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Flattening or reshaping one’s chest with constricting material to minimize the appearance of having breasts and create a more traditionally masculine or androgynous appearance. Some binding methods, including using duct tape or Ace bandages, may pose long-term health risks, including muscle tears, lung damage, and/or rib bruising. Medical-grade binders are made with stretchier, more breathable material, offering some transgender people a lower-risk way to bind. Some transgender people have created community organizations to send other trans people safe, medical-grade binders for free, preventing some of the health problems associated with binding (see our Binding Guide).

The notion that men and women are naturally and categorically different from one another due to chromosomal, anatomical, endocrinological, and/or neurological variations related to birth assignment. Biological essentialism reinforces the idea that only two sexes and genders exist, defined by a person’s primary and secondary sex characteristics rather than their internal, personal experience of gender (see: gender binary, neurosexism).

A system of prejudicial beliefs that seek to undermine, erase, and/or invalidate non-binary people, sometimes with the assumption that they need to “pick” a binary gender, are following a fad, or are confused about the nature of their true gender. Karen was binarist when she refused to respect her non-binary co-worker’s gender-neutral pronouns, rudely telling them to “choose one or the other.”