“How to Thrust Your Fat into a More Appealing Shape”- thoughts on my first time binding my breasts

Okay, so this is my first post here, so be merciful about grammar and such and forgive me if it is more rambling than interesting.

I am genderqueer and moving towards a more androgynous presentation.  The biggest barrier to this is the fact that I have very large breasts.  Very, very large.  The DDD bras that I own is are too tight.  But, being a very large breasted non-binary person presents unique problems.  For one, it has taken surgical breast reduction pretty much off the table for now.  If I seek a breast reduction claiming my breast cause me back, neck, and shoulder pain (which they do), my increasingly obvious nonconforming presentation will mean that it will likely be taken as a pretext for a gender transition based procedure.  However, if I tried to go for gender transition reasons, I risk being forced into counseling which will try to get me to take a binary narrative.  That is not the path I want to take right now.  It may be right for others, but it is not for me right now.  The odds of finding a therapist who would accept my nonbinary identity; respects that I could want a reduction for both gender AND pain reasons; does not try to pathologize my politics (radical queer and hard leftist); and will not try to ‘cure’ me of my autism-typical behaviors and take them as an invalidation of my gender identity (I am a shoe in for an aspergers diagnosis, which complicates things in a major way) is pretty damned slim.

So, I started looking into other binding options.  However, when your breasts are huge, the usual ones do not apply.  I have spent more than my far share of time yelling in frustration at a computer screen upon finding binding tips that recommended things like wearing a tight sports bra.   After more than a little searching, I came across underworks, which makes binders specifically for ftm people and reputed to work for those of use who want to bind and have large breasts.  Gleeful and apprehensive at the same time, I paid online and had one sent.

It arrived today.  As it turns out, these things are damned hard to get on.  I tried squeezing it over my head, then tried the other recommended way of sliding up from the legs (yeah, I’m too fat in the gut for that one…).  Eventually, after a few hours and a few breaks for large amounts of swearing, I managed to get it on.  Elated, I stood in front of the mirror and checked it out.  Yes, I still had too many curves to pass as male or even to be too hard to guess, but the difference was huge.  Then, I wondered if some adjustments would change the shape for a more flat look.  Shifting, pushing, checking to see the results, an Onion video that I had seen a while before popped into my head.  “How to Thrust Your Fat into a More Appealing Shape.”

Today Now!: How To Thrust Your Fat Into A More Appealing Shape

It cracked me up.  I am a fat positive fat person.  With bound breasts, I am a fat person with a flatter chest.  Thrusting away that particular bit does not change my fat person status.

Standing there, thinking of my breasts as lumps of fat, but lumps of fat that had affected every interaction I had since the age of eleven, lumps of fat that determined how people perceived my gender, lumps of fat that cause me physical pain, I noted the irony of how a culture so desperate to hide the rest of my fat body was so eager to see this part kept obvious because it makes it easier for them to put me inside one of two boxes when I have always resisted the idea that there should be boxes.  I plan to keep binding and build up to doing it in class.  I have no intention of accepting the idea that my social position should be determined based on how I wear my breasts.  Because, without all the bullshit baggage of society putting massive meaning on it, all I am doing is thrusting a few bits of my fat into ‘a more appealing shape.’