hm, well. i really truly do not think that people wear binders in an effort to appropriate experiences. i can’t speak for anyone else and have never attempted to do so, so let me explain why i do it, and why it was in the video:

i bind my chest because i do. i’m not too fond of having to explain or justify anything about my presentation, but i understand why, knowing nothing about my gender identity and having thus assumed things about my gender and sexuality identity, you would feel offended. i have pretty intense body dysphoria most of the time, and i don’t feel comfortable unless i’m binding. this is not because i feel that i should have a male body. it is because i don’t really feel entirely like a male but i really don’t feel like a female: i really truly feel like both, or something in between. i know that my gender presentation is fluid, and that the fact that i would modify my body comes not from an effort to switch from one side of the binary to the other, but because i don’t see myself on that binary or within that very limited perception of what a body can be. and quite frankly, binding makes me happy. it makes me feel comfortable in my body, and not much does. how i choose to present is not an effort to appropriate a “trans experience” because i don’t think there is one single “trans experience” anymore than i think that a “trans experience” must by default involve surgery or body modification or body dysphoria itself. i know transfolk who are not undergoing top surgery, and i know transfolk who don’t want to pursue bottom surgery, and i know transfolk who believe that the right to define their body as masculine or feminine or male or female is entirely up to them, and thus they don’t feel the need to fit their bodies into certain ideals of physicality because they believe this would be buying into medicalized constructions. i see and respect all of their views on this. i wrestle with my own perceptions of my body constantly. i use the term “girl” in that video because it’s one i’m used to, and i am growing into and out of these terms constantly, and it’s nice to have a comfort zone to fall back into. i think “lesbian” and “dyke” and “queer” serve as comfort zones for a lot of people whose genders are fluid and whose presentations may have otherwise been labeled as “trans” in other places and times. a lot of people have assumed that i am transitioning because i bind, wear mostly male clothing, and don’t always like being called “she.” if you asked me what i am, i’d say “queer,” because it fits me best when most other terms slip off quite easily, or feel too tight or too loose.

i understand that for some transfolk, especially in this society where in order to get any kind of healthcare we need to medicalize and justify and work in ways our bodies don’t always fit, labels and gender presentations can be incredibly important and essential to one’s identity, especially when society has been continually telling that person they are not the thing they whole-heartedly feel. that’s perfectly okay, and i would never say or feel otherwise. my personal experience with my body and gender is a completely specific experience that i would never attempt to apply to anyone else. when i made the video, it came from a place where i know a lot of queer-identified people who wear binders for reasons similar to my own. maybe some people would call us transfolk, and maybe there’s a place in the trans community for us, too. but i would never want to assume i have a place where i am not welcome, and i know that the experience of being trans is not one i would ever appropriate for myself. i call myself a dyke not because i consider myself much of a lesbian (since that label usually means a female-identified-person-who-likes-other-female-identified-people) but because that term has a specific meaning for me and my experience, and the dyke/queer community is where my friends are, where my social life is, and where i feel the most at home. 

i don’t know. maybe our ideas of gender are different, and that’s fine. i just don’t see anything wrong with the way i present my gender (or lack thereof) because i don’t see anything wrong with the way anyone chooses to present their body. i think you assume a lot about the way these people identify if you assume that all people who are “binding” are doing it in an effort to appropriate, or that they don’t have the right to do so because they are “women”…which is already a leap in your assumptions. i completely respect the history and tradition of the trans narrative, but i also think that terms are constantly changing, gender is constantly fluid, and there’s no rule that says a woman-identified has to have breasts, or a person of any identity whatsoever has to have them either, or that they can’t have them. let every body present the way they want to be presented! :)