirts. I felt like I had to do something to remind people that I wasn’t a dyke.
The longer I spent with those amazing gender fucking drag nuns, the easier it became to stop worrying about how people perceived my gender. My drag looks got better when I stopped limiting myself for fear of looking “too female.” And as it turns out, dresses look and fit a lot better when you have boobs to fill them out! I started joking that my tits were a fashion accessory. I stopped being shy about “bringing them out” when I faced up as my Sister persona. I even bought real bras for the first time in 3 years- and learned that despite 3 years of binding, my bra size hadn’t changed at all. I finally came to a point where I was comfortable with my femme side.
While recovering from my limp wrist surgery a few months ago, I could only wear sports bras, skirts and yoga pants. Losing the use of one arm limited my wardrobe an incredible amount. For two months, I was force-feminized in my daily life. When I finally got my cast off, I couldn’t wait to dress more butch to be “seen” as trans. But my first day back wearing my binder I realized something: My binder did not somehow make me “more trans.” People did not fuck up my pronouns any less now that my boobs were less obvious.
As a genderqueer person who’s not taking testosterone or planning on getting any sort of surgery, it’s hard to find my place in trans spaces since I’m rarely “read” as trans. Being a fat genderqueer person complicates things further since my hips and ass and chest hardly do me any androgynizing favors. Sometimes it feels like I need to “flag trans” by wearing a binder or dressing masculinely to help people understand that I’m gender variant. Now I realize that all those years of binding weren’t to make me feel more comfortable in my body, but were rather a way for me to feel like I was “fitting in” to what was expected of me as a trans person. Stepping away from those expectations let me realize that my gender is not about pleasing others, but is about doing what’s right for me. Some days I still bind. Other days I wear a skirt. But now my clothing choices are based on what I need to feel like myself that day, not on what I think other people need to see to make me “authentically trans.”
{ 35 comments… read them below or add one }
Got linked to this on my facebook, and just had to say – I’m SO glad there is another person out there that feels the same way! Thank you! I wonder how many other people out there are fed up of feeling like they have to “prove” their gender identity, being relatively comfortable in their body. It seems counter productive that even though “gender is in your head” people still feel pressured to conform to expectations.
Speak of the devil. I’ve been thinking about this question a lot this week. When I am binding, it feels good and clothes look much better, but like Mo I find that it doesn’t really help me pass. Which is to say, when I do pass (which is quite frequently in public in general), it’s not because I’m binding as I’m not often binding. When I don’t pass, it’s more to do with my voice than anything else. Also, I find that my friends who don’t know much of trans issues don’t expect me to bind anyway – and binding isn’t going to convince them of my maleness; what I say about it is. Binding doesn’t make me feel like I don’t have a female chest, even if it looks like I don’t…
I’m glad that hanging out with the Sisters helped you like your breasts, but not all of us can deal with neurological incongruence that easily. The map of my body inside my brain says that I’m supposed to have a flat chest, so because I can’t change my brain, I had to change my body. It wasn’t optional. I couldn’t just learn to like or accept my body, because that’s not how my brain works. When I read posts like this, they sound a lot to me like conservative transphobes saying that trans people need counseling to learn to like being their coercively assigned gender instead of transitioning. It wouldn’t sound that way if the author made it clear that his experience isn’t universal.
Just once I’d like a genderqueer person who doesn’t experience neurological incongruence to acknowledge that it’s real when transsexual people experience it.
i second that emotion
I’m not shaming folks for feeling dysphoric, nor does my post say that top surgery or binding aren’t legitimate.
My post certainly isn’t pretending to be “universal” since the ENTIRE THING is in the first person. It speaks about MY experience coming to terms with my chest and binding.
And my brain DOESN’T match my body. And probably never will. Me choosing not to bind or get top surgery doesn’t mean i don’t experience “neurological incongruence.” If anything, my post is about the fact that we need to stop building a “hierarchy of trans-ness” that says any one experience is harder or more legitimate.
I had a similar reaction, and your uber-defensive response isn’t helping. Writing in first person doesn’t mean you aren’t making offensive generalizations.
I don’t know what damn “transmasculine culture” you are talking about, but transsexual men don’t bind or have chest surgery because it’s sexy or because it makes us more trans. Who the hell needs to be the most trans? I’d love to have less ‘gender dysphoria’, it’s incredibly painful. I wish I could have just loved my chest- I’d have a lot more money right now. Before I had chest surgery, binding was not about passing or being visible as ‘trans’- it was about being able to see my reflection in a mirror without wanting to kill myself. Can you understand how annoying it is for transsexuals to listen to you whine about how hard it is not to have intense amounts of body-related agony?
I don’t read it that way at all. I think it’s just incredibly hard sometimes to hear someone saying “this is my experience and this is how I feel about X” as just that, a neutral statement, and not a condemnation of other experiences or feelings. I think that’s a frustrating part of human nature, that we read more into a lot of things.
Isn’t that sort of what this post is about, from the other side? About hearing other trans people talk about binding and saving up for top surgery [their experience] and feeling less than, perhaps even in the absence of those folks saying “you are less trans because you don’t bind.” [Which is not to say that no one has ever said or implied that. Or that no not-dysphoric-about-having-breasts person has ever told a dysphoric person to learn to like their body. I'm sure that's happened and it's sad and wrong. But I don't observe that happening in this post.]
While binding and top surgery was right for me, I can understand where you are coming from. There are many things I did during the first part of my transition that were just to pass. Over the past 2 years I’ve been working on untangling my own identity from what those “Passing Tips” pages told me to do. I am much happier just being me than trying to live up to someone else’s expectations. Wasn’t that the whole point of transitioning? To be true to myself?
How on earth does this post sound like it’s written by a “conservative transphobe”? Dude, that’s rhetoric for its own sake. People have to get their shit in order. You can’t tell someone to shut up and stop “whining” just because you experience pain yourself in a way that isn’t identical to their experience. It does not negate your experience. If Mo continually acknowledged and represented a view that wasn’t their own, what would be the point of writing a personal blog post? People are so quick to judge. Can’t we have some degree of cordiality?
Mo,
Thanks so much for writing this and showing folks that there are many ways to experience being trans. While my personal history may be that I needed and CHOSE to have top surgery and take testosterone to be more comfortable in my body, that does not negate your personal history and current life as a trans person. We get enough shit from the outside world. I don’t know why others are coming down on you for what you wrote. I think it’s a wonderful article that shows one of the many ways to experience being trans AND I got your back.
Much love!
yes, this! so much this! much love, mo! keep telling your story about YOU. people need to hear it.
i think casually using “boobies” and “titties” as terms to refer to your own body is fine, and its great that you like them, but i think a lot of trans-guys – who identify as male and not genderqueer – not only cringe at someone playfully referring to those long-detested alien fat sacks as “boobies” or “titties” and suggesting that a burning desire to want them gone has to do with “fitting in” to a transguy or queer community… maybe trying to “look trans” is a thing for some people, i dunno, but i’m trying to look like a guy… cuz i am.
This article was very interesting to me. I recently went through something that brought up similar notions regarding my hair. Since I was about 15, I’ve been cutting my hair very short or shaving my head completely. It’s always made me feel more masculine and helped me pass. In my family’s culture, many men wear their hair longer than most men in the US, but recently at my job I noticed something: all my best cis-dude friends at work have hair that is shoulder length or longer. All straight, cis-gendered men, about 80% people of color, half of them single Dads, all the kind of guys you’d say embodied manliness in it’s greater meaning of doing what’s right and taking care of business with maturity and good humor, and being good allies to other communities. Each of them as unique as we are, and each of them disregarding the square “straight” look. I found it equally interesting that my rigid notion of masculinity completely controlled my friggin hairstyle so I started thinking; who am I cutting my hair for and why? That was 6 months ago, and my hair is finally reaching past my collar. To have short hair where my family is from is a very militaristic, nationalistic thing….that’s not me.
This is a good article because the author is telling you about how they smashed their own preconceived notions of what is and isn’t “right” or “enough”. That’s not always easy to do. Invalidating someone else’s experience because it isn’t a shared one is much easier emotionally than examining your own notions and asking yourself how they got there, why you continue to follow them, and what that means for you. This is not a direct response to anyone specific, but rather an observation.
Mo writing about Mo’s experience doesn’t negate your experiences as transsexual men. Your experience of detesting your chest is actually the dominant cultural narrative among transguys. Mo is giving voice to another narrative that is often overshadowed by the dominate one. Mo doesn’t need to justify every remark with a follow-up about how this is not the dominate experience within the trans male communities. This is Mo, not you, share the floor so that some other folks can find a reflection of their experience in this community as well.
Mo can take all the space they want to talk about loving their chest- no issue there. My problem is with the claims Mo makes about trans men for whom that isn’t an option and the notion that binding or chest surgery are things people do to be cool or more trans, rather than something that many guys do to survive.
But binding is often (certainly not always) something that transmen do just to fit in, and that fact is pretty much never talked about. We constantly hear about the dysphoria, about how to bind, about everyone saving for surgery and how liberating the surgery was, and about how exciting it is to start hormones, but we never hear the stories of those who identify strongly as men but don’t truly want those things.
I’m not really familiar with Mo at all and from the other comments I’m left unsure about whether Mo defines themselves as transgender or genderqueer, and whether or not they prefer male or neutral pronouns. So, while Mo may be giving a more genderqueer perspective than strictly trans perspective, I think however Mo self-defines this blog really opens the door for transmen to talk about their experience as feeling bullied into binding or marginalized because they don’t think that’s right for them. It seems like if we don’t bind, we’re not really men and we don’t deserve to be called transmen. People define us for us – they call us genderqueer, or even just tell us that we’re only playing around with being transgender. Unless we bind, take hormones or seek surgery we aren’t truly members of the transgender community. Even from those outside the transcommunity we’re pressured into binding. For example, my friends don’t use male pronouns unless I bind (despite the fact that my breasts are still plenty obvious under a binder) and my wife (who is also transgender) seems to think that I must be hiding my true self because she believes me when I say I’m transgender, but cannot connect that with me wearing shirts that reveal my breasts and she can’t understand how someone who is truly transgender would not want hormones. From every other conversation we’ve had, she seems to be more open and understanding than most people in the transcommunity I’ve heard speak about their ideas on being trans.
From my experience alone I face pressure from my transgender brothers AND sisters and from my relatively highly understanding friends. Bind, or you’re not actually a guy. Take hormones or you’re not actually transgender. Why? Because every guy who is transgender can’t wait to cut off their breasts and grow facial hair. Every woman who is transgender can’t wait to have breasts and wide hips. It’s so common, so talked about, so privileged within the trans community that to be different is to not fit the definition at all. This idea even had me convinced I wasn’t really trans for a long time. I thought “they’re right. If I was really trans I would be doing everything I could to get rid of them. If I was really trans I would throw out all of my skirts. If I was really trans I would replace my whole wardrobe with boy clothes and never wear any of my old t-shirts or jeans again. If I was really trans it would sting like hell every time someone used the wrong pronoun or I would feel euphoric every time someone used the right pronoun. If I was really trans…” It took me years to realize that only I could define myself, and that I was whatever I knew in my heart to be. There are no rules to what is written on your heart, and no one can dictate what’s written there but you. And the trans community did nothing to help me to that realization. The trans community, which should be helping and supporting all its members regardless of their experience, was just as oppressive to me as the rest of the world. Because I don’t follow the rules – I don’t meet the standards. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen the transgender community do incredible things for those that follow the rules. I know that it’s a very strong, caring community that has helped thousands (millions?) of people in countless ways. I also know that it has thoroughly failed me and after reading this post, I’m learning that it has in some ways failed others too.
I will note, however, the genderqueer community did a lot to help me.
And I’m pretty closeted (another thing that makes me not actually transgender, apparently. If I was really trans it would kill me to not be out to everyone) – I can’t imagine what the pressures would be like if I gave more people the opportunity to deny my own definition of myself.
Also, I find it infuriating that people are using this opportunity to get defensive about their own incredibly normative (I mean, normative within the pretty non-normative transgender umbrella) experiences rather than using this opportunity to learn about new experiences and issues within trans groups and grow as a support to those who clearly really need it.
Don’t worry, no one’s trying to take away your relatively normal, privileged, well understood and commonly recognized position. Now can we get a little bit of that understanding and support too?
Gah! Criticizing someone for writing a blog post about their own personal experience is rude and divisive. There are so many ways to be trans! It’s saddening to see other trans folks criticizing another trans person’s personal journey. Everyone has every right to refer to their own body with whatever language they choose. I think some of these responses are a good example of what Mo said in their post: “it’s hard to find my place in trans spaces…” Not everyone is trying to be read as any particular gender, and perhaps being read as trans means being recognized as someone who is actively confronting gender norms. I think it’s really important for these journeys and experiences to be celebrated, not criticized.
And by “these journeys” I mean ALL trans folks’ journeys, whatever they may be!!
that’s wonderful that you have found comfort in being who you are! unfortunatly, there are stigma’s in every community, but we all share a lot of the same struggles. i feel a lot of people, gay, straight, and trans, look in the mirror and tend to pick out the negative things about themselves, instead of embracing our good qaulities. i personally choose to bind, and was relieved to find a binder that worked for me! through my struggles, i have learned consideration for every type of person no matter who they choose to be as long as they are happy and fulfilled. once again, i applaude you on being true to yourself, and i want you to know that there is support and understanding out there for you, and everyone like us.
Great post. I’m not sure why there is so much push back. Mo is indicting no one. The post simply expresses a reality of some experiences of trans. And, frankly, for some folks there is a little bit of a “pissing contest” aspect to who transmasculine thing. For most folks this is not true, but it does rear its ugly head sometimes, and to pretend that it doesn’t just isn’t being real.
While I do wear men’s clothing, I don’t bind. I do not enjoy wearing dresses, skirts, or even utilikilts, but I appreciate Mo’s reminder that transmasculine has many faces (and wardrobes).
Being a trans person who doesn’t bind and who plans no surgeries or hormone therapies, I do experience the kind of invisibility that Mo describes. I believe, however, that there has to be room under the tent for all of us. Like Mo, I am rarely read as trans because I neither bind nor have transformed my body in any of the visible ways that read most clearly as trans, at least in the Bay Area.
Much love to all of my trans community. Our journeys are all so different and so richly diverse. I welcome Mo’s voice, not only because, at least in one aspect, this post really speakers to me, but also because–even though I cannot relate to all aspects of this post–I have learned from it, and it has reminded me that transmasculine doesn’t always express itself the way that I do.
One reason this post is creating strife is because of the term “transmasculine,” which is a term that lumps together disparate groups that have nothing in common. I am a trans man. Whether I am masculine or not is beside the point.
I have no idea why Mo binds and evidently neither did he but it seemed to come out of some desire to fit into trans culture, something centered around a medical need that others have confused as having something to do with gender expression. If Mo wants to bind as part of gender expression, fine. But let’s not conflate sex with gender.
I’m “comfortable with my femme side” too but that has jack all to do with whether or not I’m comfortable having breasts.
That’s the last time I suggest that anyone check their privilege here; apparently that’s not what people do in this space.
I think the difficulty is that privilege cuts in many directions here. Sure, there’s privilege in experiencing dysphoria less intensely, but there’s also privilege in having experiences that fit the dominant narrative. I don’t see this particular view of binding expressed in many places, and I’m sure for the people it resonates with, it is enormously affirming to read, just as you might find other experiences about binding/top surgery so affirming.
If you really think that non-binary people are the privileged group in intra-trans relations, you are not at all in tune with reality.
I love this post and as per usual, it has me thinking. Thank you for sharing your experiences with the world. They don’t fit into nice little boxes and that is truly inspiring. I enjoy that you speak of your experiences without negating the experiences of others and am always caught off guard when I read the comments as I feel like they come out of left field. You reflect on your experiences and yours alone and at times, they will resonate with others.
Reading these comments has been difficult and I hope that you are giving equal (if not more) weight to the positive comments. I just want to respond to one question asked above: “Can you understand how annoying it is for transsexuals to listen to you whine about how hard it is not to have intense amounts of body-related agony?” I do not feel that is what you are doing at all. It is clear that you have lived with a bunch of it and you are working on where you need to be happy with who you are and that is inspiring.
Thank you for writing this article. It’s nice to hear a variety of opinions and feelings from people all over the transmasculine spectrum. I know it’s hard for some people to hear an experience that does not exactly match up with their own, and easy for people to pass judgement online. Personally, I can identify with a lot of what you’re saying, and the subject matter is a good one.
I have diminished lung capacity, so binding for me is very difficult. I’m nowhere near having the money for surgery, yet I bind as much for my safety among others as for my own feelings of dysphoria about my body. I don’t feel safe going out in public without TRYING to pass as male (or female). Unfortunately, even with 2 years of testosterone and binding, I often don’t pass as male, so often I wonder why I’m doing it since it is so hard to breathe and be physically active while binding. Yes, I feel very uncomfortable with my breasts, but I would not bind as often if I did not feel I had to, in order to be read as male by other transguys and by society in general.
There are many interlocking issues related to binding, and I’m glad you’re willing to bring up the subject.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience. I feel I am invisible in other ways. I identify as trans, sometimes as genderqueer, and I am solely read as a cisdude. I do bind for the most part and I would love to be able to afford top surgery, but I still would identify as trans and feel uncomfortable when people “he” me and “sir” me.
It’s hard being read as trans in general I feel since it’s not on most peoples’ radar as a legitimate gender identity or expression. Boy or girl? That’s it.
I like to wear scandalous tanks in the summer, and I really appreciate binding then because it attracts funny looks since people aren’t sure why I’m wearing some weird thing if I’m supposed to be a cisguy.
Mo, I appreciate your post. You bring to light some important issues that don’t get discussed very often. I am reminded that each of us has our own journeys through the complex landscapes of sex and gender. No one can speak for anyone else what this is all about. I appreciate you having the courage to speak your truth and I hope you will not be deterred by the negative comments.
I found this article interesting but I can’t relate to the experiences of the author. I’m learning how different people relate and the more I know the more it confuses me to be quite honest. I find that the term ‘trans’ encompasses a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. I told a person once that I am not trans but FTM. This person told me that they are also FTM but also identify as a woman. Well, that confused me as I thought it meant Female to Male. I suppose a part of me is trying to figure out how one has gender dysphoria but is also comfortable in their own body so I continue to read to understand it. Afterall, we don’t fit into a little box. Though, to be honest I feel as if sometimes my identity is being pushed to the side as others explore their gender identity. Though, that could and is likely a selfish assumption on my part. Today though, I prefer to identify myself as a transsexual instead of trans.
My gender is male and my sex assigned at birth was female, but I don’t have a problem with my body at all. I have never felt uncomfortable about my maleness or my female parts. My body feels male to me. It always has. It is definitely possible to experience your female parts as male. I’m not the only trans guy who experiences his body in this way. I love my body, like most cisguys I know. It’s one of the things I’ve always loved about being male. In fact, there are many ways in which I identify more with cisguys in their experience of maleness than some transguys, particularly because a number of trans buddies didn’t feel comfortable in their bodies until they made some changes. My way of being trans is not more right that theirs, though. It’s just difference.
I really understand this. I generally feel fairly comfortable with this female body (although at the same time I feel very disconnected from it. It’s not really /my/ body, it’s just a body that’s in my possession. I’m not really sure where /my/ body is). Sometimes I even show it off and get competitive about having a better body that people around me. I don’t think this makes me less of a man – rather, I think it’s just one of the ways in which I show the traditionally masculine trait of competition, and I think that I often have the same pride in and sexualization of my body that a lot of men experience. The fact that this body is very different from the typical male body really doesn’t make a difference. Hatred or discomfort with your body is a common trans experience, but it’s by no means universal.
// I’m going to be speaking about my feelings towards my anatomy, so I figured I’d post this Potential Dysphoria Trigger warning //
There are (self-reportedly muscular) cis and genderqueer men who claim online that they have or want breast implants. I’ve heard of it for purposes of career drag, body inflation fetishes, the sexual gratification of one’s self or partner, or from internet poster ‘boobzilla’, what may simply be a desire to “own [his] own rack” but the reality is that there are a variety of male-identified people and their feelings about having or being perceived as having ‘breasts’ are just as varied.
Identifying male and being male and having breasts is a scary and dysphoric thing for a lot of people, but IMHO, for some it really is just another subset of transgendered behavior. There exist transgendered trans and trans cismen who abhor the ‘vacuum’ (so to speak, an attempt at surgical humor?) and dream instead of so many silicone pillows. So why couldn’t a transsexual FTM also experience being transgender in the form of either wanting a rack of his own or feeling ambivalent about his chest?
At least in my experience, there are many ways I struggle with calming dysphoria – drugs and alcohol aren’t going to do all the work for me! But binding is only one way I deal – a pretty good way, it usually gets me to ‘pass’, at least on first glances. I try to think of “these old things” as some sort of gift (or punishment?) from god or nature or karma. Another path my journey took was for a while seeing myself as a female impersonator who just happened to not have to get a boob job in order to genderf***. (trying to keep it PG in here I guess)
For example, had I been born cismale, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would have sought to imitate the female form and cross dress for self-expression and entertainment purposes. I don’t think I would ever actually take it as far as getting implants, but who knows? In fact, I feel like I share a lot in common with the stories of other male cross dressers. I have no desire to be female. But the next time my male cross dresser friends and I get drunk, play dress up and maybe make out like pretendbians, I’ll send ya’ll all the link to my tumblr.
In a nutshell, Mo’s post reminded me that in fostering a community that values the sharing of difference and personal experience, we’re going to come up against some things that make us cringe. It’s always a good idea when posting personal stories to include a warning if you even think the possibility exists that someone might be triggered. We’re talking about life or death here for a lot of folks, including myself. I can’t tell you how many times early in my transition I scoured the internet for trans stories, only to be left feeling suicidally depressed and definitely not trans* enough.
Anyway, I’m new here – nice to meet ya’ll?
Thank you for an interesting email and to interesting comments. To add my tuppence, I am FTM, I won’t bind because I don’t like pain. I have small boobies and am thinking about seeing wether I can build them up so I don’t need surgery, that’s because of the first point again. Over the years I have definately used practices such as yoga to gain a positive relationship with my body away from gender dysphoria. I would say I like my body, I just would like a different type of body more and I guess that’s to do with neurological incongruence. And now I am accepting of that fact, I can still have a positive relationship with my body but still want bits of it chopped off to make me happy. But in the meantime I am lanky bloke with tits, and so far no one cares. over time I have been mistaken for being the wrong gender, the wrong age, posh, thick, poor etc.. But it doesn’t matter, I know who I am, or as Mo says least I do on the day!
it must be awful being shamed for being who you are in a community thats supposed to help you. im not trans but i had a semi similar experience in the lesbian community for not looking “butch” enough with meant i wasn’t a real lesbian. i know its probably not nearly as bad but it left me feeling crushed.