Flattening the Feminine

The Underwear of Self-Loathing and a Catholic Response

Target is now selling chest binders and underpants that can be “packed.” I’m neither surprised nor impressed that avaricious God-hating leftists would cash in on a destructive trend that Walmart and Amazon (and dozens of Chinese shops) have already tapped. Chest binding itself is not exactly clever or new and anyone can stuff a pair of underwear. Target has simply found a way to use gullible Americans to make it a profitable venture.

If I hated women and wanted to destroy any vestige of the Image of God in them (while also making money), that’s what I would do, too. And if I was a confused little girl vulnerable to that influence, I would fall for it. I did fall for it in my own way… but I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Walmart’s product page for one binder reads:

“The vest is helpful for making your breast look flatter, making you more handsome and attractive.”

Other than sounding like it was written using Google translate, it’s a crass bit of marketing. Whatever you want to be, we’ll help you be that… for only $10.02!

As the Western culture slouches into a post-Christian era, women are on the losing end: replaced by men in athletics, losing privacy rights in public places, their dignity mocked and distorted by flamboyant pretenders, cancelled in the womb, abused and used in the porn industry (the influence of which has found its way into almost every home in America), and groomed from childhood to accept sexual violence and use.

In a move of diabolical cleverness, the enemies of God have found yet another way to make little girls and women cancel themselves. And they’ve made it not only socially acceptable but also a badge of distinction among the young.

This trending Underwear of Self-Loathing reminds me of a period in my childhood when I intentionally flattened my own curves, such as they were. I didn’t know what trans was and I didn’t want to be a boy. I did know what a woman was, that I was becoming one, and that the transition was unpleasant…

So I simply wanted to be Invisible. Suppressed. Flattened.

My own belief that the body was an obstacle to my happiness later nearly led to my death. I believed that evil was good and good was evil and that escape from the body was a spiritually elevated good. It doesn’t take much to confuse a young grieving soul. Non-Christian spirituality is not harmless. It communicates lies about the most important things. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Binding the Feminine

In middle school I began wearing my dad’s big t-shirts to cover my developing body. I was an innocent but not sheltered, just young in a simpler time. We didn’t have the internet or even cable TV. I liked boys but not in a sexual way and I certainly never wanted to be a boy! Horrors. They were dirty and rude and rough and I wasn’t, though I preferred jeans to dresses most days.

My own body was a source of shame to me. It dawned on me that I was eventually going to look like the women around me, in the movies, or maybe like the ones in the magazines that my friends pilfered from their dad’s closets. No, no, no… please no. It’s a rough and cruel transition for many girls. Awareness varies but we adjust behaviors accordingly, often choosing suppression of the natural gifts or promiscuity, maybe both by turns.

I was skinny and straight but I still felt the shifting. All the dirty, crude roughness that I disliked in little boys became something uglier as they grew, into unwanted words, looks, touches. In the day-to-day, girls learn subconsciously that their bodies are commodity. They are unwittingly involved in a horrible game of what-can-the-boys-get-away-with-today, and sometimes which-old-man-is-secretly-creepy.

For a little girl, the transition into womanhood can bring confusion, fear, and yes, a terrible self-loathing. This complicated culture of grooming played a role in my embracing the bitter dregs of feminism. I knew there was some truth in their anger, though I ultimately rejected the ideology as a solution. So I wore big t-shirts down to my knees because I thought I could hide my body. I rounded my shoulders so my shirts would fall away from my chest. Maybe somehow I could return to a time when I was just me, unnoticed and happy, without breasts or hips or anything. A peaceful nobody.

I once purchased a baggy bathing suit two sizes too large for me. My girlfriend bought a bikini and I bought a lycra potato sack.

“Why do you want such an ugly thing? You look like a beach ball.”

My friend didn’t understand and I didn’t explain. I didn’t want to be noticed by people like she did. I didn’t want a body that brought unwanted attention. She was a little older, had already learned the same lessons that I was learning, had already kissed boys, liked her new power and used it.

“Well, all that material is going to stick to you anyway when it’s wet, just all droopy and ulgy-like,” she said. “You might as well show yourself off!”

She was right about one thing… it all sticks to you anyway. Womanhood is like that if you’re created that way. There isn’t a permanent way to escape it even if you cut it off, starve it, smash it down, tattoo it, pierce it, take pills, change wardrobes, or hairdos. In the 80s and 90s, only a few of those options were available to us which is likely why feminism had great appeal. Most women still wanted to be women, they just wanted more power… for good or for ill.

Just Let me Disappear

The ugly truth is that the child trans movement is rooted in learned hatred of oneself, not innate desire for what one cannot be. Gayness may be an attraction, but trans is a self-cancelation, a repulsion and rejection.

As little girls grow, the attention from older males increases. For many, this starts at a very young age depending upon one’s community and also which men in their lives have porn-saturated minds. In co-ed schools, we have to sit next to the very “boys” who torment. We learn there is no way out of it, no one to tell, consequences to telling, and that life is easier if we adopt certain dysfunctional ways of coping. In the greatest of ironies, we see that girls who tattle can get shunned by other girls. We see the men in families, neighborhoods, and TVs ogle and groom, and little girls have to work it out within themselves. Instinctively, we cover. But we also crave love and attention, so… it’s complicated.

Promiscuity is an obvious mechanism as girls seek love and acceptance. Sex is a powerful tool. A less obvious coping mechanism is to keep one’s head down, disappear, or cover any vestige of visible feminine traits. Perhaps once attention has been diverted, the freedom to pursue the lost creativity and happiness of childhood can be recovered.

The fact that boys are trained from a young age to view women as porn-fodder, and that girls are groomed to accept it, has nothing to do with political affiliation or with social agenda… nothing except sin and perversion. The left does not have a corner on that market. The leftists are certainly using the trend to push Communism and a narrative of “equity,” but even Christians push it forward through sliding moral behaviors and false social charity.

When I hear about another child in my community desiring a trans life, I want to ask why they hate who they are. How have they been abused or groomed? Who was permitted access to their mind? It’s easy to blame parents but I know better than that. Every information source in the typical kid’s life is pouring the diabolical propaganda into them. It’s coming from their schools, phones, iPads, laptops, TVs, books, friends, neighbors, music… even a good parent’s influence wanes and dies under such an onslaught.

Evil says…

You are ugly. You are unlovable. You are worthless. You are disgusting. You deserve to be hurt. You deserve pain. You should be obliterated. You should be cut apart and neither he nor she. A nothing. I hate you. You should hate yourself.

I wore sports bras so small that it hurt. Wore oversized clothes. Hated anything that accentuated and drew attention. And slowly navigated my way into the teen years where I walked a sloppy balance between bodily hatred and bodily power, never quite reconciling the two during that time. An evening out with a flattering outfit was counterbalanced by feelings of disgust. Not because I wanted to be a man, but because I was taught the wrong things about the feminine. And evil almost won.

For years I battled the temptation to destroy myself. To say that it was wholly related to our perverse and grooming culture would be oversimplifying, but it was absolutely rooted there. I was missing proper formation about what a gift it is to be fully alive as a woman, body and all. But at least I didn’t have the leftists offering me chemical, surgical, or name brand binding options (thanks be to God that trans wasn't trending yet). I simply wanted to disappear.

I also didn’t have misguided Christians hyper-focusing on the evils of the body. I’ll speak a word to that a bit later. I think it’s worth a mention.

In my youth, that self-loathing manifested in many other people in my community in the typical ways: self-harm, drugs, eating disorders, promiscuity, etc. Evil certainly has leveled up to what we see in present times…

But it has overplayed its hand. There are so many broken, abused, and grieving… that the time for a Christian renewal is ripe. The sunrise in inevitable. And the Good Shepherd will come in justice for His beloved children.

How to Unbind the Enslaved

The first step is for each and every sincere follower of Christ to stop consuming porn in all of its forms. It has to end for healing to begin.

Nothing at all will change in this world, and souls will continue to be destroyed, if those called by Christ to bring His life to the world are rendered impotent by habitual grave offenses against love. Separated from the Source of Life and and growing crooked and ugly in the soul. You cannot continuously abuse others and stay mentally, relationally, physically, and spiritually well.

Addicted? Get help. Immediately. Maybe start here.

Statistics reveal that a majority of men (and many women) are hamstrung by some cooperation with this particular evil. Our seminaries (even good ones) are compromised. Our rectories. Our schools. Our homes. Our leaders. Our children. I refuse to concede that this is the status quo of Christians… that we must be content to know it is among us and that the fall is inevitable.

God’s greatest attribute is His mercy. He is unfailing in this, but His grace is not magical fairy dust. We must surrender to it and change everything in our lives that is not oriented toward Love. One tiny little prayer will start the cascade. To face our weakness is the first life-changing step. To step out of our old life when He calls us… that’s where we change the world. One gritty, ugly, sweaty step at a time.

Don’t be afraid of the struggle. You’re not strong enough on your own. But MERCY has you.

Unbinding Christian Women

It is worth noting that some Christians also mistakenly fall into the Manichean error of bodily hatred, if not in belief then at least in practice or parenting. The beautiful virtue of modesty can become twisted by fear into a desire for flattening. Suppressing. Hiding. In some Catholic circles particularly, this is simply an overcorrection by parents who want to protect their children from known evil. Some of them were promiscuous, abused, or abusive and wish to spare their own children…

If I hide their bodies, then it won’t happen to them. If they’re modest enough. Covered enough…

We can find ourselves all too easily slipping into the unholy belief (and teaching) that there is something inherently loathsome about the very flesh of developing children. That’s straight up heresy with devastating consequences.

Those of us raised in this grooming culture have to find the place of healing where God is. It’s not a balancing act between promiscuity and prudery, but a permeation of belief into relationships and vision.

Even the most sheltered children will eventually encounter the depravity of the world and hear the lies peddled about our bodies and our identities. Show me a young woman who has been raised terrified of and repulsed by her own body and I will show you a sitting duck for the diabolical in the form of all the pronouns and isms.

The answer is not in the extremes of promiscuity or prudery. Again, it is a matter of having a rooted sense of Love that does not shake under the gaze of the porn-afflicted. It is falling in love with the Designer and loving His work and the sacredness of our own lives. Respecting, honoring, treasuring. This was the strength of the virgin martyrs who are now so often (and rudely) dismissed by woke Catholics as simpleton prudes. It was not that the were terrified of their sexuality…

It was that they knew who they were. And neither the threat of words, pain, or death could shake it from them. I didn’t understand that witness well even as a young mother. I think I understand better now as I watch innocence fall to the confusion and look back into my own formation by a culture which does not serve Love. I beg the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to raise my own children…

Breathe on them, Spirit of Life. Make them like unto Thee, so that they may not falter in their identity, never doubt who they are, to Whom they belong, and in Whose image they are made extraordinary and beautiful. Come, Holy Spirit. Take root deeply… and grow.

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