Non-packing butches

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Medusa

Parker - You touched on something that I REALLY REALLY want to talk about and might go start a thread in the Red Zone about it.

I think that a lot of us were a party to some of the groundwork that was laid on the Dash that dictated that Butch = certain things and Femme = certain things.

I think it has really been pivotal to how some people have shaped their gender presentation and also some of the reason we keep having to have the circular conversation of what is good objectification and what is bad objectification.

In my mind there is a lot of gray area in the Butch/Femme dynamic and I think that people really worked to try to make it a black/white issue back then. Hence the "He" for Butches and "Femmes never pack" ideaology.

Anyway, just wanted to say I hear you.

It would be nice to be able to have conversations about these kinds of things.

Is the Red Zone the place to have them? In my experience, the Red Zone perpetuates the circular conversation along with a lot of anger, emotion, hurt feelings and nastiness.

This, in turn, makes it harder for non-popular or non-dominant thoughts to be expressed. One has to decide if expressing an idea or opinion is worth the aggravation of doing so. It is also a peer pressure thing.

To be unpopularly blunt about it, we try our best to ignore or downplay the fact that the same masculine-feminine dynamics, the same internalized sexism/misogyny on both sides of the dynamic, which created and fuel the dichotomy in the first place, just get replicated in a Red Zone arena.

Thus, what could be a fruitful and exploratory conversation with lessons learned on all sides, becomes a monologue of many to reinforce the status quo.

Red Zone does make it easier for the mods tho.