[Femmadian]

There's something I'd like to touch on here for a bit, if I may, which I've noticed has come up here and elsewhere in threads about larger bodies, both butch and femme. There are always questions about who belongs, who it's for, what "qualifies" one to be considered "big," "large," "BBW," whatever word you choose... and also what the purpose of this thread is beyond some "rah, rah, rah, you do you" body positivity cheerleading which I know, while feeling nice at the time, can ring a little hollow in the face of all of the body shaming it's stacked up against.

Here's the thing: If you feel this applies to you, then it does. This thread is for people who fall outside the norm or have been made to feel that way because their size by someone's definition (either their own or someone else's) falls outside the acceptable parameters of what a good butch is, what's sexy, what's attractive, what could be considered desirable by both members of their culture or subculture and by current or prospective love interests. This thread here is for big butches, specifically, and the unique ways in which their bodies exist and are understood.

Butches in particular get so much shit from both inside and outside the community in ways I'm sure I don't have to detail for those here. To have their size and the bodies they inhabit mocked or put down on top of that, perhaps it even being said their bodies invalidate their expression of butch or their validity as a butch person, it just seems particularly ugly when, in fact, they are truly beautiful. Looking through the posts here will tell you that. To see such positive, affirming, and loving words by some of the members here is heartening and it makes me feel good for us as a community.

I've also seen some people posting here and in other threads bring up questions about if they're considered "big" or if this body type or that body type is considered large by other posters or if this or other threads are for them. Here is what I think.

It's for the bodies whose photos are hard to find. It's for the bodies whose photos never happen. It's for the bodies whose photos only happen from the shoulders up. It's for the bodies who will sweat and wilt and suffer in blistering heat and freeze in bone chilling cold because their owners have been taught that other people's callous conceptions about those bodies and what they should look like and how much space they are "allowed" to take up are more important than their own safety and comfort. It's for bodies whose owners think others shouldn't be "forced" to look at them and so they cover them up and try to hide. It's for the bodies which are derisively thought of when some hateful asshole labels someone a "fat dyke" or equates "butch" with "ugly." It's for the butches who may never be approached by mainstream LGBTQ organizations to appear in a calendar, a magazine, news article, or online feature for fear of conforming to old stereotypes while that organization engages in the queer version of "respectability politics." It's for the bodies which not only have a hard time finding clothing which they feel themselves in because of their gender expression but also because of their size and who may never feel fully comfortable, even in their own skin. It's for the bodies and their owners who do not feel that they fit in or represent a good specimen of what a "butch" is or should look like. It's for the bodies which, shouldering the burden of representing the entire community as a whole while in isolation from the rest, feel they're letting the community down and only reinforcing stereotypes by virtue of their existence. It's for the bodies whose owners who, while perhaps intellectually understanding that there is nothing wrong with them, most days cannot bring themselves to look into a full length mirror. It's for the bodies which can sometimes be a physical manifestation of someone's efforts to kill their pain... or to avert it. It's for the bodies which have been concern-trolled by loved ones and lovers instead of embraced and kissed and celebrated for who and what they are. It's for the bodies whose owners are only allowed to "live" fully after reaching an externally or internally imposed goal.

It's for the bodies whose owners feel they must first shrink themselves in order to feel worthy of love.

...

You are not ugly. You do not "look good for your size." Your attractiveness does not have a qualifier. You are attractive and you are wanted because of what you are and not in spite of it, full stop. Your body makes so many chests swell and hearts go pitter-pat. Your body makes knees weak and cheeks blush. It makes people fall in love with you and compete for you and make love to you and want to be with you... and you are no one's consolation prize.

Personally, I don't like you because I think that all bodies are beautiful. I like you and I want you because you are beautiful.

...

I've read every post in this thread, some more than once (and some much more than once) and I loved reading all the different ways and conceptions of honouring large butch bodies and seeing big butches through someone else's eyes. I've loved and smiled at the butches responding with incredulity, bashfulness, happiness, and yes, desire. It has made me cry more than once to see adult people, some in their 40s, 50s, and beyond, expressing disbelief at the idea that someone could want them for them and who and what they are and not as something to be settled for or willfully overlooked. It also makes me laugh and grin to see them coming around to the idea and egging the others on to stroke their big butch tail feathers just a little more. I think this is one of my favourite threads because it is so human.

I mentioned the symbol for lovers of big butches as yes, partly comedic relief but also half in seriousness. I think the desire for big butches, it's worth codifying and being "A Thing" with a capital "T." It needs to be something understood and accepted and not seen as a fringe-y element of a fringe-y group within an already seemingly oddball, rainbow-coloured fringe. I think there's power in appropriating a symbol not originally made for you (and even perhaps made to exclude you) while at the same time rejecting it and stating unequivocally your active desire for something else without apology or explanation. It's a radical thing for women to do and, especially when it comes to woman-identified butches, how much more so is it for women when it comes to desiring other women? Big butches are not exactly considered the norm in any respect, even within our community, and for me, my desire for them is "queer" in the truest sense of the word. My desires are queering in their effect, both on my own life and those who see me live it, as by their very nature they are not heteronormative nor most people's idea of what a "respectable" queer will do and they are an active rejection of that mould. A big butch body is not leftovers or what I can "get" or will settle for. It's what I actively want, outside the norm, outside of influence, outside of external factors, outside of everything, and inside of me.

When I write in this thread, I try to give specifics which I think might resonate with both those who may consider themselves big butches and those who love them because of my own experiences in various points and places in time of being made to feel "less than," unattractive, bigger than "normal," or tolerated but not desired. It's one thing to give generic platitudes of "all bodies are beautiful" and "big is beautiful" and "real X's have Y's" (which just substitutes one body's denigration for another...), but to hear and see signifiers that I understand as my lived experience treated with care, affection, and desirability, that, to me, makes a difference, and I hope that in some small way this thread does the same for those who need it.

Some individuals have messaged me privately expressing appreciation for what I and others have written and I get it. It's not always enough to just wave your hand and say someone's beautiful and then hope that that takes care of everything... not when they've been told over and over again for years and sometimes even a lifetime that they're not. These feelings didn't develop in a vacuum. You need to let them know why you think they're beautiful. You need to let them know what you desire about them. You need to let them know how they make you feel and you need to let them know who you are so that they can recognize that people like you genuinely exist. You can't just say someone's beautiful and leave it at that.

You need to give them a reason to believe you.

I would also like to touch on the use of "beautiful" as a descriptor of butches. I know that some may chafe under or cringe at that word, see it as feminizing, emasculating, or even a bit "fluffy." Here's why I use it. How I look at it is if something as ephemeral and ungendered as a sunset, a summer's day, a piece of music, or even a piece of machinery can be described as beautiful, so can a human being, regardless of gender or presentation. Men can be beautiful. Women can be beautiful. Anyone who doesn't ascribe to traditional conceptions of masculinity or femininity or embodies both together, can be described as beautiful. I think it's an important term to use here because it feels important to talk about these bodies with a reverence and frank desire, the same reverence and desire which I have known and felt for them, to express it openly and without qualifiers or apologies, and to restore to a public forum the concept of their desirability in whatever way possible... and also to use a word which is familiar to us as denoting positivity, praise, and unquestioned, untrammelled, uncontroversial desirability. There is nothing aberrant or unnatural about wanting and desiring a big butch with a big body. It feels natural to me to describe someone I love and desire as beautiful because that is the word I am used to having employed by the culture at large for the things I hold dear and precious and I don't want to separate my love for big butches as something different or strange which somehow does not (or should not) fall under that umbrella. I want them under that umbrella and I want to keep them safe from the torrent of acidic judgments, comments, and ugliness which have been known to rain down on them. You're bloody right I think they're beautiful. They are.

All of this is to say that if you've read everything written here (and bless you if you have) and you think that most, if not all of what has been described applies to you, then yes, it does, and this thread is for you. I think this thread functions best when it's descriptive and not prescriptive. This space doesn't need to serve as a place for excluding some bodies over others, or saying that one body is better than another, or even setting up some sort of objective, external standard of what it means to be a big butch or to belong in this space. That's not how I understand it. From what I've seen thus far, this thread is for big butches and the people who love them. I am hopeful that in time there will be more posts from the butches themselves describing the ways others have expressed appreciation and love for them and their bodies and other positive observations they may have about what it means for them to be a big butch... but in the meantime I'm happy to be a small part of a thread which, however superficially, can help big butches feel loved and desired because I think that, in the end, ultimately that is what this thread is for. It serves a very specific purpose for a very specific group and that's okay. And there's something very beautiful about that.

It may be only one small spot of one small website in one small corner of the universe, but, much like the butches it describes, it's very much needed and appreciated and loved... and I'm so glad that both it and they exist.

TL;DR: Big butches are beautiful.