Breast binders for 13-year-old girls funded by RainbowYOUTH NZ

If a thirteen-year-old girl in New Zealand hates her breasts, RainbowYOUTH will financially help her get a breast binder [page no longer available]. No pesky parental permission is needed. So popular are these breast binders for distressed young girls and women, that on 6th December there was a message at the bottom of breast binder promotional page that said – “We have paused receiving submissions for now as we have run out of stock. Check back on our IG & FB pages tomorrow for another update on the fund!”

If you’re the parent of an adolescent girl, you may be feeling a bit sick about now.

Breast binders are like a modern type of corset, shaped similar to a crop top, which mashes breasts flat and can be worn so tight that they constrict the rib cage and breathing, as well as can cause chronic back pain and changes to the spine. Like the corsets of old, they’re designed to boss unruly female bodies into a desired shape. Both the old and new corsets are a socially inflicted tortuous item of clothing - that much hasn’t changed, even if the reasons for wearing them have been tweaked.

It’s no secret that a lot of girls hate puberty with a passion. Their body is doing things that they are mentally and emotionally out of alignment with, and it may take a few years after puberty begins for that alignment to fall into place. It’s not a time when it’s abnormal to be confused, unhappy, moody, and conflicted. You’re being re-made from a child into an adult whether you like it or not, ready or not, and the process can be damn awful. In today’s woke world, though, according to organisations like RainbowYOUTH, if a girl is hating that horribly awkward time, it might mean that she’s really a boy in the wrong body. Or maybe she’s neither – i.e. ‘non-binary’. Either way, RainbowYOUTH can financially assist her to buy a breast binder to help her (maladaptively) feel a whole lot better about herself*.

RainbowYOUTH registered as a charity in 1989, and became an incorporated society 1995, and quoting from their last annual report, they “are here to work with queer, gender diverse, takatāpui and intersex youth, their whanau and wider communities”. At the time of writing, RainbowYOUTH has a combination of 18 full and part-time employees and is advertising for three more, which will make it 21, down from the 27 employees listed in their 2021 annual report. More than 20 employees put it into the same bracket as a medium-size business in New Zealand. In 2019 it received an “extra” (extra?) $3 million from the taxpayer over the next four years for gender-affirming surgery to help clear a 50-year waiting list and growing demand. In 2021, they and InsideOUT were the joint recipients of anther $3.2 million from the taxpayer for mental health and addiction services. RainbowYOUTH and InsideOUT both have private donors, too, some of whom give substantial donations.

I’m sure that those in government who so generously give taxpayer money to RainbowYOUTH, plus those who work for the organisation itself, view themselves as saviours. Others may wonder if everything is quite as it seems when looked at through a wider lens.

The act of supplying potentially health-compromising breast binders to minors without parental knowledge is surely a questionable practice. Technically, it’s not illegal, but is it ethical? Even for saviours?

Mermaids, a charity in the UK “supporting transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse children, young people and their families since 1995” is in big trouble. It is the subject of an in-depth investigation, which was kicked off by a complaint that it was supplying breast binders to girls as young as 13 without parental consent.

Wait! Isn’t RainbowYOUTH here in NZ sending breast binders to 13-year-old girls without parental consent, too? 

As far as I’m aware, RainbowYOUTH will not listen to any narrative contrary to the narrative they’ve created for their organisation. It's easy to convince ourselves we’re doing the right thing when we surround ourselves only with stories which support that. The resulting self-fulfilling prophecies, which are inevitable, then confirm our conviction. However, an organisation can fall very quickly once a certain line gets crossed, and all the good intentions in the world will then count for nothing. The saviours can become sinners in a heartbeat.

*Here is quite a big piece on the new WPATH Standards of Care 8 released in September 2022, and there is NO RESEARCH saying that binders or tuckers are beneficial to mental health.

Should the New Zealand Ministry of Health adopt WPATH’s SOC 8? (publicgood.org.nz)