#and i've been wanting to learn more about ballroom culture for SO LONG

[billowyy]

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[yrbutchgf]

hi, i'm really sorry if you've answered this before, but how would you define butch? i went with the wlw-centric definition for a long time (i.e a wlw who rejects femininity, etc), but since learning that any lgbt person can be butch/femme i've been wondering how exactly to define it in my mind, to know if that's me, if that makes sense.

hi! sorry this took so long for me to get back around to, i burnt out harrrd at the end of this last semester. but i wanted to follow through on this, because i think it's an important thing to talk and think about.

being as they started as part of ballroom and bar culture, the terms butch and femme obviously have a large relational component to them -- i.e., butch/femme as a dynamic or relationship. but butch and femme obviously are also standalone identities, however intrinsically linked they are to that dynamic to begin with. talking about either the dynamic or the individual as though either understanding is the full definition of butch identity would be reductive.

butchness as identity can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. for me, butchness is part of my gender identity and the way i understand myself. it's seen me through many years and sexuality crises; whenever i was unsure of what my sexuality was, my rock in all of it was knowing deep down that i was butch. it's the link between myself, my gender, and my sexuality, the sole constant. this is why i always struggle to define what "butch" is, because butchness has meant a lot of different things to me, let alone the myriad different butch experiences that are out there. it would be like if someone asked me to define what men or women are.

for me butchness is pretty much just the way i navigate masculinity. it's an lgbt intention that i take to masculinity that makes it loose and counternormative, but somehow also classic and rooted, intrinsically linked, to the long history of other butches who have done the same. here's some answers others from the butch/femme discord i'm in gave:

lev shalem/james @ganon:

the way i've been defining it in my head in the most broad sense (like when i was discussing the meaning of my flags) is essentially "a specifically LGBT masculinity" which can manifest in a lot of ways ofc, and obvs not all lgbt people who are masc are also butch, so i'd say [...] there's the working class history that affects the energy, there's the way you feel that your identity interacts with other identities [like butch4femme and butch4butch ...] is your masculinity critical to you? does it feel like you've had to take it for yourself, or grow into it, discover it, learn to love it, learn to not care if other people love it? does it help you to feel firm and sure where without it you felt unkempt? does it make You just make more sense? that's what butch is for me.

someone also shared a quote from an interview at a Studs and Butches photoshoot:

Collier Schorr: I think there's so many butch aesthetics, just like there's so many masculine aesthetics, and I always kind of go back to gay men and the clone era, the 70s and eighties, and you know all those things construction worker, leather daddy and the preppy...

freddie @rustedsun said:

i see it as masculinity that’s subversive bc it comes from LGBT people, like how obv women are expected to be feminine but also gay + bi men are expected to be less “real men” than cishet men so it throws people off that that’s not true, and trans men aren’t “supposed” to be men at all, so to me it’s masculinity that defies the role that’s expected of u in some way. And it’s genuine self expression that brings u joy, it’s about being part of a community, it’s not just going along with a part that was assigned to u or looking down on others for expressing themselves more femininely, there’s gotta be love for other gnc people and oppressed people, and it’s not as rigid as cishet masculinity, in fact i think it often parodies and plays around with cishet ideas of what masculinity “should” be.

someone also recommended the books butch is a noun by s bear bergman and gender failure by ivan e. coyote, noting that an answer for what butchness is will always be complex.

many of the people above also expressed, alongside the personal and individual meaning butchness has to them, the fact that their butchness is defined by a sense of community. this relationship between a butch and their communities -- lgbt, gnc, trans, butch/femme -- is so intrinsic to the meaning of butchness that you can't even really talk about it without it coming up. butchness craves community and history. in a lot of ways, butchness itself is a form of community and history, one in which people defy the role they were given and discover a new way to love oneself and each other.