So I snipped that I relate to :) For anyone on my FB, it goes without saying that I have moments when I just won't STFU :blush: If you've only seen me at Reunion then I am sure you are shaking your head in disbelief. True fact!

And Sleepy, I am so glad you said it first because I actually fretted over saying it, though it is reverse for me - I connect better with butch and trans folks. I think I can count on one hand the femmes I have in my phone, and it was due more in part to having numbers if needed at Reunion then it being anyone I actually text on a regular basis.

At Reunion, I confined in the wife that femme swap is a very awkward situation for me because I feel like the new kid at school - I do not have a group to take refuge at. Perhaps a lot of it is also the amount of people in one room that overwhelms me, but it is really sad for me. I can't go over and hug someone happily and chat and show off clothes to. Like Cajun said, I also have no femme bestie!

However, if femmelicious does come across this, you are not my friend lovely lady ~ at this point you are family, and I love you bunches, so exclude yourself from this rant xo

AND now that I finally read the OP - I love to text, talking on the phone depends who you are, lucky few Skype :) We as a couple only have two lesbian couples in the area, and outside of that is co-workers. I think we would benefit from more local people to hang out with, but I am not sure. We're pretty content with each other. I know myself personally I communicate often through FB statuses and comments, and there are a few folks from here I text roughly once a week or two if not more.

As for how people make friendships - I am not really sure. It has been a LONG time since I've made a friend in person.

:phonegab:

after reading jackhammer it just brings me back to common interests, like genme said. I don't have any mates who'd look at a pool pump or ac. they don't fish or four wheel drive.
its just not my friendship pool. I do have quite a few mates who ID as butch but they just aren't that kind. I did try dating one who was very.... truck, fishing, video games, steak, works in a hardware store, doesn't talk much... but other than sex there wasn't anything in common and I felt kinda lonely sometimes with h just not my world, really.
if I hung out with a whole bunch of butches like that and femmes who did old school feminine type stuff, I'd probably think there was a big difference between butches and femmes.
but although I'm pretty girly in many ways many of my pursuits are just general interests like science, museums, galleries, pubs, cafes, lounges, various events for political things and fund raising.
I'd prefer to talk on the phone but no one I know can afford to. its rare Skype sessions and some text. mostly email and the bulk of my communication is through Facebook.
or in person. my local mates don't seem to communicate via any other mode than text to arrange meet and then hang and talk.
everyone else, in the uk, Australia, south east Asia, Holland, Greece, France and the us, is Facebook.

I'm sincerely not an old school gal - well... american style one at least.
its great if one is, I just don't get exposed to it much because my own personal interests lay in other things. I've had old school type relationships but we shared the common interests as mentioned above. and we all shared a box mix up of friends.

that's why I think where one is might also co tribute a lot to the question asked.
I think gender lines seem stronger in certain types of backgrounds or environments or the way you express your gender attractions.

I can see why it might look that way if that's what your friend circle looked like. so at least I'm not baffled now.

so thanks.

but the world is a massive place and with many ways to do the things we all do. I don't think I'll have anything in common save one or two things just because some has the same ID as me. that includes communication. to me it strikes me as an individual thing. I communicate with individuals so... I don't see a trend. but it do think gemme is right. its because I bond through common interests and common values and goals. not ID. :)

I think it is interesting that the original question was:

Friendship Circles: Gender Differences in HOW We Do It?

but many response's were centered on WHO we do it with.


I'm not criticizing people who answered that way, I genuinely think its interesting that the conversation seems to have moved in that direction.

My friends are all over the map in terms of who they are (their personal identities), and my friendships are as unique as the people in my life are different from each other, and I love that.

How we do it is either very simple or very difficult to answer. This is probably why people respond with who they do it with. I mean "how" is either a very concrete answer like how do i keep up friendships - in person, on the phone, text messaging, online etc. Which is really rather short on content containing not much to elaborate on. Or it's a more philosophical answer like "how" do i conduct my friendships. And I think within that context it could arguably contain who do i do it with and why do i think that is.

Maybe?

Well I fish, I enjoy a good steak every now and again and I love my video games although as I age I notice I don’t put the time in like I used to. But the love is still there. I talk plenty, it just might not be subjects that hold anyone’s interest. The operative word is really hold because you might initially be interested, but I can talk about the same thing for hours examining it from every conceivable angle, reviewing it, using every possible scenario until you either want to cry or stick something sharp in MY eye.

If you are pressed for time or even just bore easily you might want to skip the long version and jump down to the end.

LONG VERSION

A little background to explain the difficulty in bonding with the handy butch.

I could look at a pool pump until the end of time and I really wouldn’t be any closer to understanding what I might do to make it pump if it didn’t want to. I would love a pool though.

I wanted to take our AC apart and run water through it to clean out any possible mold cause it’s coming on 3 years old and mold just happens sometimes. My wife talked me out of it because she believes I will cut myself on something sharp. I can understand her reluctance. I’m sure she still remembers when I put together a TV stand for her step- mother. I did something wrong, not sure what, except that it was uncorrectable (at least by me.) Apparently once screwed in, using these kinds of screws on this particular place on the stand, you couldn’t remove the screws. Because of that I was not able to attach the shelf and the doors. So she really did just have a stand. I mean I’m sure someone with the know how could have just pulled out the old power tools and found a way to attach the shelf and doors. But I only had a manual screwdriver and zero ability.

I put together one of those big white cabinets once. My gf at the time made sure to explain to me that this project would be mine alone as she had no aptitude for this kind of thing. I cheerfully assured her this butch had it covered. I laid out the directions and began what turned into a 5-hour marathon. At the end, after discovering that I had some how put the shelves on upside down or backwards or something and the cans would just slide off the shelf, my exasperated “I wouldn’t know a Philips screwdriver from a carburetor” femme took over and fixed the shelves so our food wouldn’t slide to the floor when we stocked the cabinet.

After purchasing a crib my very pregnant ex and I discovered there are a lot of pieces in that box. More tiny springs and screws and oddly shaped paraphernalia than you could ever imagine. I laid out the crib pieces and began studying the directions while my partner examined said pieces. Before I ever finished reading the directions she had most of the crib put together. She didn’t even need me to lift the heavy parts. She put the whole thing together and never once looked at the directions. She has an understanding of how things fit that I couldn’t hope to duplicate. I had a butch friend who lived in the apartment below us who kept trying to show me how to fix my car every time it would break down. My partner would hang around with my friend’s wife while watching peripherally trying to hear what was being explained. Finally I told my friend you need to tell this stuff to B, she will be able to do something with the information. For me it’s just so much gibberish.

One of my sister’s exes, M., is like me in some ways. She doesn’t naturally understand how to fix the car or put stuff together. I remember staying up all night with her one Christmas eve putting together my niece’s bike. We finally got the thing together just before sunrise. I’m sure the beers didn’t help, but the truth is neither of us has a natural aptitude for this stuff. But M. had something I don’t. A more practical intelligence. I’m smart sure, but in a very useless way. I am a good thinker. And really you’d be surprised how unnecessary it is to actually be good at that. You can easily get by being an okay thinker. Being good at it is mostly a handicap really. Anyway M.’s strength was in her ability to persevere. She would find out what was wrong with her car and then get books out of the library (the olden days before the internet put it all at our finger tips) and figure out how to fix it. It might take her hours, even days but she would get it done. I only recently learned how I too can do this. Thing is I don’t always want to. But I can. There isn’t anything I can’t read about and figure out how to do given enough time and margin for error. I mean if I was trying to defuse a bomb, we all explode, that’s a given. But normal stuff that is forgiving and flexible I can eventually figure it out. But that’s not always fun for me. So I may or may not do it. However, just knowing I can has given me a bit of confidence that I never had before.

Another of my sister’s exes, T, was a butch of a different type. He could fix anything. He was an electrician and very much a dude. He teased me about my inability to fix anything, my choices in swimwear and often told me what butches did or did not do (kind of like my mother did about what girls did or did not do). He ended up transitioning and now lectures on what men do or don’t do.

END OF LONG VERSION

My straight male friends, especially K., but all of them really, are like me. They don’t fix their own cars for fun or shoot pheasant and duck out of the sky. They like to spend a Saturday afternoon walking around Harvard Square talking and looking in bookstores or maybe taking in the Museum of Fine Arts or the Aquarium or a Science Museum. They are politically active. They enjoy getting together for a barbecue or a day at the beach. Maybe meeting after work to take in a Red Sox game at Fenway. Funny thing so do my straight female friends. Not much difference in what the guys like to do from what the girls like to do. I don’t see them much anymore since moving to Montreal, but they all had one thing in common. They were easy in themselves. The French have a saying here, Bien Dans Sa Peau, comfortable in your skin. That would define my straight friends. There was an ease of gender for them. There wasn’t the underlying frenetic apprehension surrounding gender presentation that I found present in many of my butch buddies. But then there didn’t have to be did there? They fit easily, their place in the world was solid. They walked through their life without suffering much anxiety surrounding their gender. So while I find them enjoyable as friends, I also enjoy my hyper gender aware butch buds. They may be a tad annoying with their crap about my v-neck t-shirt being too feminine or their merciless teasing at my insistence on wearing a woman’s bathing suit, but they have walked in my shoes and know my heart, they know something about what my life has been. We don’t share the same life, but we understand what it means to live differently.

HB mentioned American style butch femme. I wonder if it is cultural to a degree. There may be more emphasis on gender in general in the US than there is say in Europe. I’m not sure, never been. But it is possible. Certainly the people I’ve had as friends who were from European countries as opposed to the US or South and Central American countries seemed less gender concerned. There interests were more generic and less gender specific. But I don’t know if that was just my personal experience. But if it is true it might account for the more gender post traumatic stress symptoms found in American butches and femmes. Gender is so much more of a thing for everyone in America.

I do know that I have more in common with my straight male and female friends who like to go to museums or walk around Old Montreal, Harvard Square or Faneuil Hall than I do my butch friends who like to fix cars and walk around Home Depot. I also have butch and femme friends who find visiting museums enjoyable as well. The difference for me is that while I would have no use for straight male friends who only want to drink beer, fix cars, shoot cans and take in a grand prix or straight female friends who spend the day baking, shopping, doing their nails and talking about their men, I would be able to be friends with the butch/femme versions. They have something else for me even when we don’t share common interests. Without common interests straight people just don’t have anything for me. Not so with butches and femmes. They inherently have something in common with me. A shared life experience. Not a shared life. Not the same life, but a similar interaction has occurred between them and the world, at least enough so that they get where I have been because they have occupied similar space.

Still the truth of my life is that my best friends have been straight men or women. Can’t really explain it. It just is.

Completely. It boggles and hurts my mind sometimes when I come here. It feels at times like a kind of gender obsession. When I have had the company of butch/femme visiting from the states to London I knew that they were going to get very weird looks for the constant gender talk coming out of their mouths. I would get looks of "are they on crack??" from others. They insult people by saying things like "so, where are the butches?" at a table that has many butches at it. I wince and smile and make a joke and try to move the conversation politely on. But since they don't dress/act in an american masculine manner, they don't "catch" it. If they go up north, it's more recognisable to them, because of the factory work and mills history. Also, I think if any of my partners had been referred to as "bro" by another dyke they probably would have stared with complete bafflement and slight disgust.

masculinity is not a constant. it's expressed differently. but people seem to think where they are is the bog standard man. And yes, masculinity is based on male behaviour - it may not belong to them but they are the ones that set the bar that women and queers grade themselves against. Which is why many of my butch friends in the UK wanted their own word.

Pronoun use is mostly she. Except for the ones who are transgender. And I didn't really see too many people in relative comparison who considered themselves that way. I knew a very small smattering of people who used "hy".... and the rest wince at it and call it an "americanism." People don't do american masculinity (repair, hunt/fish, steak, etc) because that's a pioneer type background. And they have a church of england or atheist back ground, not puritan/calvanism. These things make a big deal in how people see masculinity.

I just left a b-f singles group on fb that is supposed to be global. yet when I asked privately, the members who aren't in the states, why they don't post, the answer was "there's no point." what they talk about will just be ignored or whoosh past people as irrelevant.

Canada winds up being somewhere between the two. I find canuck reserve to actually be more, in some ways, than english, but less in other ways. But we also have a pioneer background so in vancouver, every dyke and their 6 dogs wants someone to snowshoe-kyak with while bench pressing a killerwhale. It's not really my thing. I'd rather do the walks you describe, Miss Tick, that sounds fabulous. I like history.

Again, for me just depends on their background more than anything. I've been with femmes who do nothing but talk about butches, shopping, baking and how cute their shoes are and I frankly want to open my wrists.

I do want some butch and femme friends, of course. there are some political things - if they are wired that way - I like to discuss with them. But the ones that are gender talk (in a non analytical/deconstructive kind of way) I can't do. It drives me a little bit mental. I'm really not interested in talking about my gender and butches. I like most of my conversations to pass the bechdel test, in terms of males and butches.

Also, I can often talk about some of those politics with non-ID'd dykes. feminine lesbians who don't ID get the same stick I do about most things. Masculine dykes who don't ID still get policed in the bathroom. But they don't talk to me about gender qualifying.

ID, since going to a place where I was accepted, is not the issue it once was. Coming home was hard because that acceptance was yanked back to a degree and it really hurt, but I've also learned a different view that is far more relaxed. And when I talk to people in seattle, that gets hyped up even further. I have tried to date south of the border but the constant butch, butch butch, butches do this and femmes are that, that I get puts me in a bloody bad mood. And I just don't have the patience. I find it less so here, but even lesser still in the UK and Holland.

I was actually considered to be the extreme of my queer friends in the UK. I had the piss taken out of me for talking about it more than anyone else. So... !!!
Goes to show, hey? If I'm extreme, then...

I've enjoyed reading others' answers on this thread. I think what surprises me the most is just how much so many people hate talking on the phone and love texting. I LOVE talking on the phone. I often talk to my mom on the phone several times a day, sometimes for a few hours and sometimes for two minutes. I don't like phone "dates" or when every conversation has to be a long one. I really just like to hear someone's voice whether we are talking about nothing or something important. In fact, if you are reading this and enjoy off the fly phone conversations, please PM me so that we can exchange numbers. What's funny is that I'm not good at returning calls and may call someone else several times without a call back from them, while at the same time not minding at all if they don't call me back. I like to be very casual about the phone. Sometimes I resist calling friends because I'm worried they will think it's weird that I only have ten minutes and have nothing to say. Truth is, I just enjoy the connection, even if brief. It doesn't feel like the calls I do for work because there are no guidelines or expectations. I have this with a few people, though not many. This paragraph is part sharing and part advertisement for phone buddies :). If you happen to be someone who also connects over the phone, reach out to me. It's always fun to get to know new people from our community. Conversely, if you've been getting calls from me, and that's not your thang, as I'm realizing -gasp, not everyone's like me!- just let me know that too. And then keep in mind that at some point I will probably forget and need to be reminded again.

As far as texting, I am just not very good at it. I feel that I am slow and have difficulty communicating. I will engage in it a little bit and am sometimes cheered by the unexpected text, but in-depth texting is hard for me.

I like email alright but often feel I don't have much time to email. There is, however, nothing like a long email from a friend. The problem is that I'm inconsistent in responding. Still, I can type faster than text, so for real written communication (that isn't a few quick words), I prefer it over texting.

Private messaging is not my favorite form of communication because I'm lazy, and it requires that extra step that email doesn't for written communication. I'd much rather exchange emails and communicate that way. But on the other hand, it's prettier than email (at least my email!) and keeps things on the site, which has its own degree of comfort, so I'm cool with it for communicating with people I don't write with a great deal.

Well, of course this wasn't the question, but methods of communication did come up in the discussion, so forgive my rambling on the topic.

As to the question, I have a lot more phone and this-site communication with people than BB, and BB has a lot more Facebook communication with people. BB also sometimes talks on the phone but definitely not as much as I do. I am equally friends with butches, femmes, straight people, and trans people (or trans femmes / trans butches). I'm sure this description is not phrased right but I think you get the drift.

In person, I like to take walks with people. I think it's a nice way to talk. I also like to have people over to our apartment (if I trust them!) and chat and eat and just hang out. I have a group of BF friends that I get together with maybe twice a year. Life is like that. Much of life is taken up with work and responsibilities of one sort or another, and it's not always easy to fit in person social time in. I have friends from this site who I have not met or even talked on the phone with (you know who you are!) who I feel a deep bond with for years. I feel like if these people lived closer to me, it would be so nice to get together in person as friends. But, because of the nature of the geography of this site, it's just not possible.

There are also people who I may not be close friends with here but respect deeply on this site. They may not even realize how important they are to me, but I read their posts or see how they handle situations, and they end up holding a close place in my heart even if I don't tell them because it might sound weird. Hopefully that doesn't sound too stalkerish :D.

Anyway, enjoying this discussion and looking forward to more people posting. :)

I have friends who I'll go out with some times or especially if I feel like going out to a club, then I have closer friends that I see a bit more often. I don't talk as often as I'd like with people, though. Especially after moving out of community housing. I don't think that has much to do with being butch or a trans guy, though. I know a lot of really social butches and trans guys.

As for phones...I really hate phones so much. I get really anxious when I have to make a phone call and often end up putting it off even if it's really important. When I do I often recite in my mind what it is I'm going to say, or sometimes write it down so I don't forget. Part of it is also I find sometimes I have trouble hearing what the other person is saying, and since they aren't in front of me I can't read their body language or anything else to try to fill in the blanks. Then I end up asking them to repeat themselves a million times and it makes me feel like crap...so yeah...I hate phones lol

I don't know if gender plays a role in the way I am as a friend.

I can make some observations, but I'm not sure what they mean, if anything.

One is that I have a couple close straight male friends now and have had many others throughout my life, but I've never had a butch friend, and always felt a kind of wall with butch women especially if they were in a couple.

I've noticed that on this website, butches seem more open to friendships with femmes, and that makes the environment feel less rigid to me.

Off line, b-f couples I've known seem to gravitate toward other couples while two of my oldest dearest friends are a straight couple and I love them both a lot.

I do have one close femme friend who has friendships independent of her partner (not that I don't get along with her partner, but the femme and I are the ones with the connection).

My long-term friendships, except for the one femme friend I mentioned, are with straight people that I have things in common with. We met either in grad school or in the literacy or poetry communities in NYC.

Some of these are people I've had countless seders and Thanksgivings with, and when something bad or amazing happens in my life, I tell them right away.

Others are people I've seen at readings for 20 years, and we have a mutual respect and casual appreciation of each other, but we don't share anything personal.

Right now I'm getting close by talking on the phone with one of my ex's close friends. R broke up with me a couple weeks ago, as she lay in the hospital recovering from two strokes and heart failure, and was (is) waiting for a transplant.

Her close friend M was also banned from visiting her, for different reasons that are equally puzzling.

M, the ex, and I have been a huge solace for each other. We've talked and cried on the phone for hours and hours, and I am not generally a phone person. I feel very close to her, and we've shared our grief and sense of loss and bewilderment and anger and deep unrelenting worry about R with each other. I hope it's a friendship that continues beyond this crisis we've found ourselves in together. I've never had a friendship start that way. And it has nothing to do with gender.

I know *so* many phone phobic (really anxious about talking on the phone) people...

The worst for anxiety over the phone, imo, are phone interviews...who ever thought that was a good way of interviewing people? Ugh...

I was just on a search committee and we interviewed a guy in Atlanta, via Skype. He really appreciated that we were open to doing that, and it went well. I think we got about as much a sense of who he is, as we did of the people who sat at the table with us. It's a good option, especially since so many people are willing to relocate.

Also just wanted to say that while I described a good Skype experience in a post just now, I didn't mean to invalidate that for you, phone interviews (not quite the same as Skype but still...), are anxiety-producing.