[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Metropolis

Revel in your strength... there's nothing weak about a female and/or women who flips a bird to the naysayers, the peer pressure, binary expectations and walks into "a mans world" every single day with masculinity and a proud swagger to boot without giving up any part of being respected as a female and/or women. This is a space is for rapping about living life openly as a female and/or woman who holds by societal standards "too much" masculinity for the world to be comfortable with... and how we deal with the good the bad and the just plain ugly that comes our way.

It is exactly this - walking in this mans world daily with pride as a butch woman far too masculine for the mainstream that I find most satisfying as a butch lesbian. Most challenging too, yet something that is at my core and feels complete.



The world we live in already is inherently deeply mired in misogyny and sexism, fallacies of masculinity and who owns/wears the boxers and who owns/wears the panties in the arena of the sexes. Sexist innuendo based on a patriarchy's cultural misnomers that women can't be masculine, can't wear the boxers and if they do it's easier to understand if they claim man in them. When we speak and take space in the outside world and in our own communities it's often challenged, we're often put to task to explain as to reason or need, considered insubordinate radicals, wave-makers, put on the defensive, patrolled... insecurities abound.

And it is these fallacies of masculinitythat I find most disturbing! For butch women, for every identity on the spectrum of butch and for men! there is no such fucking thing as male ego! Ego has no gender! And the Id is not only masculine, nor is the Super Ego mainly female!

For good reason? Perhaps... because the patriarchy has something to defend... has something to lose. Something that seemingly has to be taken as it's been proven it not going to be graciously given, and females/women are more than able, and less than willing to be bullied out of it. I find even we here in our own communities we haven't escaped it and it's even more ridiculous, frankly sad to see it played out in LBGQT, Butch Femme communities.
Yes, it is.. very sad. But, no, we are not going anywhere. We are just as viable as ever.

I think something that's not recognized is that Butch Women/Female ID face a special unique set of challenges internally in (but not just limited too) struggling to integrate who we are against binary and patriarchal teachings masculinity = man, but also outwardly/externally being recognized in for both masculinity and female/women simultaneously and seamlessly. It isn't an easy road to navigate or explain.

The remainder of your OP includes many more points that I hope will be discussed here, but, I have to say that our unique challenges and our simply amazing merging and seamless integration of female and male plays a major role in combating the patriarchal binary which all people ought to be involved in. It dismisses all of us and is predicated on structural and institutional sexisism!

There need be no divisions - we are all fighting the same war....