Cause & Affect: A Femme's Influence On The Friendships Between Butches and Transmen

[SuperFemme]

Originally Posted by Pretty Woman

SuperFemme said: I am having a completely different read on this thread. I am not at all reading it as Femmes having to be responsible for how butches and trans folks get along. I am reading it as Femmes being a part of the equation though. Neither of us exist in a vacuum. Some Femmes perpetuate the chasm between Butches and Trans Folks. Some Femmes are Butch Avengers and/or Trans Avengers...always ready to leap from a tall building to speak for a Butch or Trans person. To nurture. To save.

And I agree! This is what comes to mind when I read through the posts to this thread thus far. And honestly, right this minute it's more interesting to me to hear from other femmes here how we alienate each other (other femmes) when one femme puts down the protector sword while another picks it up and actually uses it to poke the other femme in the proverbial eye!

On the other site, a femme started a thread asking for tips and help to prepare for her first dildo experience with a butch. We were happily chatting along when a butch appeared and started making little jokes and sexual innuendo. And I called hym out on it and asked that hy respect the thread, read if hy must, but not post.

Immediately, two other femmes began to describe how the butch that had posted was one of the nicest people on the thread and blah, blah. Avenge the feelings of the butch! Honestly, I was floored that femmes would be willing to sacrifice their sisters to protect a butch's feelings in that type of circumstance.

Interested in others thoughts on that.

I am glad I was not there to witness (read: get banned) this.

It is a shame that everyone is reduced to sex acts while waiting for a butch or trans guy to show up isn't it?

Conversely, I understand that somebody thought that they were joining in on the spirit of the thread, but it IS disheartening.

[Pretty Woman]

Thanks and for your note. It would have been fantastic to have the support (not a one of the folks stood up to it with the exception of me...known to push back here for sure).
The title of the thread was directed to Femmes only to assist on the subject, but yes it seems that we femmes most often want to discuss sex acts amongst ourselves and then become quite chatty on a variety of topics once the butches and trans men show up.
Just to say a little more about my experience there (can you tell that it still pisses me off?)
It would have been totally cool with me if the femmes that jumped down my throat would have instead asked the OP if she thought it was ok for butches to join in the discussion, but instead they chose to attack me for questioning the appearance of a butch in a thread that was directed toward femmes.
I went back to the thread just to see how it was going a few days later (read but not post) and all sorts of butches had joined into the fun...mostly describing what femmes should do to make ourselves more comfortable with an early dildo experience.
Honestly, the whole thing was disgusting.

Originally Posted by SuperFemme

I am glad I was not there to witness (read: get banned) this.

It is a shame that everyone is reduced to sex acts while waiting for a butch or trans guy to show up isn't it?

Conversely, I understand that somebody thought that they were joining in on the spirit of the thread, but it IS disheartening.

[SuperFemme]

Originally Posted by Pretty Woman

Thanks and for your note. It would have been fantastic to have the support (not a one of the folks stood up to it with the exception of me...known to push back here for sure).
The title of the thread was directed to Femmes only to assist on the subject, but yes it seems that we femmes most often want to discuss sex acts amongst ourselves and then become quite chatty on a variety of topics once the butches and trans men show up.
Just to say a little more about my experience there (can you tell that it still pisses me off?)
It would have been totally cool with me if the femmes that jumped down my throat would have instead asked the OP if she thought it was ok for butches to join in the discussion, but instead they chose to attack me for questioning the appearance of a butch in a thread that was directed toward femmes.
I went back to the thread just to see how it was going a few days later (read but not post) and all sorts of butches had joined into the fun...mostly describing what femmes should do to make ourselves more comfortable with an early dildo experience.
Honestly, the whole thing was disgusting.

PrettyWoman? I am sorry that you had that experience. I have no idea how a butch and speak to a Femme strapping for the first time. Rather, I have no idea how ANYONE can speak to it. It is such a vastly personal experience.

Maybe we should start a thread here in the Femme Zone about it and see what happens? I would hope it could be a different experience?

[The_Lady_Snow]

e are you saying butches and transguys are the ones perpetuating this issue?

I am getting caught up with the word competition...

<scratching head like a monkey>

I am a lil confused

[evolveme]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

e are you saying butches and transguys are the ones perpetuating this issue?

I am getting caught up with the word competition...

<scratching head like a monkey>

I am a lil confused

Actually, yes. Except not consciously, which is important to remember. It occurs in the same way that a good deal of the tension among feminine women (like-among-like) is about underlying competition. It's a theory of evolution, anyway.

And again, it's exacerbated by the conditions of patriarchy, which are quite negative (obviously) and not conducive to the more positive features of informal in-group dynamics (team building, support systems, community-building, etc.).

ETA: Obviously, the same tensions occur among populations of queers for which gender variations/presentations are not so obvious, e.g. gay men and uniformly lesbian women. Competition among and within a group for which attraction and mating is also widely characterized is not as easily parsed.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by evolveme

Actually, yes. Except not consciously, which is important to remember. It occurs in the same way that a good deal of the tension among feminine women (like-among-like) is about underlying competition. It's a theory of evolution, anyway.

And again, it's exacerbated by the conditions of patriarchy, which are quite negative (obviously) and not conducive to the more positive features of informal in-group dynamics (team building, support systems, community-building, etc.).

I get it and I don't. Here is why.

I am not competitive when it comes to partnering up. I am good on my own, I don't have issues getting some or dating. So for *me* that head space does not exist.

I can see how it can play in to all this.

I also have to disagree that it is a butch transguy issue, and this is just my opinion.

We have the power to stop it if we want, or to watch the chest bumping when it comes down to us as future *mates*

So yeah I don't get it and I do cause I don't roll that way.

[Martina]

i think the fact that people hook up out of a community adds dynamics to it that can lead to drama, but that is not necessarily because of competition for resources. It's the added energy. Even the sweet and healthy posturing for attention can get to me at times, but that's my problem. This is a place where people hunt. i don't hunt here, or i haven't. But friends of mine do. And i think that's great. But, yes, it does change the nature of the exchanges.

In r/t butch-femme and (for me) lesbian communities, i see some of that. i have walked up to talk to a butch and seen the femme clutch her partner's arm. But that's not something that i think colors the entire community.

Is the sexual energy strong in our community? Yes. That's one thing i like about it. Does competition for mates cause a lot of the drama? i don't think so.

I am not sure what creates so much drama. Some of it here, i believe, is the medium -- the internet. Also we are a diverse group, and a few people want to feel more "at home" here or in r/t butch-femme than it turns out is always possible. i think that leads to frustrations and disappointments. And there is the normal drama of break-ups, etc.

Because i do not hunt here or even in r/t butch-femme (i hunt in the leather community), i do not encounter much femme jealousy. Some. It always shocks me, and there seems to be no way to defend yourself against it. But those folks are sad. They can't be having the best time. And most of the b-f community members i meet in the world are having a really good time. That's another thing i like about us.

Now I think that for the most part, our evolution has moved away from the domain of the body and into the domain of the brain (at least I’m hopeful), and so maybe it’s true that our choices affect our future. Like, if you refuse to participate in the personal shit storm, you’re doing your own small part to evolve the race.

Also, whatever behaviors people exhibit, unless they lead to greater reproductive success, they are not affecting evolution. It might affect how we all live our lives and what we teach our children -- our culture(s) -- but they are not affecting biological evolution.

[evolveme]

Originally Posted by June

I don't know, Snowy. I kind of get it and have seen it. The whomevers out there that are always looking for "The Next Best Thing" who will make every attempt to discredit their Ex or assign blame without taking responsibility for any of their own actions in the relationships. Some of them will even project their own behavior onto others and infer or assign a deeper relationship or even an inappropriate one onto others. This is not Femme/Trans/Butch, masculine or feminine, this is, as has been noted, human behavior.

I've had it happen to me. Once I was telling someone how nice I thought their partner was for being so thoughtful towards me and I watched her face turn stone cold with anger over it, as though I was trying to make her jealous or steal her partner, instead of what was actually happening, which was that I was saying "Hey, you picked a good one there!". It was both sad and telling about the level of insecurity she had. Sidenote: I was also partnerned when it happened, so I wasn't even "Suspect by being single".

It's interesting to correlate this back to evolution and competition for food/mates/shelter and how that may affect our little microcosm, even though the majority of us are unable to create progeny together in the "usual" way.

Actually, it was your post, June, about not feeling responsible for the tensions among butches and transmen that inspired my thoughts. I don't feel responsible for those tensions either, and I don't think that any femme should, except when she has deliberately participated in a kind of negative in-group behavior that spurs intolerance and dissension. Perhaps we've all been party to this kind of thing at one time or another. Still, I think the basis - the foundational cause - for most intergroup tensions is competition and that it does have an evolutionary source. Like I mentioned, even though we are unlikely to add to the surplus in population, it is a benefit to our survival to mate, and ironically, to find and build community.

Snow, even while some of us overcome our more basic (and base) instincts (and I hear what you're saying definitely) some of the time, others have to consciously work to continue to do so (provided they ever select to do so). Not everyone has a competitive nature, sure, and not all people are given to behaving in ways that are derisive, but most people enact these behaviors at some point, and the larger question becomes not just one of the personality clash, or an inability to sort differences, but whether there is a deeper motivation for this need for establishing groups and even hierarchies.

I just happen to think there is.

[evolveme]

I can’t say that I’ve ever personally witnessed a global (for lack of a better word) insertion of deliberate discord among butches/transguys by femmes or feminine women. What I have witnessed is a kind of dissension taking place amongst butches and transguys surrounding the circumstance at the center of which was a femme. I do not believe the femme was the problem so much as the underlying competition. And I think that competition, being what it is, is a natural impulse centered in our evolutionary instincts. Certainly the conditions of patriarchy make our competitive behaviors quite vicious and self-defeating at times, but as I’ve argued before (to crickets, but wth) patriarchy may well be a condition of the evolutionary impulse.

I’ll provide an example: For me, to use the wrong gender reference for someone is an act of aggression and I will not do it, regardless of my personal feelings about the individual in question. I’m not saying I’ve never done it, but in the years since I started dumping out the knapsack and looking the contents over, I simply refrain. Still, and in spite of the ardent activists I’ve known, I have repeatedly witnessed certain butches/transguys utilize incorrect gender references out of cruelty and in times of frustration.

Back to competition: in spite of the fact that we’re predominantly queer and our partnerings are unlikely to affect population rates toward the surplus, our survival instinct compels us to seek a mate. In every species, this process is the underlying play of its adult groups. And through this process, competition is born. In fact, it’s necessary. We might have the iPhone 4.0 and quantum computing and Bill Maher and personal politics and Julie Marie Wade but we are stupid to think that 2.5 million years of evolution* doesn’t daily inform our interactions with one another (even when we think we’re being smooth). Now I think that for the most part, our evolution has moved away from the domain of the body and into the domain of the brain (at least I’m hopeful), and so maybe it’s true that our choices affect our future. Like, if you refuse to participate in the personal shit storm, you’re doing your own small part to evolve the race.

*just since Homo