In Celebration of Butch Femininity

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by Kobi

When I see "perpetuating a problem" and "enabling expectations", what I am hearing is "blame". I may again be misunderstanding you but this is what is behind my response.

No one is responsible for my identity but me. I am who I am based on a combination of innate factors and life experiences. Life experiences have helped me to both define and refine that identity as I encounter things that feel right to me for me, and encounter things that dont feel right to me and for me.

Having said that, we still send messages to one another thru the things we say, how we say them, and where we say them.

What I find in the butch femme community is a blurring of sorts. We have mixed genders, and mixed sexual orientations. We also have a desire to be inclusive and accepting of diversity which, it seems to me, is supposed to be accomplished by blending into something generic rather than having respectful boundaries for distinct differences.

If we want to address it as a community, it seems to me, we need to be willing to walk the talk. If we want to celebrate peoples diversity, our language and behavior needs to reflect this. Not all butches are male. Not all butches are female. A transman is not the same as a female id butch, or a male id butch, or a transgender person. How can we celebrate diversity when we call them all "butch"?

I have never equated butch to male or imposed male on butches, so if you could be clear who is perpetuating this?

Being respectful of boundaries is another way to address this community wide. We all need and deserve our own space regardless of how we id. There are issues that are unique to us and that space should be respected.

I am a fan of respected space.

As a woman and a lesbian, I find it very intrusive when male id people find the need to make their presence known in a thread for lesbians. It has nothing to do with them. As a woman and a lesbian, it feels like a violation, voyeuristic, and indicative of male privilege and entitlement.

I believe when this happens we have options to report or ask the people to leave or exit the convo, I know I have done this in the past in certain Femme threads.


I feel the same way when I see male ids make their presence known in femme threads. Do you really want to have sexually suggestive comments made indiscriminately when you are talking about what makes you feel sexy? Or when you are sharing lingerie pictures?


Honestly Kobi, this particular problem is just as much a butch problem as it is a male problem, the butches are no less guilty than the male id folks when it comes to being sexually inappropriate. I have been known to call on that, and it doesn't make me popular..


I also feel the same for the trans threads. Transfolks do not need my opinions on their experience. It is their experience not mine.


Another way we can address boundaries, is to be mindful of the info we are sharing and its appropriateness to the topic at hand. Again, I am mindful of lesbian space, so when someone comes into a thread about the lesbian experience, addresses it, and then has to bring other ids into their response, it sends a message. To me, it is a "yeah but" message. "Yeah but" is an invalidating message.

This particular issue is difficult for me because who gets to police who is lesbian or not? I know I was policed, so I chose dyke, how do we keep lesbians who are lesbians but other lesbians do not see them as lesbians out?

Sometimes it is important to pull something apart, to see where its origins lie. I dont know that this is one of those things. Sometimes we just need to be mindful that everything we do and say or dont do and say sends a message to other people. What may be more important is are we aware of the message we are sending? And, are we sending the message we want to send?

My questions and thoughts are in bold...

[imperfect_cupcake]

That's the thing. I like butches who are women. I like butches who are their own gender. I just can't equate sex (female or male) with gender (man, woman, butch, femme, bear, genderqueer, trans as gender). I personally get that a lot of my exes did not want to embrace the term "masculinity" because they felt it came with too much baggage. They wanted another word that was just for them and their gender. Which I get. I still personally have a residual twitch with the word myself. No, masculinity doesn't belong to men. The swastika actually doesn't belong to the nazis, it's eastern. But no matter how much I know that it means other things, the very first thing I think of when I see it, is hitler.
It's really hard, no, next to impossible, for me to say masculine without the same thing happening to me in my head. Probably why some butches struggle with the concept of being called feminine. They can't imagine femininity as any other thing than _______.

I tend to see most things as Nongendered to be honest. There are some things I cant help seeing as masculine but it's more an interplay between doer and item. than an actual "thing" ... I don't believe in "energy" or anything like that. I think it's a cop out word. What people talk about is movement, interaction. The way the body holds it's self we read as masculine or feminine. Because we were taught that. No other reason.

So my concept of "grace" like say the way Peter o Tool moved, crossed his legs, smoked and laughed, to me is ungendered but to someone else with a different back ground, less understanding of upper class British training of poise perhaps, would call it "faggy" or "effeminate" (feminine). Or tell me he has a "feminine energy about him" (argh... No he doesn't. You are talking about something you see, not an essentialist notion of being because it subjective. And if it's subjective, it CANT be essentialist)

Sorry bulldog I'm leaping off a word you used, not to get up your ass about it, but I see this "energy" word used all the time here used to describe and essentialist ideology about a persons being... And it's just not. It's the way they are viewed and for a reason the view has a bias toward. For example, the kids at school see me as having a "masculine" energy where as my friends see me as having a highly feminine "energy"

The kids at school mean : I'm assertive, I like to piss about with the boys, I like to talk about adventures, I laugh loudly and openly, I swear and am very confident about taking up space.

My friends mean: I dress very feminine, I flirt in a feminine style, I move my body in a feminine way. The kids at school don't see so much of that.

So which is it? Do I carry a masculine energy or a feminine energy? Could it be I don't have either and it's just how people have grown up with concepts and seeing those at the forefront of my behaviour? Probably.

I personally see myself as highly feminine because of certain traits and my love of feminine ritual.

I never put down a partner for doing anything they want that may be considered feminine. Go for it. Embrace it. Make it butch. I've seem butches pull off tiger striped bras and lip gloss. She also wore a disco silver lame soft ball jacket. She had MASSIVE huevos, that one lol... And no one Who knew her was ever in dispute about her being Butch. She has a presence of authority over herself. She dripped sex. Woof.

But yeah I have seen femmes and butches do it. Butches to the femmes and femmes to the butches. Mostly not with intent but sometimes incredibly so.

Mostly I feel pressure to be old school in my dating rituals in order to be desirable. I'm not. So I know my relative dateableness scale number is quite low. If I was more demure, quiet, giggled more, acted embarrassed and wanted someone to kiss me slowly and wrap their big strong arms around me and protect me...

I'm sure it would be easier. Alas. I am brassy, loud, and if anyone tell me what to do when I'm not naked, I get arsey. Plus I don't accept protection and care from people unless they have proved to me we have a caring friendship and hot sex. Oh well. My luck.

But yeah, I do feel a lot of pressure to conform in order to be desirable. So I get it.

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

My questions and thoughts are in bold...

I have never equated butch to male or imposed male on butches, so if you could be clear who is perpetuating this?

I believe when this happens we have options to report or ask the people to leave or exit the convo, I know I have done this in the past in certain Femme threads.

Honestly Kobi, this particular problem is just as much a butch problem as it is a male problem, the butches are no less guilty than the male id folks when it comes to being sexually inappropriate. I have been known to call on that, and it doesn't make me popular..

This particular issue is difficult for me because who gets to police who is lesbian or not? I know I was policed, so I chose dyke, how do we keep lesbians who are lesbians but other lesbians do not see them as lesbians out?

Those were your points.

What I hear in every one is "yeah but", "yeah but" "yeah but" and "yeah but".

Sometimes we lose sight of the forest because the trees are in the way.