#being butch

[celebrate-lesbianism]

Being Butch

Being butch is embracing the bushy eyebrows my mother used to hold me down to pluck. Thick and dark, they're one of my favourite things about my face.

Being butch is wearing comfortable clothing in my favourite earth-toned colours. Wearing boxers, long ones, and feeling secure and covered even in vulnerable moments. 

Being butch is being practical and helpful. It’s having extra time to sleep in the morning and not being afraid to run, move, or get my hands dirty.

Being butch is making peace with the colour pink, forced on me as a kid, implicitly and explicitly. Now I pair my pink dress shirt with a tie, if and when I feel like it. 

Being butch is taking up space, doing as I please. Dirty looks from men mean nothing when I have all the power. 

Being butch is reclaiming my favourite parts of myself and letting them truly be mine.

[cowboyjen68]

hiii!

i'm a younger butch lesbian, but there's a bit of a roadblock: i live in a very cis/heteronormative place, so i have no butch role models. i have no idea how to...well, be butch.

tips and tricks?

This is an easy and simple answer. Just be you. Dress in what makes you feel confident and comfortable.

Being butch will come as natural as breathing to you.

The best butch role models will live life as their honest selves whether that be an outgoing smiley extrovert or a quiet stoic introvert or anything in between. She won't need to put on a facade of toughness or act in any certain way to appease the outside world. We are perceived as butches just by existing so we might as well live life in a way that makes us happy.

You don't need to subsribe to any roles or rules as expected by society. IF you are butch you are butch. Be you.

Now some less woo woo advice. LOL Boy shorts or boxer under wear are almost universally comforting to butches. (NOT all by many) so try some Wal Mart boxers on for size. They seriously made me more comfortable and confident in my younger years.

IF you want to shop in the men's (boy's section) go right ahead. Rarely does anyone look twice because, frankly, men's clothes are accepted, in general, as more gender nuetral than women's clothes. Thrift stores are great places to try different clothes on to see what you like. It is a chaotic grouping of all kinds of styles and sizes for much less than retail (in many cases but beware over priced items larger second hand stores ). Once you find a style you like you can go to new or stick with used.

Shoes... I wear women's Columbias because they are good for my feet, affordable and suit my manual labor jobs. DO not neglect your feet for fashion. Find and spend the money on good shoes. Men's are just too large for me and sporting or outdoor activity shoes tend to have similar quality in men's and women's as opposed to dress shoes were women's are crap and men's are sturdy.

Flannel at big box stores are pretty affordable. Estate sales and garage sales, auctions and thrift stores can be a great place to find vintage, unique men's clothing at a fraction of on line or retail. I have found some very cool ties and belt buckles and dress shirts by taking a Saturday to check out estate sales. If you don't like them down the line you are only out a few bucks.

It warms my heart to see young women embrace the word butch and their own butchness because with that acceptence can come a wonderful community and a source of support in life.

Butch hugs from me to you.

[spitblaze]

I don't see people gas up gnc and butch transfems nearly enough, can we get a fuckin round of applause for gnc and butch transfems

[redrosefemme]

The laziest femme you know with the messiest bedroom is daydreaming about being a housewife to a butch rn

[kingworm]

thanks

[souphamsters]

I've been hopelessly fixated on drawing one (1) sweetheart butchfemme couple ... they're all I think abt ... HELP !!!

(silly lesbian ocs that I love , chae🍓and lucky🍋!!!)

[undeadbutch]

do you actually love transfem butches or are we, to you, just handsome faces with a built in strap? do you see us for anything beyond our penetrative capability? are you disappointed when our boundaries include a lack of genital penetration? would you respect a transfem butch's he/him pronouns in the same way you would a transmasc's or otherwise he/him'ed sapphic?

[mysticfemme]

Getting railed to the point I go nonverbal, the only noise I'm making are little whimpered uh uh uh's. They notice and in between rough thrusts gently ask me if I'm doing okay, so I reach my hand up to tap their arm twice. They smile at me in recognition and praise me before pulling my hips into their lap and going even harder.

men dni

[celebrate-lesbianism]

8?

8. can you share the story of you coming out? 

Coming out as a lesbian and coming out as a butch lesbian felt like two different experiences so I'll address both. Either way, it was a really difficult process for me made worse by the fact that I grew up in an insulated rural community with unsupportive family. 

I officially came out as a lesbian at age 19/20 but knew I was attracted to the same sex since age 10/11. I went to a culty af high school where we had classes on gender roles and traditional marriage, and like I mentioned in my last response, the progressive teacher I looked up to said that women can't be fully homosexual so I spent my teen years thinking I was bisexual by default. I started identifying that way at age 13, which did not feel right, but it was the only language I thought I could use.

Fast forward about 6 years, and it was actually my mother who brought up the fact that I might be a lesbian. This was shocking to me because we had a terrible relationship, she REFUSED to let me have short hair growing up because it "looked dykey," and she worked so hard to bully the tomboy out of me when I was a kid. I don't really remember why she brought it up but I think it let us both process the inevitable, and from there I could finally put the pieces together and start working on self-acceptance. 

I dated a little bit at 20, cut my hair, and started presenting more masculine. For the most part, I liked how women reacted to me, and I loved how I felt. I didn't love being compared to a man so much though, or how hard it was to find clothes, or the way that I started getting treated as suspect in a lot of LGBT spaces. All that plus backlash at work and from my family ultimately made me conform to femininity again for a while. 

When I was 21, I started dating my now wife. She was the first woman who I felt was actually dating me for me and there was a lot of freedom in that. I wasn't being sized up against a man and I didn't have to look or act a certain way for her approval. I could just be myself, and so I started figuring out what "being myself" meant for me, and it turns out that it meant what it has always meant deep down: being a butch woman. 

I embraced my butch identity in recent years with my wife's support and she has found that she has a connection to the femme identity. I moved to a bigger city that is more accepting of gender non-conformity and I cut ties with a lot of family members that were holding me back. I know what I like and don't like, and I'm at an age where I don't care as much about what others think about my appearance or my life. I can just live and focus on what's important to me.

It took a while to develop the confidence and the self-esteem to be open and honest about who I am and what I want, but here I am at age 27, happy, married, and butch. 🙂

[athlast]

there's something about butches reclaiming protectiveness and chivalry from an imposed "caring, nurturing" character associated and often forced upon women. something about how while straight men often try to present as careless as possible, masculinity and care are not only not conflicting in the butch identity, but inherent to it. there's something there.

[mike-png]

Miku in Jewish Menswear

[reyth0rii]

I made this out of the rage I felt from seeing transphobic, butchphobic and enbyphobic comments in my tl.

Being a lesbian is part of my identity too and I refuse to let other people tell me I am not a lesbian just because I don't fit their binary perception of things. It's so sad to see other lesbians shitting on butches and gender non-conforming or non-binary lesbians.

But hey, we are here and we're not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere. I've always been a loud lesbian and I'll always be.

Keep being loud, proud and gentle with other lesbians and be fierce with the ones who try to erase us.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS x Brazil (1985)

(Yes. Real movie dialogue)

[technically-human]

Hey, don't cry. Ghost yuri, okay?

(Now that you know the girls, they need to meet the boys!)

[butchtheworld]

here's for disabled butches. butches who aren't physically imposing or physically strong. butches who are seen as more feminine because of their disability. butches who can't do traditional 'butch' things because of disability. i can't carry your couch up the stairs, but i can sit on the ground with you and put it together

[wyrmwright]

the love you can't even name