About Butches Q & A

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by Mormegil

I dont really know where I stand. My brother has told me countless times that im butch. and i do wear masculine clothing and have other traits associated with being butch.

But when i look into the mirror , i dont feel "butch" , I dont feel anything. not femme or butch. I simply exist.
I dont feel very feminine or masculine at all. But sometimes the balance i seem to have shifts one way or the other and then i return to the middle. and i tend to be extremely flexible when it comes to a partner. if she is more masculine iam usually more submissive unless she is. and if shes femme I can be her gentleman . I comfortably shift according to the needs or vibes she gives off , but its not something i do at will , it just kinda happens naturally by itself.

I hope it's OK for me to comment in this thread even though I'm not butch. There's no need for you to make decisions about how to present. It's really, REALLY perfectly OK to just be who you are in the moment. No one else gets to tell you how that 'should' be, or to identify you as butch or femme. Simply existing is just fine. Most of the butch and femme women I know simply exist, which places them somewhere in a vast galaxy of possible presentations. A few of those women are extraordinarily masculine, and others are really traditionally feminine. Most of the others fall somewhere in between. They aren't posturing. It's just who they are. And that's great.

By the way, I understand that there's a societal assumption that masculine=dominant, and feminine=submissive. That assumption is problematic for many of us. You can be very masculine and not at all dominant, and vice versa.