[betenoire]

Yesterday when I was posting I was getting ready for work. I actually typed with one hand and brushed my hair with the other, then typed with one hand and did up my bra with the other. So I didn't have time to expound.

Here we go.

I agree that her wordage is unfortunate. But I also think, that since she is -not- a member of the Butch+Femme community (I don't mean online, I mean from my understanding of her words that is not her ID or how she views her relationship) it's unsurprising that she didn't have a more savvy way to voice what she wanted to say. And, again, while her wordage was unfortunate it's very -very- clear that she wasn't making a sweeping generalisation about the Butch (upper case B, here) community at large.

Only very stupid people are going to read her comments and think "omg! I was so right! Butch women just want to be men!" because only very stupid people think it's appropriate/sensible/sane to paint entire groups of people with one brush like that. And those very stupid people would have thought what they thought no matter what Nixon had said - even if Nixon had given a 14 page essay on gender, those very stupid people would have been like "omg she is ugly and mannish!".

In fact - we have no way of knowing what all Nixon had to say on the subject. She could very well have said some well-thought-out and sensitive things, which were largely ignored by the Advocate (which is a shitty magazine for very stupid Queer people) in favour of printing the easypeasy pat one-liner. Are we also cross with the Advocate for so irresponsibly printing something that would cause all of this kerfuffle?

I don't believe for a second that she thinks that the only way to be appropriately female is to be feminine. I also don't believe for a second that any of the people in this thread who don't think what she said is worth all this uproar think that the only legitimate way to be female is to be feminine.

But I do have a question. If comparing a masculine female to a man is upsetting...is it also upsetting when someone refers to their (female identified) lover as "Daddy" "Sir" "My Husband" etc. I get that those words do not mean "man" to us in this community - but I also get that those are words that have been used to describe men in various positions...well, for as long as those words have existed. Should we as a community reject those words? Should we be making up new words?

I'm not trying to be a shit-disturber by asking that question. I genuinely can't wrap my head around how one thing is diminishing and the other is perfectly acceptable. We cannot have it both ways.