sadkairi:

e-cryptid:

There is no “safe way” to bind your chest. “Don’t wear a binder for more than eight hours a day,” “don’t sleep while binding” and “use a proper binder from Underworks or gc2b” are harm reduction tips, nothing more. Even if you do everything right if you bind consistently over long periods of time then you’re almost definitely going to fuck up your back a little and reduce your lung capacity.

Your mental health is a part of your health, too, and it’s OKAY if you have to make the need to reduce your daily dysphoria your #1 priority BUT everyone really needs to stop talking about binding as if it has no impact on the body if done correctly. It encourages people who don’t need to do it to do it anyway even though it could harm them and it implicitly blames those with binding related injuries for not just “doing it right.”

I was an athlete before I started binding regularly. Now I can’t breathe as deeply as I used to be able to, and any strenuous movement causes pain my my shoulders and chest. No one told me that even proper binding could result in injury, and even though I never played or worked out while binding, I still had to quit. I just wish we could have an honest conversation about the health risks associated with transition without it being viewed as an attack on trans people.