Lesbian Butches - Coming home to ourselves....
 

Thank you for the thread, Kobi.


WHY LESBIAN ETHICS
by Sarah Lucia Hoagland

"In claiming lesbian focus, I began to notice things I had not noticed when my focus was on men or on women [or, on myself as masculine gendered]. And I found that at this point in time, at least, lesbian existence creates certain conceptual possibilities that can effect conceptual shifts in consciousness." - Sarah Lucia Hoagland


:rrose:

Funny that you would start this thread today, for me anyways. I am 54 and I too have always had my woman,female, lesbian self.
Today I found a picture of me in the early 80's. It reminded me that way back then I was searching for the right skin I felt comfy. That picture sure reminded me of the struggles to find out where I fit in.... I look at that picture and boy, was I never gonna fit in as a Femme!
It wasn't long after that that I found comfort in having my masculine side, my Butch came out and I finally was comfortable. Back then, I use to really get upset when I would get a sir, I would say "yanno, I do have boobs" or something blatant like that. Today I just smile and correct them, or not, they figure it out and get just as red.
From 1994 to 2002, when my daughter was in elementary school, I did for my daughter what some consider unthinkable, I again pulled out the dresses for school functions and only school functions. Once she hit intermediate school, it was cool to have a lesbian mom, a butch one at that!
She, my daughter, always accepted me as Butch. It was the outside world that didn't. Now, I don't really care, I am a Lesbian Butch Woman.
OSB...aka Jo or Joan or JJ

I know this is for Lesbian Butches, but I just have to say...YEAYYY!

Sing is sistah! ;) Viva la butches ~ woot!

I love all things butch, cuz my gf is :)

Thanks Kobi for this thread. I want to engage in this conversation, however tonight I am just too tired.
Thanks also to everyone participating! I'll be back tomorrow or at some point soon, when I have more energy to offer. Just wanted to send out some good vibes to let ya know this has been seen and appreciated.

Hmmmm....interesting and much appreciated thread!

I agree with Kobi's post...to each their own journey....I think the path's we walk on our individual roads to self discovery sometimes lead us right back to where we started...and that's ok too. Self discovery at times is more about self acceptance.

I came out as lesbian when I was 27....being femme or girlie or anything close was never in the question....I think I was 16 when I wore my last dress.

More recently I have been exploring my more masculine side...and bottom line is through that self discovery was that while I like being this tomboish mixture of female and male...I do not want to be male....

I think sort of like a sliding scale....we slip back and forth until we find a place on the spectrum of sex identity that suits our feelings in that moment....moments change and so does the scale...

I wonder if at times the need to identify as inherently male or female is not just ingrained programming that in society to fit in you have to be one or the other....instead of embracing who we want to be...even if that means being gender neutral or embracing of both our masculine and feminine spirits.

all things woman!
 

I am very proud to be a lesbian butch. This is truely my identity and sexuality. I am woman-identified. I also take pride in being a part of a B-F sub-culture that encoumpasses all identifications, gender and sexualities.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt internally estranged from my female self. I think outside forces conspired to keep me estranged from a female identity. I think borders are patrolled vigorously. I think there is a natural softening, a certain slippage if you will, around borders, around the edges of identities. These areas must be guarded stringently. There is fear, as there is with all borders, that something from the other side will escape across and morph what we know and change the face of our reality. As a society we have a lot invested in maintaining duality. Right or wrong the need appears to be to keep it simple. If you are not male then you are female. If you are not straight then you are gay. There isn’t a whole lot of room for expression outside of the box. And to keep it that way society sets up defenses along the edges of male and female to maintain the borders intact. Of course we have lots of expression outside of the box anyway because people naturally resist boxes unless they personally choose to sit in one. But I think that our infinite variety of expressions and identities often get confused by the seduction of duality. Identity and gender outside of male and female get lost in translation and is often co-opted without our consent by society’s narrow vision.

I’ve thought a lot about this stuff, struggled trying to understand it, understand me, see where I fit, how I fit. I always felt like I was female. I don’t think I ever wanted to be a guy. However, when I was a kid I wanted the freedom that came with being a boy. As I got older I wanted all the freedom that came from being male. I wanted not to have to worry that some creep was going to rape me. I wanted to have a better shot of walking around at night without being attacked. I wanted to be treated with respect and to have my girlfriend be treated with respect when we walked down the street together. I wanted some of those indulgent smiles that young love always gets from straight people. But I did not want to be a straight man.

As a kid I loved running around shirtless in warm weather. My mother put a stop to that by the time I was 6. Whenever I would complain to her that it was too hot to wear a shirt her answer was a halter top. I hated halter tops. I really wanted the freedom to be topless. And I hated looking like a girly girl.

I wanted to be free from needing to get all dressed up like a doll. I hated dresses. The worse day of the week for me was Sunday. Well, it’s kind of complicated to just say that straight out because there were quite a few years of my childhood that I didn’t live exclusively with my parents. The days I was not with my parents were my worse days period. But when I was home the worse day was Sunday because my mother did everything she could to get me in a dress. I complained, begged and pleaded with her to leave me in my jeans. I explained how I couldn’t have my guns strapped on correctly in a dress. But my mother wasn’t moved.

She spent years telling me the things that little girls didn’t do. I remember telling her once that she had to be mistaken because I was a girl and if I was doing it then clearly girls did do it after all.

There finally came a time when she gave up. At that point I believe she unconsciously stopped looking at me as female. My father was always happy to treat me like the son he never had. So now it was unanimous. I was a boy.

I didn’t want to be a boy really. But now I was subjected to the opposite type of coercion. Now if I had to get dressed up for some reason or other, I would get remarks like “what’s with the dress and the make-up you look like you’re in drag.” It was almost as if in order to fit into society’s gender narrative I had to now be seen as a guy. It seemed this was the only way people were comfortable. Okay, if you’re not a girl then you must be a guy. I didn’t want to be a guy. But I couldn’t seem to be a girl, at least not as defined by others.

Talk about feeling estranged from myself, at that time if I could have found some way to have my sex and gender match society’s definition of it, I would have done it. I would have asked to be made female. At least female as defined by the society I lived in. It was like I was one sex and the world insisted I was another because my actions didn’t align with their gender narrative. It was surreal. It still is sometimes. It’s kind of a mind fuck. Even finding enough clarity to explain the way it feels is difficult.

I remember feeling torn a lot trying to figure out exactly what I was. I mostly ignored my masculinity because to me I was a woman, just a woman who loved women, just a lesbian and yet it felt like that was always being negated. It never felt at anytime in my life that the world ever accepted me as a part of the definition of woman.

It’s odd looking back how woman and even lesbian were held just out of reach. But masculine, male, and/or butch were what defined me to others. And while they tried to deny my version of woman, the keepers of gender who decreed I failed miserably at female, thrust a male definition at me and then turned around and were angry at me as though masculinity was a prize I had stolen or a trick I had played when their guards were down. I was loathed for my masculinity in its female packaging. Like it was my idea to be male. So is it any wonder that I held on for dear life to my right to identify as woman, as female. It always felt I was on the verge of having my sex and gender stolen from me. I spent little time ever nurturing my masculinity. It was always about woman for me.

I don’t see this as an internal problem with my self identity but it feels as though I was estranged from myself. I realize it was society’s narrowly defined gender roles causing my estrangement. And it sounds simple when you say oh well, that’s just society’s definition of woman, you don’t have to buy into it. You can define it for yourself. And while that is true enough, you cannot define yourself for anyone else. So it turns out to be a very lonely definition indeed.

One can even say it’s society’s definition of lesbian that causes my alienation from mainstream lesbians. By defining lesbian exactly as someone like me, someone who is female but looks male, society made me a pyorrhea, a danger, the unwitting anarchist in a peaceful revolution. Lesbian is not made up mostly of women like me. Society’s inference that it is has made many lesbians suspicious of butch women. I can and do own lesbian as an identity but lesbian does not care so much to own me. I am a woman. I am a lesbian. I am a butch lesbian. But even in the margins there are margins. The margin that is defined within the margins.

I figured out that I could decide to just define myself however I choose. I can own woman and lesbian as well as masculine and have that mean whatever I wish. I can believe I have expanded gender roles to include me. But how does that actually work out? And can I own feminine at all and ever make it mine when people look at me and see male? Can I be feminine when every move I make, every wardrobe choice, every interest, every intimate interaction, even my very essence screams man to those who see gender in neat tight little packages labeled man or woman? It always felt to me that I was being told if you can’t be a woman the way a woman is supposed to be then you need to be a man. It tore me up. It made me turn my back on a very important and integral part of who I was. It made me dislike the male part of me even while I had no choice but to act exactly how I was, a masculine woman.

It seems to me the world hates masculine women and feminine men. They loathe them. More than anything else masculinity in a female package is taboo and worthy of disgust. As is femininity in a male package.

I spent so much of my life holding on tightly to my female self because it felt like it was always threatened. I felt like someone was always trying to take my feminine identity away from me. I fought so hard for this that I usually ignored my masculinity. It was just there. It was just who I was. But it was also the cause of my self-estrangement. I regarded it with contempt and distrust. Male bad/female good. It’s still such a part of my unconscious narrative.

I think my feminist ideals further complicated my estrangement from myself. I believed being a woman was the best part of who I was. Followed closely by being a lesbian and a feminist. The fact that my masculinity erased most of this in the eyes of others was difficult for me to negotiate. My feminism further alienated me from my masculinity. I don’t mean to say that I hold my feminism or feminism in general responsible for my feelings. Or that I would wish to be or ever will be anything other than a feminist. I just want to clarify that. I love being female, lesbian and feminist. These are the most important parts of who I am. But there is another part of who I am that always seemed most important to the world in general, while just a part of the whole for me. And that is my masculinity.

I remember when I discovered butch as an identity. That fit. I was a butch. I was a butch lesbian feminist. Finally I could be comfortable in my identity. However to everyone else I was still a wannabe man. Nothing really changed. Different day; same shit. I think that discovery affected me deeply because I began to see a pattern here. I looked at the term LGBT community that was being used frequently. I realized I actually couldn’t see myself reflected in totality within any of those. Then I figured maybe queer would define me best. But that didn’t seem to honor my woman lesbian feminist identity.

It’s been an interesting journey. I doubt it is even close to complete though. Identity is an ever evolving aspect of my humanity. Whether the actual identity changes or whether the language used for understanding shifts I cannot say. But I can say that for me, masculinity has always taken a back seat to woman in my understanding of myself. Yet, masculine as defined by society is such an integral part of who I am. Can I really understand myself if I relegate such an important piece of my identity to the back of my consciousness whenever possible? Actually one could easily say that masculine is the face I present to the world. Yet it is the part of me I least understand, the part I least want to understand. It seems a real loss. I think that is where the disconnect is for me. That is the self estrangement. But that estrangement was caused by society’s obsession to define me by what it termed my masculine behavior. And then to despise and loathe me for my insistence on preserving my identity as woman, thereby presenting to the world an example of the much hated female masculinity.

I think if anything got a raw deal it was my masculinity. I think my masculinity needs its day in the sun.

Just for the record in my above post that was supposed to read pariah. Not the gum disease.:readfineprint:

But I guess it works either way. Sort of.:|

Hope ok to post this here but it seemed an appropriate place
 

Pre-ordered on Amazon, releasing the end of the month:


When We Were Outlaws (Paperback)
Jeanne Córdova

A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women’s Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s. 

Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is “to the revolution” –to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground, Angela Davis; exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement.

By turns provocative and daringly honest, Cordova renders emblematic scenes of the era—ranging from strike protests to utopian music festivals, to underground meetings with radical fugitives—with period detail and evocative characters. For those who came of age in the ‘70s, and for those who weren’t around but still ask ‘What was it like?’ –Outlaws takes you back to re-live it. It also offers insights about ethics, decision making and strategy, still relevant today.

With an introduction by renowned lesbian historian Lillian Faderman, When We Were Outlaws paints a vivid portrait of activism and the search for self-identity, set against the turbulent landscape of multiple struggles for social change that swept hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets.
About the Author
Cordova’s previous books include Kicking the Habit, A Lesbian Nun Story, and Sexism; It’s a Nasty Affair. Her essays appear in numerous anthologies such as Persistent Desire; A Femme Butch Reader, and Love, West Hollywood.
   Product Details
Publisher: Spinsters Ink 
Release date: November 29, 2011
Language: English
Number of Pages: 456 pages 
ISBN-10: 1935226517
ISBN-13: 978-1935226512 ...

This is a subject very near and dear right now. Something of what I went through recently, if you can call a period of two years recent. Now I grew up with a high degree of "butch/masculine" tendencies, there is no doubt to that, it was a natural part of my life from day one, likes, dislikes, behaviors, mannerisms... a natural part of my personal progression, direction and growth, still is.

What's not natural, is the stuff you "learn" later, unwanted life events that change you and leave a bit of sludge each time they touch you, that build up and bog down your movement... and pretty soon you're lurching through life with all this crap you carry. It can be a personal trauma/s, or something you see or even when you're young it can be just a word/s, cuts just deep enough to leave a barely visible scar you didn't even see until much later when actually looking.

I think for me, this all kind of bubbled up slowly and I felt like I was in a constant struggle to define internally my gender "identity" for myself, reconcile the pieces that felt fragmented but every time I claimed the female/woman "piece" I literally cringed... pulled back and looked for "something" else, something that didn't make me cringe so much. Through the years, the conglomerate of directions I went with identity, spoke more accurately about who I was than any one days/years idea/feeling or paragraph. I'm very fluid, to that there is no doubt... so one day I had to ask myself- wtf am I doing? Why am I cringing? I didn't always feel this way, I had to look back to things, events in my life that occurred between who I was when I was proud and embraced of every part of me... and forward to who I had become... and exactly how I had learned to be ashamed and hide "it".

I really have no desire to talk right now about the particular events and things, only that I think it's sooo f*cking critical to living a happy, authentic life, that we r-e-a-l-l-y do examine ourselves, those cringes in particular, with a very critical eye. For myself it was a very long process, I desired strongly to experience and express what I knew I was strong and beautiful inside me but always did a smack-down when I felt that desire. You can't be doing that and be truly happy, you can't love yourself while you are simultaneously hating on parts of you. It's taken literally years... to let the little bits of those parts of me in one at a time, inside and outer things... one at a time... going forward slowly, even having to back up a bit at the end until I reached a place of balance and comfort.

I didn't take a different path then was meant for me, just a more difficult trek on that path when trying desperately to side step parts of it. I have deep regrets, I spent over 2 decades progressively stifling and hating on an amazing and beautiful part of myself, maybe the most beautiful complete part even. I feel like I missed so much that I didn't allow myself, moments, experiences... but quite honestly I can't blame myself... for me personally there's just no way until I'd moved far enough along to look back and see the whole picture. I am just extremely grateful I've reached this place of healing and have a new chance... I think many females/women of all types never do.