Hi! Are you a CAMAB transfeminine person who’s sick of only ever seeing resources for CAFAB trans people on your dash? Are you just coming out to yourself and struggling with Peak Dysphoria? Are you a CAFAB trans person who wants to support the people above? Then here’s a post for you!

This is a post about tucking!

Wait Erika, what the fuck is a tuck?

Glad you asked! For those who don’t know, tucking is a technique for achieving a flat groin area. It’s a time-honored tool of CAMAB trans feminine people but, unfortunately, the tradition doesn’t seem to have been communicated very effectively to the current generation. 

So what’s the point of tucking?

Tucking has lots of awesome benefits! These include:

• Being able to wear pants & shorts marketed to women more comfortably
• Seeing yourself with a flat front often reduces dysphoria (it did for me!)
• Referring to the previous bullet, it is one of the easiest ways to lessen your dysphoria when you’re still closeted, since you can wear a tuck under your normal pants/shorts and no one has to know
• It can help us reduce some of the risk of being outed in public

Oh neat. How do I tuck?

The basics of tucking goes like this:

• Push the testicles up into the inguinal canals
• Pull the rest of the junk between the legs
• Secure the arrangement with very tight underwear (or some other method)

Wait wait wait… What the hell is an inguinal canal?

Alright, so…. this is gonna require some body exploration on your part if you can stomach it. Basically, the inguinal canals are little tunnels in your pelvis above the testicles. If you push your testicles directly up into your body from their resting position, they should slide pretty neatly into the inguinal canals.

Yeah… this is what the TW was mostly for. Sorry, but the visual is helpful.

Ok…. So how do I secure it all in place?

Ok so first thing’s first: do not use tape. A lot of tutorials online (particularly ones for and by drag queens) recommend using tape, but that shit hurts and it’s super unnecessary!

Instead you need two things:

1. A tight pair of panties (preferably more, so you can do this frequently without wearing the same undies every day)
2. Control briefs

…. Control briefs?

I know, I know, so many new words tonight! Ever heard of Spanx products? They’re mainly marketed to cis women for “tummy control”, but they have another awesome use as well - tucking! Here’s an example at Target.com (you should be able to find them at any store that sells women’s underwear, but if you’re afraid to go buy them in the store that pair is pretty cheap and you can order it online if you’re in the U.S.)

If you get the right size of control briefs (I would recommend buying a size down) they should fit very snugly over your junk. To hold your tuck in place, simply hold it between your legs, pull up your undies all the way, and pull the control briefs over them. Assuming you’ve pulled everything up as much as possible and kept everything tucked between your legs correctly, you should now have a snug and smooth tuck! Congrats!!!!!!

But wait, I can’t get that stuff! What do I do???????

Hey, that’s ok! Couple of ideas here:

• Get a pair of tights (possibly old ones from a friend) and cut off everything but the stretchy part at the top. Congrats! Those are basically control briefs (albeit kinda messy ones)
• Contact me and I’ll try to get you a pair of those control briefs from Target (if you live outside the US im sure we can find another website)

Ok…. So is there anything I should worry about with the tuck?

Unfortunately, yeah - mainly discomfort. Here’s a few ways discomfort occurs when tucking and how to avoid it:

• Tucking with the inguinal canals can be painful at first. I spent weeks practicing using them before ever getting my first tucking materials. If the pain is too unbearable for you, dom-the-destitute suggests just tucking everything back and continuing from there.
• After a few hours of tucking (varies depending on how active you are) things are probably gonna start to feel a little out of place. Part of the prevention here is practicing lots to get as tight a tuck as possible. Other than that, it’s something you’ll have to get kind of used to dealing with - I usually excuse myself to the bathroom when a tuck becomes too uncomfortable and fix it in the stall.
• After even more hours you’re going to feel a pretty general aching. Much as people who bind shouldn’t do that for too long, you shouldn’t tuck for too long at once. Usually 4-8 hours (again, depending upon activity level as well as experience) is gonna be all you can stand before getting some longer lasting aching. I don’t know if there’s any long-term harm that can occur from tucking too long, but it’s best if you’re not the first to find out.
• Generally I find that more & longer pubic hair can cause discomfort and generally make your tuck less effective. Definitely look into shaving down there, or at least trimming up a little bit if you don’t already (I’m not going to go into details about pubic shaving but send me a message if you need help in that department).

Congrats! You now know how to tuck! Go get those cute white capris you saw at Macy’s the other day and ROCK that shit!

If you have any questions or need additional help, feel free to send me an ask. If you have any additional suggestions to add to this post, please go ahead and reblog it with comment or send me a message about it!

Wikihow also has a good article on the topic to check out for some more visuals! (Make sure to skip to the “Tuck without Tape” section)

Please, make this post as popular as possible. CAFAB trans folks all have so much info about binding, but so many CAMAB trans feminine folk don’t know about tucking and could use the info!