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@disparx
Hey, don't know if you still use this blog but ... thank you for writing about your experience♡ I'm waiting to hear when my surgery date will be and it's kind of hitting me that it'll be happening soon-ish. Seeing your early posts about your anxieties makes me feel a lot better
Aw you’re welcome! I still check this blog but I don’t post anymore because I really don’t have any updates anymore. I hope your surgery and recovery go well!! 💕
We really have harmed a whole generation of trans and gnc children by failing to communicate how serious a decision binding actually is, how there’s no ACTUALLY safe way to bind, how it permeneantly damages the body, how it can make top surgery more difficult in the future. I don’t think we should be keeping trans kids from binding (we let kids do all sorts of things they’re really not old enough to understand the potential consequences of) but we owe them the ability to make informed decisions at LEAST
So this is definitely an important conversation to have, but can you point me at some reading about “permanent damage”? I might just be lucky, but I had zero lasting effects from binding. I’d like to at least read up on it so I can have this conversation and be more specific than “be careful.”
Of course! I can’t easily source right now but I am more than happy to provide further info when I am not at work and on mobile. Unfortunately, like a lot of trans healthcare, a lot of what we know about binding is anecdotal and word of mouth. BUT permeneant damage can include:
-Musculoskeletal damage. Binders are indiscriminate compression tools; they can’t flatten the chest without applying pressure every other anatomical structure underneath including the spine, ribs, lungs and heart. Many people who bind experience chronic back pain, shoulder pain, sharp stabbing chest pains, permeneantly decreased lung capacity, literal spine deformation, etc etc.
-A continuation of the above but the ribs are actually jointed bones. Their ability to flex is absolutely vital to their ability to withstand trauma and protect your vital organs. Imagine the damage that would be done to your elbow if your bent your arm to full flexion and then tightly bound it closed like that, for six, eight, twelve hours per day, every day, for weeks or months or years. And you don’t NEED a functioning arm to live!
-Tissue atrophy. Forcing chest tissue to lay in an unnatural way can and will change the way that tissue looks, even to risk of atrophy. Some people who bind and only moderately dislike the way their chest looks find that they HATE the way it looks after binding for a period of time. Tissue atrophy can also make top surgery more difficult in the future, and increase the risk of complications like nerve damage.
-Worsened dysphoria. Once someone starts binding and becomes accustomed to seeing themselves with a flat chest, it can be much more difficult to see yourself without one, and dysphoria that much more intolerable. You can imagine the psychological feedback loop of binding more in response.
The typical safety measures passed around about binding are harm REDUCTION measures and should not be advertised as making binding “safe.” Binding is not safe. It is a very serious health decision with long term consequences and should be treated as such. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong decision, but it should not be considered the DEFAULT decision for chest dysphoria which is frankly how it’s currently treated.
gonna drop some links to read more:
Health impact of chest binding among transgender adults: a community-engaged, cross-sectional study Inside the Landmark, Long Overdue Study on Chest Binding
Binding FAQ
Health Consequences of Chest Binding
@pooflyperfectprincess
Holy shit
I went to the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference and went to a workshop held by a chiropractor who works with trans men (as well as being a trans man himself), so I’m going to pass on his advice to people who bind:
Stretch your chest, shoulders, and back everyday (at least)
This is a passive stretch where you place a foam roller at the bottom of your spine (to support your hips and lower back), and lifts your shoulders off of the ground, with your arms on the ground to balance you.
This stretch is meant to be held for a few minutes, open up your chest, and aid your everyday posture.
You probably don’t own a foam roller, he advised to wrap a towel or blanket very tightly and tied as a substitute. I use a layer of bed foam rolled up with two belts to keep it rolled. Whatever you use, it ought to have a bit of give and it needs to lift your shoulders off the ground.
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This is an active stretch. Stand in front of a doorway with your feet together (if the door way was not there, your toes would be touching the wall, not crossing through it). When you lift your arms up and put them against the wall, your feet, hips, and arms should all be in line with each other (your arms should not be behind you with your feet and hips in the doorway).
Make a “W” shape with your arms against the wall so that your elbows are the closest part of your arm to the ground, and take one small step forward.
You should feel a pull in your lower shoulders, but it should be comfortable to hold. Do not over stretch, you shouldn’t be leaning your weight into your arms to balance, your weight should be balanced by your legs. Do not judge yourself and think you are doing yourself a favor by thinking that you ought to have a bigger step. Sure, you could overstretch today, but you need to be able to do this tomorrow too! Hold this for 10-15 seconds. (Yet again. Do. Not. Overstretch.)
Bring your feet back together, and do it the other foot. There will probably be one foot that is easier than the other, stretch that step more often than the less difficult step.
Bring your feet together and bring your elbows up so that your upper arms are parallel to the ground and your elbow forms a 90° angle with your forearms. Take your small step forward and hold for 10-15 seconds and switch feet.
Now reach your arms up as high as you can. It doesn’t have to be much higher than the last stretch, if that is as high as you can go, then that’s it. If you can’t reach higher than the last stretch, put your arms down at your sides and then lift your arms up from your sides and put them against the wall (sorry he didn’t include a picture of this one in the slides, message me if this is unclear.)
Your goal is to be able to reach your arms up like in the picture so that you form a Y shape. Step forward and hold for 10-15 seconds, then switch feet.
His advice was to do this stretch as often as you use the bathroom at home (shoot for 3-5 times a day).
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The next two stretchs don’t have pictures! If you can do these stretches with ease and want a more intense version, try using dumbbells and incorporating it into your workouts.
If you’ve ever done snow angels? Put your heels, butt, shoulders, and arms up against a wall (as much of your body as you possibly can should be touching the wall) and lift your arms up as high as you can go like you are making a snow angel.
Alternatively, lay down on the ground instead of up against a wall if you need to work your way up to lifting your arms above your head.
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Again, with your body up against the wall, but this time with your arms in front of you, bring your arms up like Frankenstein’s monster, so that they are as high as your shoulders. Hold this for a few seconds.
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After trying these stretchs, it’ll probably be clear where your range of motion is most limited. For me, the most useful stretches are the W and 90° angle doorway stretch and foam roller stretch, bc I have the most trouble with my lower shoulders and chest. Try to maintain your range of motion where you have it, and use these stretches to improve your range of motion where you are limited.
1 year post op
omg dudes it’s been a whole year!! aaaaaaaaaaaa
(i got my top surgery with Dr. Éric Bensimon in Montreal. i’m 20, nonbinary, and not on T.)
my scars have faded a LOT. how visible they are varies a lot with the light. in brighter light like this, they show up less, and in darker light like my 9 month post, they show up more. i’ve been putting bio oil on them every night and i think that has made them fade more.
left nip + scar. left nip is a funny boy. healed kinda weird but i love him anyway.
right nip + scar. right nip is an oval man and that’s ok too.
idk what dictates which parts of my nipples have more colour but they’re kinda whiter like my skin colour around the outsides and darker in the middle.
my chest is still pretty sensitive to pressure. i don’t know if it’s because the muscles are tight or because of the scar tissue. i try massaging it sometimes but i don’t wanna hurt myself. i should probably see someone about that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
my scars and nipples are completely numb, but other than that i’ve regained a lot of sensation. however, there are a bunch of areas where my sensation is not 100%, and when i touch them the touch feels lighter than i know it actually is. in the area under my nipple on my left side, where i feel the touch doesn’t quite match up to where it’s supposed to be, which is a weird sensation.
here, i made a shitty diagram:
red is completely numb, orange is partial sensation, and no colour is full sensation. (the red lines on my scars are too thick actually they’re just the width of the scar)
you’d think having numb areas would suck but it’s fine tbh i don’t notice it unless i’m looking for it. they’re only numb to touch, like surface-level; pressure i can feel fine. it doesn’t make my shirt feel weird or anything.
Because I love myself and it’s h*cking hot out, here’s a shirtless pic
9 1/2 months post op
do any of you remember like 7 months ago when i was like “i’m gonna grow my hair out!”? look, i did. i’m gonna cut it again tho cuz it gets in my face when the wind blows lol. i think my hair is also a huge determining factor in which direction i pass - i’ve been getting read as female a lot more in the past few weeks.
my scars have faded quite a bit since my last update. i still use bio oil on them every night, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future because in 9 months of continuous use i’ve used like a fifth of the little bottle i bought. the scars are kinda wrinkly sometimes (vertical wrinkles) but very soft.
left side (the lighting makes it look kinda bruised and weird but it’s not)
right side
an exciting development from the past few weeks is i’m regaining some sensation in the area between my nipple and my scar, which besides the scar itself is the only place i still have numbness. it’s very odd, when i run my finger across the area it feels sort of like the sensation lags slightly behind the finger.
that’s the only notable change though. i still have a lot of buildup of scar tissue beneath the surface which feels bumpy and is sensitive to pressure.
i’m gonna go swimming this weekend for the first time since i was 13!! hopefully i still remember how to do it... i bought my bathing suit from outplay, which is an online US-based swimwear company geared toward gender nonconforming afab people. as a canadian it’s on the expensive side, but i couldn’t find anything in stores in the style i wanted or that fit me.
Hi I thought I was nonbinary but recently I’ve just been so confused. I’m registered for top surgery in my state but I’m worried it’s a mistake. I don’t know what my gender feels like anymore and everything I do makes me feel dysphoric both masculine and feminine things.
how far out is your top surgery? if it’s a long ways off, keep it, but if it’s really soon, you might be better off postponing it. it’s important that you feel ready and certain when you get surgery, and it’s not a bad thing if you need more time. better to take time to feel sure than to rush into it.
both masculine and feminine things making you dysphoric sounds nonbinary - at least that’s how i experience it. but i get it, gender is hard to pin down. my friend’s little sib recently asked me what my advice is to people questioning their gender, and i said to focus on the things you know. it’s so easy to get wrapped up in all the things you don’t know because gender is such a fundamental part of us and questioning that creates so many unknowns. i think focusing on things you do know - i know this thing makes me dysphoric, i know i want this part of medical transition, etc - can help you figure out the underlying gender identity.
i went to see a doctor a couple days ago just to check up on the tissue. it had been causing me some stabbing pain when i took deep breaths or just randomly, mostly on my left side in the lower part of my chest where it’s numb. it’s fine now, it didn’t last very long and it didn’t hurt that bad.
also in that spot the tissue feels pretty bumpy and gnarly under the skin. i figured it was tight muscles, since i know i have tight chest muscles from bad posture.
according to my doctor, it was all just scar tissue. the bumpiness will level out eventually as the scar tissue breaks down (which massaging and stretching can theoretically expedite, and i’m doing those things already). the pain is from my nerves, and is something that i’ll just have to deal with until they settle down.
dont you wanna go on t?
Not really… I’m nonbinary not male, and the only change I want from t is the voice. The rest would make me more dysphoric. If I were to go on t, I would only go on it for a short amount of time until my voice got as low as I want it, and then come off again.
are u on t?
I am not on t, probably never will be
6 months post op!!
here we are!! wild
front (sorry for bad quality photos, i used the front-facing camera)
right side
left side
right nip - defs looking super oblong but it’s whatever. also it’s not this red irl, it’s more brown, and there’s more of a contrast between the colour of my skin and the colour of the nip and the scar.
left nip - also p oblong and definitely higher up on my chest than the right one. still has that crease in it, which was caused by the scab - if you go back in this blog to when i was scabbing you can see why. you can also see how when my nipples were put on, they were really good circles - it is not Dr. Bensimon’s fault that my nipples are ovals, that’s just how they healed.
i’ve been pretty much painless since my last update (which was 3 months ago yikes i know), except for the very occasional stabbing pain in one of my scars that only lasts for a few seconds. i have full mobility and flexibility. however, there are these knots in my chest that are so tight they literally hurt to touch? i try to massage them regularly but i forget most of the time... but like it’s not bad or anything and probably if i got someone to professionally massage them they’d go away.
i don’t have any more swelling anymore, i don’t think. i’m still mostly numb along the length of the scars, as well as the area between my nipple and my scar, and my nipples themselves, especially on the right side. on the left it’s like, i can sorta feel it but not fully, like the response feels sluggish, if that makes any sense. probably some of the nerves in the area reconnected but not all of them. right side i got nothing.
in my last update i talked about weird lines radiating out of my nipples. those have faded, but they’re still there. it’s like little super-shallow divots in the skin surface. no idea why, but i don’t think you’d really notice them unless you were looking.
i’m back in school again, so physio has taken a bit of a backseat, which is definitely problematic but i’m conscious of my actions and in theory i know how to fix myself if i fuck something up, so i should be fine. i wanna do my physio stuff but it takes so looong and i got assignments to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk dude i’ll get back to it at some point. i’ve been doing pretty ok without doing it regularly so that’s a good sign.
6 months though!!!!!!!!!! 6 months post op! fuckin WILD.
Uhhh you're really cute oh my gosh
thx my dude
the coolest part is that i have no dysphoria anymore. like yeah obviously, but i mean, it used to be something i thought about all the time. it was part of my routine. not that i thought about how much i hated myself all the time, because i couldn’t afford to dwell on it, but like “i can’t wear that because i’ll have dysphoria” “i have to remember to bind before i go out” “do i bind in class or in res, i can only do one” “my ribs hurt but i’m at work so i can’t do anything about it”. or walking around and just feeling lowkey self-conscious without really getting upset over it
and all of that is just Gone. overnight, poof. now i don’t think about my chest at all when i’m going about my day. i underestimated how much of my mental energy i spent minimizing and ignoring dysphoria. sometimes i have weird moments where my brain is like “think about ur chest! why isn’t it bothering u?? it should be bothering u!” cuz it’s just so habitual. but it doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t distract me, and i don’t even have to spend any effort to achieve that anymore.
Binding and posture
Everyone talks about binding and rib damage, and that’s really important. But no one talks about binding and shoulder blades.
Now disclaimer I’m not an expert on anything whatsoever, not even close but this is my thinking based on my own experience and inference.
Consider this: you’re a pre-op transmasculine person with bad posture, like most people who bind. Your shoulders roll forward and hunch to conceal your chest. I mean no judgment, this is just how it is to have chest dysphoria.
Some facts about shoulders: when your shoulders are rolled forward, your shoulder blades wing out. When your chest is out and your shoulders are back, your shoulder blades retract. Try it right now in the mirror with just your binder on.
Imma tell you from experience that having your shoulder blades in that winged out position all the time is really not good for them. Some of your tendons lengthen, others shorten, and that starts to be your normal position, and it’s a bitch to put them back.
Now consider this: you’re wearing a binder for 8 hours a day with your shoulders in this position. Your binder is squeezing your shoulder blades, essentially pressing them further into this unhealthy position. Basically what I’m saying is, while everyone can get fucked from having bad posture, people who bind are gonna get fucked a lot more easily than other people.
So to people who bind: try to have as good posture as you can handle, ESPECIALLY when you’re binding.
Listen I’m not here to preach. I know it’s incredibly hard and psychologically taxing to have good posture when you’re trying desperately to hide your chest, and if I could go back and make myself try harder, I don’t know that I would. I just want people to have the information.
So here are some tips for good posture that not everyone knows:
Let’s start basic. Chest out, shoulders back and down. Pretend you’re fucking proud of your chest, or at least not as ashamed of it as you feel.
Traps should be relaxed, no shrugging.
Core slightly engaged, breathing without shrugging.
Glutes a lil engaged, but don’t go too hard lol.
Now things start to get a little weird. Stand up normally with your hands at your sides, and look at your thumbs. Little shits are pointing at each other aren’t they. Ideally, they should be pointing forward. Fucking wild, I know.
Don’t just twist your wrists and say “look they’re pointing forward I fixed it!” It needs to come from your shoulders and lats. This is fucking hard to do. Focus on improvement rather than an immediate 100% fix.
Lats engaged. That’s the muscle that you would use if you tried to bring your elbows together through your body. Engaging your lats will pretty much instantly turn your thumbs out somewhat.
Try this: push on the front of your shoulder using your opposite-hand fingers, and let your shoulder go with the push. Then try to keep it there. (It might crack. That’s ok as long as it doesn’t hurt.)
Look at your shoulders in the mirror. Are they level? Try to make them level.
If a lot of this shit is really hard for you, you might just have really tight muscles in your upper torso. Get a massage if you can afford it, or look up ways to massage yourself.
Some of this stuff varies from person to person but I think these are good as general rules? If someone more knowledgeable about literally anything wants to add to this, please do. I’m pretty much just regurgitating what my trainer tells me, but also he thinks I’m a cis guy and has no idea how I fucked myself up so bad lol.
tl;dr: People who bind are at a greater risk of bad posture related injuries. I know it’s hard but try to have good posture when you bind. Read the bullets for good posture tips.
I swear I’ll never take a goddamn day for granted.
101 days post op
i bought a crop top!!! i’ve wanted this for YEARS and it makes me so happy! i’m so glad i can finally express my gender however i want and not be limited by physical dysphoria.
something i learned: most crop tops are designed to stretch over your boobs, so they bunch up in the chest. so i couldn’t get a more t-shirt-y kind of crop top, i had to go for a sweater style. it seems vaguely impractical and idrk how to wear it BUT I DON’T CARE I LIKE IT
so if y’all... transmasc followers of this blog... have tips for me on how to wear a crop top sweater... hmu lmao
also shoutout to @croptopsareforguys for being a quality blog
I probably just missed it but how long did you have to stay in Montreal? When were you able to travel home?
i arrived on the 22 and stayed the night, had surgery on the 23, left on the 24 midday. i believe i could have stayed one more day, but we found out we could leave whenever we wanted so my mom was like “let’s just go home u’ll be more comfortable at home anyway”. so i stayed in montreal for only 2 nights
Hey Jack! I found you a la google this morning, I know this is random but you are the first person I have found to ask this of.... I tried to read through your blog to find this info, so apologies if it has been posted already. I have received my OHIP letter for GRS after having a letter written for me, and have now received my info package from them. It's saying I need a secondary letter from a WPATH certified practitioner? Did you find you required this as well??
i’m a little confused... who is asking for it, GRS or OHIP? either way, i think the answer is no... you shouldn’t need a secondary letter of recommendation for top surgery, only bottom surgery.
GRS sent me a scan of a sheet called “acknowledgement of receipt and missing documents”. secondary letter of recommendation was an option listed but not checked off.
