In Celebration of Butch Femininity

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Well, the way I see it there are chest thumpers in every group. I have faced more judgement and hostility in BF online communities than I in real time lesbian communities (have faced some there too)- most of it hasn't been from lesbians. There are judgmental people in every group. If you are going to get some hurtful feelings it's probably going to be from your dating pool and people who don't id the same way as you. It's not right no matter who does it.

It seems when lesbian complain about blanket statements, we are then told there needs to be room for people to talk about there experiences. I don't see any lesbians saying that all lesbians are perfect or that no lesbians have ever been judgmental. I don't get why it is taken to such extremes. There's people in every group that are judgmental and there plenty of very accepting and nice people in every group as well.

I believe EVERYONE has been broad stroked so far in this thread in one form or another, from ftms to butch, to lesbians so on. I don't see how we are going to have these conversations if we don't leave personal beefs, personalizing things and other stuff that is going to blurr the lines and not allow the conversation to flow.


There have been a lot of ugly things said to Femme's who date xyz by lesbians here, there have been ugly things said by xyz to trans folk, there has been a militant stance on who can identify as xyz or lmno.

I don't get it, I never will.


This is a very difficult conversation to have because we all have such vast experiences across the gender spectrum here on BFP.

I don't deal with these issues out there, we just are, we're queer walking about the world, here it's like walking on land mines, it's very disconcerting.

[BullDog]

Snow, I honestly don't know what posts you are referring to where people have been broad stroked in this thread. I will come back later to read. If you are talking on the site in general, then yes I agree it does happen and it has happened to every single group.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Snow, I honestly don't know what posts you are referring to where people have been broad stroked in this thread. I will come back later to read. If you are talking on the site in general, then yes I agree it does happen and it has happened to every single group.

either way, it shouldn't be happening, regardless of group.

Why is it that we can't get a on handle that?

When there is an implication that masculine folk are the only ones tromping around in threads or spaces, that's not true, we all do it, Femme's do it, Butches do it (that covers all butch identities) Guys do it etc. I had to clarify to Kobi I believe that it wasn't just a *male identity* problem. This is a merry go round conversation we can't just blame one sub group of the community, we're all crossing boundaries up in here... Make sense?

[Julie]

Damn right there are chest thumpers everywhere. I am a chest thumping Femme. I also believe we are all judgmental at times and we all get defensive. It is human nature. I will own my own failures in communicating my thoughts. I will own that I am judgmental. And hopefully I will stop and take a breath and learn from this. I will not come in here with miniscule passive aggressive statements. I will say what I am feeling, right or wrong. Not just leave a word bomb.

What is not okay for me, is when a person who identifies as a Lesbian on a Butch/Femme/Trans site and says... You don't belong in this space and you don't get to interject your opinion. What is not okay is shaming another for who they date, how they dress or how they identify and worse Bulldog, how they fuck. I don't care if you are a makeup wearing Butch who loves pantyhose. This does not take away from the Butch you are.

I came out as a proud Lesbian. I found my people. I was finally home and while there were masculine and feminine energies in these communities, they were Lesbian. They did not have space for masculine or feminine identified folk and certainly not for trans folk on either gender spectrum.

Again (for the zillionith (exaggerated) time) - Please (not you Bulldog) stop picking this one statement of mine apart. NOT ALL LESBIANS are like this! My mistake in making such a generalization. (I'm done apologizing for this).

[BullDog]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

either way, it shouldn't be happening, regardless of group.

Why is it that we can't handle that?

I am in complete agreement. I said that in my previous post.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by BullDog

I am in complete agreement. I said that in my previous post.

Good to know!

[BullDog]

Originally Posted by Nat

Over the years I've run into many conversations with people off-site who have hit my radar as butch-ish, but who feel like certain "feminine" traits they possess or express somehow exclude them or distance them from butchness.

Among things I've specifically heard: haircuts, relationship to make-up, pronouns, sexual preferences, wearing women's clothes or undergarments, even prefered roles within a family or relationship, even jobs held.

This thread is intended as an opportunity for celebration of the femininity which can co-exist with being a butch. Because I think it's better to celebrate where there has perhaps been some tendency in the direction of shaming in our community and in the greater community.

Do you experience gender pressure from other butches or masculine people to amp up your masculinity or tone down your femininity in order to *qualify* as butch? Have you ever found yourself exerting gender pressure on self-identified butches? If you are not butch, have you ever found yourself pressuring butches to behave, dress, etc in more masculine ways than is natural?

Hello, are there any butches who would like to celebrate butch femininity? It would be awesome to hear about it.

I personally think it is very cool when people have various blends of masculinity and femininity within themselves and love to hear about how they think about that and express that. I think I am mostly masculine, so not sure what else to add, but cool topic.

[C0LLETTE]

So, is that it then? -A lot of things got said.. then some hand waving by the weary, maybe some "agree to disagree" and it's over? I'm not so sure this can all be papered over so easily. It's obviously a contentious issue that keeps rearing up, over and over, and it does seem to invade many diverse threads. Maybe the weary need to let it play itself out.

Of course everyone could also be sent to their respective corners where they could only talk to their own kind but I betcha that wont work and what's the benefit of that. And, to complicate matters, it's not just what we talk about but also how and why we do it: some like the intellectual reasoning and have the vocabulary to do it, some need to vent in whatever terms are immediate; some have heard it all before; and I'm sure there are many more motivations.

Seems to me that the only solution is to: 1. make threads iron clad and have mods jump in at the first hint of divergence or tangent ( likely a path to upheaval) or 2. just let things go, pull out if you feel the thread has lost its bearings and there's little more of interest to you that is being said. The contentious issues wont die but they will go into a gentler coma for a while.

Thing is, there may be thousands of threads listed but there really do seem to be a very few themes. Everyone will surely get their chance again.

[imperfect_cupcake]

I hear your frustration. Perhaps opening a thread in the red zone about this issue and posting a link in this one might be a good idea. Although I don't agree with how Julie is communicating it, I fully understand her experience as I went through it when I came out as feminine into masculine in a Lesbian (as political, gender, social and feminist ID, not as a label for their sexuality). Luckily I escaped that community or I would have thought - and I did at the time - all lesbians were like that. I didn't ID as lesbian for four years because I thought that's what Lesbians WERE. I think a lot of us have been through that.
I now consider myself a queer AND a lesbian because my sexuality encompasses both. To me it's not an ID. It's just a name for PART of my sexuality. So I guess when I hear some femmes talk about "the Lesbians that told her how she was allowed to fuck and how judgemental they are" I personally hear a specific kind of lesbian and know who she is talking about, off the bat. Not all. Cause I'm a lesbian and I know she's definitely not talking about me. But then I am familiar with Julie and her posting style lol I'm just as ranty
I might not be so patient with a trans bloke I don't know going on about the Lesbians. I might get on my white horse and jab him with the pole I sometimes keep up my arse.

So sincerely, I think people have a lot to say about the issue. And if you think the conversation should be continued, start a thread and post a link.

[Martina]

Originally Posted by Julie

Let's say I have a friend who is trans and he lives his life as a male and he is a submissive bottom, there is an automatic judgment that is placed. And I can tell you, it is not made by other transfolk or MI Butches or most femme's for that matter. It is made by the chest pounding Lesbians that want their own space and don't recognize these people as having a right.

It seems to me like butch and trans bottoms get a lot of shit from male-ID'd folks and femmes who like male-ID'd folks. Folks who like masculine-lead relationships and the fantasy that that is the norm. I have seen a LOT of that. I think that lesbians out in the world would possibly crap on a butch for being a butch, but for being a bottom? I am sure it has happened. But the ultra political lesbian we seem to be constructing as a straw man might delight in the masculine bottom / feminine Top arrangement. I don't know.

I also missed the statement that a stone femme wasn't a femme. That should have been moderated. It might have been. I didn't see it, as I said.

As to lesbians telling a femme she isn't a lesbian if she dates a transman, I can imagine that happening. I have seen it in the real world. But it shouldn't happen. I imagine it happens less and less. No lesbian or group of lesbians gets to tell anyone who can ID as lesbian, queer or whatever. It's an obnoxious conversation. I think most people do not cross that line anymore. Those who do are saying more about themselves than they are about whoever they are talking about.

The whole thing about lesbian space here. Kobi made an argument for it on this thread, and Julie thanked her post. Kobi and Snow also had an exchange re masculine people coming into threads and making prurient remarks that I thought was useful and interesting. Kobi was like masculine-ID'd people come in to threads and make unwelcome remarks. Snow said something like I have seen that from all kinds of butches, which is true. Kobi thanked that post. It's interesting to me that Kobi saw the behavior as more egregious coming from a male-ID'd folks. I kind of get that, but as a femme, I can tell you, it makes little difference. Kobi is not a femme, so she might miss that subtlety.

Historically, on b-f.com, where many of us have a previous online history together, lesbian-bashing was permitted and very common. A lot of butches and femmes, whether lesbian or not, have had a problematic relationship with lesbian communities in the United States. Transmen and their partners have had a particularly hard time. I do not know why there was so much pleasure taken in lesbian bashing on that site. Perhaps because there had been so much hurt. A number of us rose up and changed the culture there some by confronting the anti-lesbian sentiment. We got no support from the administrators or monitors of that site. On the contrary. But things did get a lot better.

Originally Posted by Medusa

We have moderated a fair amount of folks for talking about what they have experienced in the Lesbian community and I have often felt really frustrated by that. Not because I don't think that we need to be very careful about making generalizations (of course this is important!), but because I have felt like it is somehow "taboo" to talk about the very real marginalization that Butches, Femmes, and Transpeople have experienced in the Lesbian community. It's especially frustrating when that conversation gets squashed in Butch,Femme, Trans space. Why? Because that's a very real conversation that is valid, truthful, and important.

When this site was founded, it seemed like they were going to tolerate less of that. And that has been the case. I get that there are a lot of people who are still angry with the lesbian community and would like to express that.

IMO, if they do get that opportunity, it will not be pretty. We might go back to the way it was at b-f.com. But the idea that there is a lot of pent up rage is kind of unpleasant to think about.

Kobi has recently been the self-appointed spokesperson for lesbian feminism on the site, more or less policing lapses when she finds them. I find some of her arguments ludicrous, and her approach nearly always lacks finesse. But honestly, she does seem to feel like she's struggling for air here. And it may be true. Maybe she's the canary in the coal mine, and I ought to be paying more attention to her discomfort.

She did have an interesting post where she talked about trying to connect online with radical feminists and encountered some rabid old school cultural feminists who hate transfolk. She was like, no thanks. I am more at home on the planet with my friends. (I am paraphrasing freely.) Seriously though, if someone like Kobi can't make it here, then neither can I.

I don't give a tinker's damn what Kobi herself thinks of my reaction to this stuff. (We have never gotten along.) But if she, or people like her, are to be vilified, I am going to stand on their side. I do not volunteer to go back to the b-f.com days when it was open season on lesbians.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Regarding the thanking Martina, I want you to know that my usage of the thank button doesn't mean anything other than:

Thank for participating, if I have something else to say I may use a rep note, only if I have something kind to say or I have a question that is not disruptive. I swear the thank button is ridiculous on how it gets viewed, I don't even want to thank anymore cause it's assigned so much damn power...

It's hard to be polite in this venue because manners/politeness gets turned into xyz, also I totally agree, that be it butch or guy when someone tromps into a Femme space I am like wtf.

I also feel the same way when a Femme goes into Butch/Guy space but that is always more welcomed than not. That's weird to me how that works

Thanks for letting me rant

[tapu]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Kernerman English Learner's Dictionary

lesbian(noun)ˈlɛz bi ən
a woman who is sexually attracted to other women

Wiktionary

lesbian(Noun)
A homosexual female, a female who is sexually or romantically attracted to other females.
lesbian(Adjective)
Homosexual; preferring female romantic or sexual partners.

For everyone.

tapu's dictionary:

Got a pussy? Like pussy exclusively? Yer a lesbian.

[Martina]

Originally Posted by tapu

tapu's dictionary:

Got a pussy? Like pussy exclusively? Yer a lesbian.

Really? So are you the one saying stone femmes are not lesbians? What was the point of this?

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by Martina

Really? So are you the one saying stone femmes are not lesbians? What was the point of this?

Yanno, had a male id'd person said something of this sort regarding say cock, equating xyz there would of been a shit storm in here, that's just down right ugly, ugly and erasing!

[tapu]

Originally Posted by Martina

Really? So are you the one saying stone femmes are not lesbians? What was the point of this?

That definition doesn't disinclude stone femmes.

As for my point: that's pretty much the definition of lesbian in a practical sense. Some may wish to push certain parameters in certain ways, but that's how language works anyway. The situation I observe here in talking about anything like this is things deteriorate into fine-line arguments about essence: is or isn't. What if we use the general terms most use in practice and recognize that variation is inevitable and acceptable. Then we can mildly ask for clarification or define a real issue without what feels like policing going on.

[dykeumentary]

I'm sitting in the waiting room of an OB/GYN clinic, where I am getting treatment for an ongoing medical situation. I am feeling very unwelcome, because the people here think they know something about me because of how I look and how i am behaving.

I thought I'd read some threads on this site to not feel so alone in this super-heteronormative and gender-normative waiting room.

So I just wanted to add a friendly reminder that the people who post on this site are our allies, some better, some less better. But we are not the problem.

[BullDog]

Like pussy exclusively, huh? There is a more to having sex with a woman than that no matter how you id. Also, I am a lesbian stone butch, so mine is not involved. But yes I am a lesbian.

[tapu]

Cue intellectual reverse snobbery. Do I have a GPS tracker on me? <lifts shoes to look under>

[tapu]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Like pussy exclusively, huh? There is a more to having sex with a woman than that no matter how you id. Also, I am a lesbian stone butch, so mine is not involved. But yes I am a lesbian.

I wasn't defining how to have sex with a woman. And, stone whatever does not negate the base definition. It's a variation on it.

Originally Posted by tapu

tapu's dictionary:

Got a pussy? Like pussy exclusively? Yer a lesbian.

Not true akshually!