a mini-foray into gender/Gender* and the patriarchy in general; or, Theorizing Breasts

(Disclaimer #1: This is something I initially wrote in my personal journal a couple days ago, and I've gone back and forth about whether or not to post here. But as problematic as I'm sure it is because it was a fairly impulsive entry and I haven't gone back to fix any non-inclusiveness or overly gender-oppressive language...I think it's still good as raw material for musing. So please see it as such (raw, that is), and feel free to problematize anything that needs problematizing. I have edited it only slightly to take out any overly identifying information.)
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*Disclaimer #2: This is not meant at all to be indicative of other transgressively or ambiguously or otherwise gendered people's experiences. I'm not pretending that this is me "transgendering" (which is evidently a verb, according to a naive ex-dean of students at Wells). This is just me playing with my own physical indicators of my sex -- which is of course assumed to be my gender. The circumstances of this are absolutely, positively not to be taken as circumstances similar to any kind of "transgender experience," insofar as such a thing exists. This came from a place of self-hatred, which may or may not be indicative of individual TG people, but as such circumstances are highly individual, please do not take my experience and circumstances as anything more than my own. Also, I fully accept that I'm just doing this in the privacy of my own room, so I'm not pretending that I'm being socially subversive here. I'm just musing.
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So tonight, I was having a bit of a panic attack, paired with some massive body-hating, specifically aimed at my breasts, which for some reason were looking way bigger than normal. I hated that. I wanted to just cut them off.

Normally, when I get to this point, I cut. Specifically, I usually cut my breasts, but sometimes, if the panic attacks are especially flashback-intensive, I cut my thighs or pelvic area.

This time, though, I just wanted them to go away. My breasts, that is. Even though they didn't really show up so prominently until this past summer, I place a lot of blame on them for a lot of things, and place a lot of hatred specifically in and on them.
See, my breasts are predominantly what make me so recognizably female, and therefore recognizably vulnerable and victimizable.
I'm sick of being objectified, of them being stared at - yes, by both/all genders. I'm sick of my breasts being something to be ogled. (By comparison, they're not even that ridiculously huge. They're only 36C, not crazy huge like a few of my friends. They could be much bigger. And while I love these friends and their breasts, I am very thankful that mine aren't that large. Just sayin'.)


Anyway, so instead of my usual "I hate my sexual identifiers" actions (i.e. cutting), I did something else impulsive.

I tore off my shirt, my tank top, my bra. I grabbed two of my tightest sports bras, a bandeau that's far too small, and an ace bandage (with velcro ends -- very handy).
I squished my breasts into the three tops, and then wrapped the ace bandage around my chest.

I put on a beater and a t-shirt and looked in the mirror.

And they were gone.

Of course, I'm not pretending I'm an expert at binding, so you could still tell that they're there, somewhere, but they were no longer prominent. Instead of seeing:
Breasts!
then
"AWCC Soccer Championships 2003" (the writing on the shirt) when I looked in the mirror,
I saw simply "AWCC Soccer Championships 2003".

I love it.



I'm sure I could analyze and deconstruct and dissect this to death, but right now, I'm only going to scratch the surface.
(The rest behind the flip 'cause it's wicked long.)

I don't pretend that, "Ooh, I bound for an hour, I know what transmen feel like now! I totally sympathize!"
That would be stupid.
Because my incentive was not that I wanted to change my perceived gender. I don't want to stop being so recognizably female because I want to be recognized as something else. (Which, I realize, can hardly sum up the reasons behind transitioning, but bear with me and my generalizations.)
See, I have no qualms, inherently, with being recognizably female. I want to stop being so recognizably female because I want to stop being objectified. I want to stop being so recognizably female because I'm sick of being used. Because I'm sick of being seen as hypersexualized. I'm sick of being an object of the male gaze, wherever that gaze happens to be embodied. Essentially, I'm sick of being looked at.


And I realize now that my changing my outward appearance by removing the prominence of my breasts is not going to change that, and that even if I did so, it would not go far to change the system. And I realize that it's the system that needs changing, not me.


Because my breasts, in and of themselves, have no meaning. They are not inherently sexualized. They are not inherently beautiful. Or inherently objectifiable. They, themselves, do not say, "Hey, I'm a female! Come, objectify me, rape me, hurt me, look at me, stare at me, penetrate me!" Outside of the discourse, they mean nothing. They're just lumps of fat and tissue and muscle and nerve endings (etc).
When I was "little" - that is, when I was in high school, flat-chested, and trying not to be bitter that everyone else had boobs and I didn't - I would try to make myself feel better by saying that I didn't need breasts, that they were useless anyway. What good were they? They were just lumps of fat, I said. I didn't understand why they were so coveted.
Because back then, I didn't acknowledge the workings of the discourse around and in me, that glorified The Big Breasted Woman by virtue of her Big Breasts. I didn't understand at all where the "power," if it can be called that, of the breasts came from.

And sometimes, I wish I were back there. Back in the place where I didn't understand the workings of the system, of the patriarchy, of how oppression touches each life uniquely and unequally. I would love to be ignorant again, to just not see all these unjust things. To whine that, "It's not fair," and when the inevitable, "Well, life's not fair," came, to whine that, "Well, it should be," and honestly believe that it could be. A lot of the time, I would give anything for that.
But you can't ever go back to that place. You can't just pretend that you don't know about homophobia and sexism and racism and all the other phobias and 'isms that oppress and objectify people.



But I digress.
Back to the breasts.
(Since starting this post 45 minutes ago, I had to remove the ace bandage, bandeau, and 1 sports bra, because it was hard to breathe and my back hurt. I honestly have no idea how pre- and non-surgically altered transmen do it...)

There is so much I want to analyze about this impulsive action, but I don't know where to start.
It's all so mired in the patriarchy and the system.

I looked in the mirror, saw the breasts, and thought, "Objectified. Victim. Sexualized." That's what my breasts signify to me. That's what I assume other people think when they see my breasts. I thought, "Ugh, I hate these things." I grabbed at them, squished them down, scratched at them.
I automatically (and falsely) assumed that if the breasts weren't there, or at least weren't immediately visible, that all of those things that they signify wouldn't be signified elsewhere on my body, and therefore wouldn't exist. But erasing my breasts doesn't erase the discourse. It just makes the discourse slightly harder to identify.
But I (naively) assumed that making them go away would fix everything. So that's what I did.
And when I looked in the mirror, and they weren't immediately there, my chest didn't scream BREASTS!!!, and I smiled at myself in the mirror.
I turned to the side. I turned to the front. No breasts.

I went out into the hall of my suite where the full-length mirror is. I looked, saw my chest, and saw no breasts!, and smiled. Then I took in the whole image.
My hips were still there, still identifiably female.
My butt was still identifiably female.
My face, my hair, my fingers: still identifiably female.
Even if I tried to get in full drag, I still wouldn't "pass" as anything but female. A "girly man," at "best." And, therefore, still oppressed.
I wasn't smiling anymore.

I looked at my face. It was still the face of a victim. Maybe a survivor too, maybe not, but always at some point a victim. Nothing I can do to my physical appearance can change the fact that I was, at one point, a victim.
That's something that stays with you, no matter what you do to your body. That's something that gets tattooed on your forehead, even if nobody sees it but you. That's something you can't ever escape.


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(Slight Digression) And I wonder...if I'd been born a boy (like my mom so often wishes I was), and therefore socialized as a boy, what would have been different? (Well, other than everything.) Would I still have been sexually abused? My abuser was abused, too, and he had male privilege on his side. Would I still be a victim? What would have changed? How would I have dealt with things differently?

Would I still look in the mirror and hate what I see?
Would I still be cutting or hurting myself almost every day?
Would I still feel so dirty for getting abused in the first place?
Would I still feel the threat of rape every time I walk alone? Every time I'm in a vulnerable situation around men? Every time I take a breath? Every time I exhale?
What would have been different?
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But I guess this all comes to the question of what would have prevented this impulsive action altogether. At this point, is it even possible to change the system to make women less objectified/sexualized/etc?

I guess it can be summed up with this question:
What would make me not hate my breasts for their female (and therefore oppressed) implications?
I'm ok with the idea of having breasts. I'm ok with the idea of my breasts giving me and whoever else I choose to "share" them with sexual pleasure. To an extent, I'm even ok with the idea of breasts as teasing, because anticipation is pretty imperative to pleasure, and as I'm a sex-positive feminist, I'm all for the whole pleasure thing.
I'm not ok with them being used as fodder for some random person's fantasy. (I realize it sounds like perhaps I'm giving my breasts too much credit here, but I'm not talking specifically about my breasts, I'm talking abstractly.) I'm absolutely, positively not ok with the suggestion of them being used as justification for rape ("she was dressed provocatively, she was asking for it!"). Obviously. I'm not ok with the fact that a woman showing cleavage is inevitably going to be ogled and stared at and objectified by anyone mildly interested in the curvature of said cleavage. I'm not ok with the fact that I've internalized the notion that because my breasts connote femaleness, they connote victimized status and being oppressed, that because they announce my "womanhood," they announce my vulnerability.


I love breasts as breasts.
I hate breasts as tools of the patriarchy. I hate what breasts connote. I hate what they symbolize and signify.