Binding is not safe. Long term, it is detrimental to your physical health. While the social and psychological benefits might outweigh the physical risks for many people, the choice to bind should be made with the understanding that the risks cannot be eliminated even with great care to ensure good fit and avoid overuse. Tightly compressing a large part of your body with many complex skeletal and muscular connections on a regular basis damages your body over time. Take off-days, wear the proper size from reputable makers, don’t sleep or exercise in them, and take them off as often as possible – all good advice that you absolutely must follow to be as safe as possible, but it’s impossible to guarantee that there will not be complications.
People tend to downplay the physical risks of binding because the payoff for self-confidence can be so profound. But seriously – even responsible binding is likely to cause complications ranging from sharp pains, nerve damage, dramatically decreased lung capacity, fluid buildup, skin issues, and back injury. Do not take it lightly just because it’s a piece of clothing that can be removed and does not need a doctor’s approval or informed consent to use.
If you must bind, be gentle with yourself. On your off-time, or if you choose not to bind at all, puffer vests are your new best friends. Seriously. Get your Marty McFly on. Not your style? Your loss, you unfashionable fool, but scarves, loose-fitting button-downs, and bomber jackets can help as well.
Okay shut the fuck up.
If it’s a decision between hurting myself but feeling confident, or killing myself because I don’t feel like I belong in my own body, I think I’d choose the former.
That’s your prerogative. I never told anyone NOT to wear a binder. However, it’s a major medical decision, and minimizing or dismissing the very real and common side-effects is not good for anyone, especially young people just beginning to transition. Like I said, sometimes the psychological benefits outweigh the physical costs – if not wearing a binder makes you suicidal, then clearly continuing to wear a binder is the correct decision for you.
The problem lies in presenting binders as a miracle solution that everyone can and should try if they are distressed by the appearance of their chest, or that only “incorrect” binding (as with ace bandages) poses any dangers. Some people may develop complications that make it impossible for them to continue binding. It is vitally important that people are aware of the potential harm before they begin and are able to make informed decisions by weighing their own priorities and exploring alternatives.
Unlike surgery or hormones, binders are not medically regulated and don’t require you to understand what you’re getting into. That means we have to look after each other, and in this case, that means being honest about safety.
I would also really appreciate if we worked on respecting people who can’t bind anymore because of complications, and not treating them as not “really” trans or continuing to use their assigned gender to refer to them.
Like, it’s an issue with gatekeepers, but it’s also an issue within the trans community.
Tag: respect
this is good
I’d just like to add, see how they behave when they’re angry/frustrated/exhausted, and if you see something that concerns you, wait until they’re calm, and then talk to them about it.
My husband used to yell when he got frustrated, but after I explained to him that I found it upsetting, he stopped yelling and started consciously working on asking for help before he got to that level of frustration.
When I’m upset over something, or just in a bad mood, I tend to withdraw. My husband explained to me that it makes him feel like I’m mad at him, so now when I need some space, I’ll tell him what I’m upset about, or that I’m in a bad mood for no particular reason, and I need to be alone for a little while.
See your friends and partners at their worst, but don’t assume that their worst is immutable. If someone loves and cares about you, they’ll try to accommodate you to the best of their ability.
When audiences at disability conferences laugh instead of listening
A challenge to disability professionals and disabled presenters at conferences and panels: Please find a way to respond to the routine contempt that presenters with disabilities are treated with.
I’ve gone to a fair number of disability-related conferences in the past few years. At nearly every conference, I saw an audience laugh at a presenter/panelist with a developmental disability. This happened particularly often to presenters with intellectual disabilities, but I also saw it happen to autistic presenters and presenters with speech disabilities.
This isn’t a matter of random jerk encounters; it’s a major cultural problem. Even disability professionals who pride themselves on inclusivity and respect tend to behave this way.
This isn’t nice laughter. It’s not a response to something funny. It’s a response to presenters talking about what they’re proud of, what they’re good at, or talking about wanting control over their own lives. People also laugh similarly when parents and siblings talking about their disabled relative wanting autonomy or objecting to being treated like a little child. This happens all the time, and it needs to stop.
If you’re moderating a panel and the audience laughs at a panelist, here’s one method for shutting this down:
Be proactive about taking the panelist seriously:
- Don’t look at the audience while they’re laughing, and *especially* don’t laugh or smile yourself.
- Wait for the audience to stop laughing.
- Pause briefly before going on. This will make the laughter feel awkward.
- Ask the panelist a question that makes it clear that you respect what they’re saying.
- You can explicitly ask “Did you mean that seriously?”
- You can also be a bit less direct, and say something like “That sounds important. Can you say more?”
- You can also ask a follow-up question about the specific thing they were saying.
I think that we all need to be proactive about changing this culture. (Including disabled presenters who get laughed at; we need to insist on being taken seriously. More on that in another post).
There are more ways to shut down disrespectful laughter and insist on respectful interactions than I know about. What are yours?
Teaching Consent to Small Children
A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.
“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”
Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.
My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.
“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”
Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.
“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.
What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.
Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.
And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?
I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.
Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!
Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.
just saw ur comment that you have a really strong startle reflex. I do too, from a past partner who was sexually abusive. my current bf doesn’t really get that when he touches me without me being aware he’s about to touch me, i automatically get scared. like, as a reflex. he says it feels like i don’t trust him, and i’ve told him that’s not the case- my mind totally trusts him, but my body just sends me crazy danger signals anyways. do you have any advice or tricks that have worked for you? thx!
The people that I’ve trusted most in my life have been the people totally aware of their ability to hurt me. They aren’t ashamed that they have it; they just choose not to use it. My foster dad was the only person I fully trusted until I was 25, and he’s a military combat veteran with PTSD. I think a lot of what made him so trustworthy for me was that he was never upset when I was startled or uncomfortable with him; he just factored that into his plans. “I’ll explain it, but to adjust your stance more I’d have to come in and move your legs.” “You can sit on this couch with me, or drag over that chair.” “If you’re okay being around people with guns, you can come to [event], otherwise I’ll see you on Thursday.” And we’re from a social context where some people just DO have those triggers, and you accept that and Don’t Fucking Touch People When They Can’t See You. My own startle reflex is from childhood bullying, but it blends in pretty well with a found-family of military veterans and trauma survivors.
So I mean, there are ways to tone down a startle reflex, which are mostly just “ways to get PTSD treated” but I for one? Chose to actively keep my startle reflex even as I went through other treatments (medication, therapy, EMDR, yoga, etc). I’m generally a pretty passive and gentle person IRL, since I’ve worked to be very soothing and calming to other trauma victims in my work, but that means my boundaries get trampled a lot. If I didn’t have a strong startle reflex, I’d just freeze up when my physical boundaries are infringed on, whereas the startle gives me the energy I need to get physically clear and have a bit of adrenaline going to do something scary like tell them to back off.
So you know, this is me and the choices I’ve made–choices like “not dating anyone until I was 29 and finally found someone 100% okay with my boundaries”–but I’d tell your boyfriend to learn to deal with it? If you were a combat veteran who startled every time he dropped something loud, I bet he’d have a lot more sympathy for you and not make it All About Him. I mean, I get that it sucks to make a gesture of intimacy and connection and have it rebuffed, but the point is: IT’S NOT ABOUT HIM, BECAUSE IF YOU KNEW IT WAS HIM YOU WOULDN’T FLINCH. You say yourself that it’s about being aware that it’s him touching you! It’s knowing, “This is my boyfriend, whom I trust; a serial killer hasn’t wormed his way under my couch and decided to wrap an arm around me.”
So maybe he needs to work on better signalling his presence the way my found family does, like audibly making sounds when he’s coming up behind you (scuffing his feet as he walks, jingling keys, humming or whistling), approaching from within your field of vision before he touches you, or moving from a known area of touch for a new one (so if, say, he’s standing next to you, instead of just throwing an arm around your shoulders, he touches a near part of you with his hand, then slides it across your shoulders, so you’re always aware of what’s happening.)
Maybe HE lives in a world where people can be 100% trustworthy? Maybe he lives in a world where it’s reasonable to be hurt when people don’t automatically interpret everything you do as benign. But I’ve lived with being traumatized for so long, and lived around traumatized people so long, that I’m like, “That sounds like an interesting place, I wonder what colour the sky is there.” Like… you don’t think he’s bad or malign or going to kill you (one PRESUMES), but at the same time, you live in a world where the people you’re socially close to and comfortable around CAN hurt you, and your definition of “trust” is always going to mean choosing to be around them despite knowing they can hurt you. It’s not very possible for you or your body to just un-know that.
And in the end it ABSOLUTELY would not cool or fair if you end up in a situation where HE can show upset and discomfort with your emotional expressions, but YOU cannot show upset and discomfort with his, and his unhappiness is more important than yours, and you’re the one working to silence your discomfort for the good of the relationship but he’s not working to change his behaviour and deal with his emotions to make you happy. He needs to take his sadness over your “not trusting” him and go, “Okay, it’s not me, so now I’m just sad that my girlfriend had these negative experiences, but I will use that sadness to make sure I act in a way that feels safer and more comfortable to her.”
If I didn’t have a strong startle reflex, I’d just freeze up when my physical boundaries are infringed on, whereas the startle gives me the energy I need to get physically clear and have a bit of adrenaline going to do something scary like tell them to back off.
…..huh. My response is generally to freeze up until I can get out of the situation somehow (and I may not even notice that’s what I’m doing until after the fact). I don’t have a typically overactive startle response (usually). Perhaps I should stop letting my brain use that as “see you’re just faking.”
Yeah fear responses are actually tripartate: flight, fight, FREEZE.
@star-anise tends towards the flight-type of startle – jump/flinch AWAY, etc. I … have in fact nearly broken people’s noses because I have the fight-type – “KILL THE THING THAT TOUCHED ME”, and even though I’ve gotten a good handle on it so that I don’t HARM people without at least a split-second’s thought (enough to parse “do I know this person/was it probably a total accident/is killing Allowed here”), the hostility is still. Um. APPARENTLY VERY OBVIOUS.
But a fuck of a lot of people freeze, too. Especially people who’ve learned/been conditioned to know they CAN’T either fight or flee. Like all responses in some situations it can be vital, and in a lot of others is Less Useful.
It’s specifically Less Useful when you’re trying to establish working safe boundaries in situations where people genuinely can’t hit you with a mallet. Which is most of the situations one is in on a normal day to day basis.
So.
(Ok really on time out now. >.>)
this trend of people offering simple, usually good advice for feeling slightly better and being immediately met with “WE CANT ALL BE NEUROTYPICAL KAREN” needs to die ASAP if only because 99.99% of the time on Tumblr its friendly advice from one mentally ill person to the rest of us
And also… not everyone talking about this stuff is pushing it on everyone.
Like — Unfuck Your Habitat doesn’t work for me. Trying to engage with it would harm me.
I’m also really glad it exists. It works for a lot of other people.
It’s not harming me by existing.
Getting pushy and assuming that the same strategies must work for absolutely everyone are really what I object to. Doesn’t matter that much who they are or where they’re coming from with it, that type of overbearing approach is unlikely to go over well.
Unsolicited advice based in assumptions that you know better than the other person about their own life and wellbeing is just not cool. (And it’s also hardly limited to any one group. Unfortunately.)
That is also very different from the way more respectful “I have tried X and it worked very well for me in my particular situation (though of course YMMV)”. That type of discussion can be very helpful.
A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.
What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.
It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.
Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.
But like at the same time, Christians who have certain jobs need to throttle back at work because for real it gives me hives being told “Have a blessed day!” by someone like a receptionist at a doctor’s office. It happened today and while she was super-sweet and very obviously genuine (in context, I think she was actually trying to make me feel safe) it was still one of those “…welp…” moments. I’d just told her two minutes before that my girlfriend would be coming to the appointment with me. My cat was out of the bag, no takesie-backsies.
Christians have a very nasty track record with violence and obstruction against LGBT people like me, so I suddenly am aware that there are people around who might hate people like me, and they have the ability to make my getting medical care difficult or even impossible.
I get that even if they didn’t SAY it, they would still have the same biases, but I don’t have much choice in who I see, so I’d be stuck with them regardless, and I’d rather not have the anxiety of worrying about it. My other choice is not disclosing that I’m queer if it comes up, and even when not saying anything about it is an option, which it often isn’t, it’s not one I’m willing to take. I have to choose between being safe and being honest, and that’s shitty.
It can be hard to imagine, I think, for Christian people, what it’s like to be afraid like that, because to Christians, Christianity is a great thing and Christians are great people.
But like the first psych doctor they wanted to send me to for my disability reevaluation worked out of a Christian therapy office (okay) and their clinic policy was “gay people are against God.” (Not okay at all.)
My disability eval was going to be performed by a dude who was comfortable telling children they are wrong to be gay.
I called up the disability office the day I got the letter and got another doctor to do the eval. Thank goodness they were willing to reassign my case after I told them there was “a potential conflict of interest that might threaten the doctor’s impartiality.” Thank goodness I had the spoons to make the call and the presence of mind to phrase my issue the way I did instead of just yelling “MOVE I’M GAY.”
I mean, y’all understand, I could have gotten my benefits yanked if I’d gone in there and they’d taken a dislike to me based on the fact that I’m not cishet. Legal protections aside, there is no impartial third party monitoring that appointment, and they have total control over what goes on their paperwork. There is literally nothing keeping them from recommending I be denied. For disabled people, legal protections are only effective to the extent we can afford to enforce the law with our own money. Money that, if you are on disability, you obviously do not have.
Without my benefits, especially medical coverage, I cannot survive. So like.
Yeah.
A lot is riding on the goodwill of people who have been shown to historically have very little goodwill for people like me. I don’t like being reminded of it.
Y’all are cool, I love y’all so so so much, but y’all are also really fucking scary in large groups, and when one of y’all has power over me, I never know whether I can trust you and that shit is scary.
Fucking police your own, thanks.
Yeah I don’t think many Christians realize that most LGBTQIA+ people have had someone be all “have a blessed day!” and be super nice when they didn’t know that the person wasn’t cishet (or, heck, even Christian) and then turn into something completely different upon finding out.
Like. I get the whole “they will know we are Christian by our love” thing but having seen people turn from super-nice into “OMG you’re not a Pure individual and I MUST SAVE/SHUN/CHANGE YOU!” It is fuckin’ scary. So yeah people have every reason to be cautious when they find someone is not only Christian but the type who says blatantly Christian things to people. Because saying that so openly gives an implicit assumption that the person you are speaking to is also part of that group.
Or something. I am having a rough day and I don’t think I’m wording well.
You’re getting at something though. The implicit assumption that the person you just told to have a blessed day is also Christian. (Or at the very least, theist of some kind.)
Like, that’s part of what’s so disturbing. The other person is in this bubble of “Of course this is welcome because this is obviously a Good Christian Person like me!” and then, when you bust that bubble, they damn well could be nasty as hell about it – even nastier because they had tried to be nice, but you just had the gall to be rude to them by being super-gay.
And it’s also just … awkward … to have people assume I’m Christian, when I’m a member of a group that is explicitly shit upon by mainstream Christianity. Under most circumstances it doesn’t bother me and I take it as it’s usually intended: kindly. But in situations where my utter queerness is GOING to come up, and these people have the potential to be obstructive in some way, it makes me uncomfortable. Like with the doctor’s office the other day. I’m going to go into that same office in a couple of weeks for some really personal shit, and I’m bringing my GF with me, and now I’m worried that there will be an issue.
I’m like 90% sure there won’t be, because frankly two women together are not nearly as threatening as two dudes, and people’s ability to gals-being-pals us is frankly astonishing, but the thought is now in my head and because I have a for-real anxiety disorder, it’s not going to leave.
I know that receptionist absolutely did not intend for it to cause that reaction, I’m not even angry. I just wish people thought about what they say, and how it comes across.
A lot of dog training stuff is really hard for me to read. I recognize, intimately, both the tactics used by trainers and the reactions recorded by them from their dogs, from my own experiences as a child and teenager – in the place of the dog. They were not positive experiences for me, and I am doubtful that animals who are displaying the exact same reactions to the exact same stimuli are happier about it.
Like, I’ve experienced constant rewards on the basis of whether I’m focusing on someone else for long periods of time. It does work on humans, despite our complex brains. It’s probably just as effective on us as on dogs, honestly – which is not surprising, since “clicker training” was initially developed for use on marine mammals. (It has since been decried as cruel in that context.)
It’s horrible. It left me with severe PTSD. It’s been years since I got out of that situation, and I’m only sort of recovered. The rewards and constant demands for focus were much more traumatizing than being hit was.
I don’t think we have a good idea of what ways of teaching are non-traumatizing for dogs; and I do think that we have to do something for them to live with us safely; and that because of their numbers and degree of domestication the only realistic options are living with us or not at all.
I do think that we can safely assume that being ‘on’ all the time is stressful.
(Yes, I know many dogs display positive emotions and appear happy and eager during training and this kind of thing. So did I.
You’re rewarding the happiness as much as the behavior, for one; and once you’re used to this kind of thing, you are eager for it – because being rewarded tells you you haven’t done something wrong. The rest of the time is a kind of constant gnawing anxiety that you’re misbehaving. As a result, it tends to produce constant attention and physical proximity, with the dog/child constantly monitoring your emotional state and actions, and growing slightly frantic if prevented from doing that or denied positive reinforcement.
The positive reinforcement results in a temporary relief from the anxiety, which feels intensely pleasurable for a brief period before the anxiety comes back. So, you seem happy and excited; it’s the result of a constant and erratic back and forth between pleasure and fear.)
#it’s also worth pointing out that all of this is based on behavioral theories of cognition #which are a) totally outdated and disroven #and b) associated with horrific ethical breaches because they involve the idea that there is no autonomy or internality in animals #and consequently combine a sense of freedom from ethics in the reesarcher with a lack of concern for the wellbeing of the researched upon #they’re currently used mostly for torturing autistic kids
(please note: this post is about dog training. I care about autistic people and abuse survivors, being both, but this is not a post about those issues; it is about using the experiences of people who’ve been through behavioralist training and can tell us about it to interpret the experiences of dogs, who cannot.)
Basically, the goal of behavioralist training methods – whether used on dogs, dolphins or people – is to cut out or deny the role of the brain in decision making, reducing behavior to responses to external cues; behaviors that receive a good response should keep happening or happen when cued, behaviors that receive a bad response should stop. The only context is the cue – no emotions and no internal motivations, let alone conscious decision or thought.
I don’t think this is entirely possible, but you can get pretty far. A lot of autistic adults, and abuse survivors subject to less scientific versions of this spectrum of training methods, talk about being cue dependent – having difficulty initiating actions without an external cue or without being told to by someone else; or conversely, having difficulty not responding to a cue given intentionally or by accident in a way that resembles an old training cue.
(For a while, I had trouble in social situations because if the person I was talking to implied an expected answer I would automatically give it without having time to stop and think, and sometimes that meant I was lying. Fortunately, I’ve been out of my mother’s house for three and a half years now, and this particular problem is mostly gone.)
Interestingly, there are a number of studies that demonstrate that punishment and reward reduce intrinsic motivation (here’s a pop science article rounding them up). This has long been known – if perhaps not consciously – by behavioralist trainers, who sometimes extinguish a behavior by teaching it in response to the cue, and then never giving the cue; when done correctly, the animal or child will never produce the behavior autonomously.
(When I discussed this with my girlfriend a while ago, she mentioned that a behavioral problem seen in some protection trained dogs is biting in response to certain movements as though they can’t tell the difference between a person and a bite cushion.
It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on in a dog’s head, because we can’t talk to them and our understanding of their behavior is filtered through a mesh of body language differences, rewards and punishments for emotional expressions and communication, and their utter dependence on us. That said, I was pretty horrified by the implication that they may know they’re hurting people and be involuntarily biting anyway, unable to stop. I’ve been there, though thankfully not in a context involving assault.)
Obviously, we can’t allow dogs utter autonomy and still live with them, but dogs are living creatures who need some amount of autonomy the same way we do, and I think it’s worth considering whether we’re infringing on it because we need to, or because we think it’s fun, or it scores us dog trainer cred. Minimizing harm is sometimes all we can do.
I am still trying to decide what I think the best ways of doing that are. I think that requiring constant attention or focus is probably bad; that good enough to live with should be allowed to be good enough in regards to obedience training for non-working dogs; and that “extra” recreational activities such as dog sports should be chosen with an eye to things the dog is enthusiastic about initially, and things that involve decision making on the part of the dog.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.