[BullDog]

Great thread and opening post Metro. How to carve out space as a butch woman? I have found that process to be a very difficult one in butch femme spaces, although I certainly don't think it should be.

Butch women are not a small group of butches sitting around worried that we are about to go extinct, as it is often claimed when butch women speak up about visibility. We are everywhere.

The male defaults for butches are due to sexism. Full stop.

I claim masculinity, but it is specifically within the context of being a woman, a female, and lesbian (and queer). It isn't something I can separate out from being a woman and female in any meaningful way.

I have at times struggled with claiming woman as part of my gender, but never as part of my social existence or as the human beings I most closely claim solidarity with. I am not sure, still, all the reasons for this. I think part of me was over thinking gender, and as Metro said, even butches fully claiming to be female can feel like they are looking at woman from the outside. I am sure there is some internalized sexism in their somewhere as well, no matter how hard I have fought against it.

However, in the face of some very harsh criticism I experienced when speaking up on behalf of butch women visibility within the last couple of years, I have fully reclaimed womanhood for myself. It is very empowering for me and does not at all take away from my butch identity.

To our allies, to me what is important, and what I believe is important to many butch women and female identified butches as well, is that we be recognized not just as masculine beings but as women and females as well. Simultaneously as Metro said. We are not butch lite because we are females and women, and when female and woman disappears from what is seen and acknowledged as butch, it is a very high price to pay.