[blush]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Out of how many sites, how many threads, how many years (!)*butch* identity gets discussed/analysed, deconstructed (and put back together again!), it goes on and on.

There have been some awesome people who have started great *Femme* threads, but, constantly, the threads that get the most feedback are about BUTCHES (FIB and MIB) /TG/MEN of our community and their identities.

What is that about their (butch/female and male dependent) identities that make for the most heated (and most interesting!) conversations when femme threads do not get half the attention?

Originally Posted by Nat

Maybe it's transgression that makes this discussion so much more of a focal point than any discussion involving feminine experience, or maybe it's controversy or maybe it's a masculine topic and therefore deemed more worthy of discussion...

Every once in a while, I find myself reading (perhaps imagining?) a certain strain within this type of thread that feels like this to me:

The masculine folks demanding more respect from the feminine folks than they already get while at the same time being less than respectful toward feminine folks who get it "wrong." I see masculine folks complaining about femme "laziness" and "apathy" and such for not always getting things right. Most femmes I know have bent over backwards for the butches they know or have known in an attempt to understand and be respectful of them. I even see masculine (and feminine) folks blaming the behavior of feminine folks for the behavior of masculine folks who send mixed messages about their own IDs - which I think is actually the most infantilizing, demeaning assertion regarding masculine community members that I've seen in this thread.

I really want to be on board with whatever I need to be on board with to be an ally to every member of this community, and when I read about how femmes are being perceived as so lazy and apathetic, I feel exasperated, frustrated, helpless and disrespected as a femme. It's soooo sexist to call a butch by the wrong pronoun, to misinterpret their gender or to misrepresent them to the heterocentric world, but complaining about how femmes aren't being nurturing, attentive, understanding or respectful enough toward masculine folks - that doesn't hint at misogyny?

You know what I don't see a lot of? I don't see a lot of feminine people here in threads talking about how lazy or thoughtless the masculine folks here are for not understanding and respecting the feminine folks enough. Do you think it's because we (feminine folks) feel like we always get respect from the masculine folks?

I have been guilty of defaulting to different pronouns in the past. To me there are two different main types of default. There is the default pronoun used in hypothetical situations and then there is using a default pronoun with a specific person, regardless of how they ID. I have mostly been guilty of the first type of default, but I know there are times I have slipped with the second.

Guess what? It's freaking hard. It's hard to remember, it's hard to keep track. Some of the masculine folks I've known from this community have even changed pronouns and identities sometimes more than once over a matter of months or years. It's hard to keep track, it's hard to always get it right. To me, it does become a laundry list, and at some point, the amount of psychic energy it takes to remember every single masculine member of the community's preference becomes too much.

How much time and energy does a masculine member of the community feel they need to spend talking to an individual femme about their gender experience, identity, pronouns, etc, before they consider her apathetic and disrespectful for not knowing their stuff? Do they know her stuff? Are they invested in her, or do they just expect her to be invested in them no matter how much or how little they respect or even think about her?

It seems like many of the masculine folks here want all this "respect" and really sometimes I feel like the respect which is being demanded is actually being confused with male privilege. And if male privilege does exist on this site, then maybe working toward dismantling it together would be the better option than demanding to receive equal share in it.

PS. I am mutilating the English language by purposefully using "they" and "them" as gender-neutral singular pronouns in the above post. As odious as this is for my poor English major brain, I think I'm going to make it a habit. I just didn't feel like writing "her/hir/hym/him" a hundred times. Sorry, my dear English.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that both of these posts speak to that frustration femmes feel about pronouns. The one that acknowledges that sometimes it's fucking hard for ALL of us to keep pronouns straight. Yet femmes are most likely to be called out if we get the pronoun wrong. Why is that? To admit that it's hard sometimes is just that: admitting that it's hard. So what. It doesn't mean it's not worth it, or we don't fully understand the why and how of it.

However, it has gotten to the point that if a femme acknowledges that it's difficult sometimes to keep pronouns straight, we are slapped as not caring enough about a butch's or transperson's identity. We aren't trying hard enough. We don't understand. We want to emasculate you.

Are femmes held more accountable for pronoun mis-naming whether intentional or not? It sure feels that way.