Quote:
Originally Posted by girl_dee
thank you!
i have been called out about not being feminine enough and that weighs on me.
i’ve moved on but there are moments.....
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Awww.. try no to worry about it dee, I'm sure your partner thinks you're just fine as you are! :-}
I don't feel any need to compete with anyone with regard to butchness or femmeness. I know full well that I can no longer carry off femme visually so well as I could thirty years ago, and I've stopped feeling freaked out about being mistaken for a guy occasionally if I'm not wearing a skirt (which is nearly always, these days). I can see why some folk nowadays suppose me to be a butch - walking boots, jeans, tank-top, and either a long warm waistcoat with deep pockets or a biker jacket. Yet I always carry a handbag, and have shoulder length hair, and tend to use a quick dash of foundation and some lippy every day. And vanilla perfume. My attitudes toward other women more closely resemble a butches, and yet I'm innately a wallflower (hey, I had years of simply being pretty and waiting to see who got lured in by my appearance! It worked!), though I've been working hard on trying to overcome that. But if anyone chides me for being a wussy butch or a not very femme femme, I'll simply laugh in their face.
I'm a (hopefully) fine example of me, and I'm only competing with myself to be the best me I can be.
Harking back to an earlier bit of this thread, I've been pondering the terms masculinity/femininity and butch/femme. I can't quite explain it properly yet, but I've a feeling that seeing butchness in women as being female masculinity is kinda backwards somehow. I'm just thinking aloud here, no offence to anyone is intended - but I'd say that masculinity is male butchness, just as femininity is female femmeness. So... butch and femme are the more fundamental, but when butchness is expressed by a male or femmeness by a female, it then fits the societal sterotype of masculinity/femininity respectively. I think. Does that make sense? I'd be particularly interested to know what any of the FTM gents here think on this.
I came to this thought whilst considering my former discomfort at being occasionally thought butch. I came to the conclusion that it's not the butchness I mind so such as the implication that that somehow involves masculinity (which, given my background, is anathema to me!). Which raises the question, of course, as to whether my personal feelings have warped my perception to the point of mangling the language simply to make myself feel more comfortable. I don't think so, but please do say if you think I'm nuts and have done just that!