He looks at his body in a mirror. His body looks at him, rough and hairy and aging. His arms are thin but his legs are muscular, soft-bodied around the middle like most men are. There are scuffs and dry skin around his knuckles, acne up his shoulders, and wrinkles around his eyes. This is a body that is well-loved.
He moves his hands upwards and cups his breasts. There's a ring of course, dark hair around the areolas, and they’ve shrunk with time. These are a man’s breasts.
These are my breasts.
I have had a lot of difficulty writing about myself in this way - the only way I’ve been able to start this essay is with him instead of I. My breasts are small, pointed, acne-covered. Years of testosterone have changed their shape, but they are still my breasts.
I used to be disgusted by them. I would lay back against my sheets and poke at the buds, recoiling in disgust as they grew softer and rounder. I looked on at my mother’s chest with a sense of terror for my future.
Luckily, I did not take after my mother, with breasts so heavy she struggled to breathe lying down. I took after the women in my father’s family, light and pointed. This was a small blessing, a rare victory while stuck in a body that seemed to drive me further and further out of it.
I describe my world before testosterone as a cold one. My body felt strange, stiff, and dead. I ate less, praying that by losing weight my breasts and hips would shrink. I felt faint constantly, undernourished and dehydrated.
Slipping on my binder for the first time was the world opening up for me again. Though my back was still stooped to hide the remaining swell, I could navigate the world with a new sense of confidence. I was lucky enough that a short haircut and a button-up allowed me to pass as male most of the time. Years of my life were spent adjusting every part of my external appearance to avoid being misgendered. Only the soprano of my voice and the softness of my face would give me away. I hated phone calls.
My world opened further with masculinizing hormones. A line of thick, black hair grew across my chest and around my nipples. My skin was rough and acne-prone. Testosterone had caused my breasts to shrink a cup size, and my binders became loose and frayed.
I bound my chest for seven years. Long days as an undergrad caused my ribs to ache, and my shoulders bowed further. Every once in a while a sharp, all-encompassing pain would shoot through my ribcage, preventing me from moving or even breathing too deeply. On one occasion, I Googled the symptoms of a heart attack.
The choice to stop binding was a difficult one, eased by years of hormones masculinizing my body. I had few sports bras left, and I quickly abandoned them. If cis men didn’t have to conceal their chest, I wouldn’t either.
Going out in public with visible breasts was - and still is - terrifying. It’s a level of vulnerability I’m still uncomfortable with, and it’s hard to convince yourself that no one notices, because they do. It is a privilege I’m still gendered as male in spite of them.
Almost inevitably, having to confront my breasts for the first time has changed my relationship to them. They are with me when I go to the gym, every time I go to work. I see them every time I pull on a t-shirt, nipples still poking through. A man’s breasts.
It is hard enough to accept them, and it is harder, still, to desire them. Cisgender society, yes, sees breasts as desirable. They are desired in their symbolic and literal relationship to the feminine, the fertile. To womanhood.
Can I see breasts desirable in a masculine way? A mannish way? Can I, further still, desire my own breasts for their masculinity?
Every person, with rare exception, has breast tissue. Cis men can develop breast cancer. Cis men, just like cis women, can have breasts. Saggy, pointy, soft, wrinkly breasts. Breasts, too, can be mannish.
Men’s tits are, indeed, an object of desire. The border between the pectoral and the breast is, in itself, a muddy one. The bear is an archetype of this desire. Fat, burly men are desired for their size, not in spite of it. There is something wonderful in the swell of a man’s chest. Something soft, something to hold.
There are countless fags and cissies with wifebeaters hugging their round, muscular chests, with nipples straining through thin fabric. Shirtless fraternity members with their sweaty cleavage on display for any onlooker to see. Are men’s tits, in their soft, grabbable glory, not to be ogled?
I give many thanks to the dykes, too, who saunter shirtless through the world, with their chains and leather. Shirtless photos of butch women strike me as deeply personal, their eroticism captivating. These dykes have taken their breasts, their tits - and have made them a symbol of masculinity and desire. It has taken the mannish woman to see myself as a mannish man.
There are days I miss my masculine girlhood, with my anger and my filth. I fought hard to be a tomboy, and I fought harder to be a man. In my desperation to be read as male, I stripped queerness from my masculinity. By recognizing my breasts, by finding a sense of eroticism and desire in them, I have become more of a man. I’ve become more of a woman, too, I think. To embrace my breasts, to embrace their manhood, is how I find myself for the first time.