#butches come in all kinds of gender identities and expressions

[transguyking]

Always there to be my princess’s gentlemen @etherealemeraldprincess 🥺

As a butch I feel like there's a thing happening especially on tiktok with baby gays where lesbian/sapphic terms are being used incorrectly, not only that but they seem to think they're similar to the gay/achillian terms. They use terms such as bear, twink, wolf and otter to describe body type. We use terms such as butch, stem and femme to describe gender expression.

Butches and femmes come in all shapes and sizes, they're not just skinny white women with long hair. Butches and femmes come in all kinds of fucky gender identities and expressions, they're not just tomboys and "straight passing" women. They can be skinny cis white women with long hair, but that's not all of us - fat hairy he/him butch dykes in leather gear are the crutches of the community.

I love being a butch, it's been so freeing to accept things about myself that I never would have without the proper knowledge of queer and sapphic history. I love femmes of all kinds, I'm here to cater and be a gentleman in whatever why they need me and in return I get taken care of by a lady but none of it is in a heteronormative way

[spinosacha]

Sorry for the awkward crop but I am cooking.

But seriously, it is so facinating that this is such a defined trope. Like there are so few butches in media so the fact that three of them have so much in common is telling. I think it's interesting how these masculine characters are disempowered when masculinity is often associated with power in male characters. These women however are masculine while being trapped and limited.

Often these characters masculinity is even shaped by their disenfranchised position, i.e they have to fight to survive and thus become tough. None the less they also take pride in their gender expression and physical adeptness. This relationship to fighting is complex, it's both something they find some agency in, something Gideon and Vi could work on even while being trapped in a small confined space, but also something that is forced upon them, especially in the case of Karlach.

In the societies they are from, people with real power get to avoid getting their hands dirty themselves. Fighting is power exercised on a lower plane of society so even when the characters themselves can look physically imposing and threatning that doesnt translate to actual privilegde.

This link between oppression and masculinty can be relatable for butches and I think it’s a facinating way to make the characters expression translate well into our experience marginilzation. I also really appreciate how these characters are very compassionate and protective people, traits a lot of butches identify with and tie to their butch identity.

Not to get all anthropological about it but it makes sense that the characters who are confined to operate in a more fragmented plane of society also are very attached to their close community. In this sense, being traditionally masculine by being a good fighter, is related to their protective and compassionate qualities since both fighting and kinship takes place in very localised personal spheres.

I think this trope is a really neat exploration of how power isnt as binary as "femininity is opressed while masculinity is franchised" but that the intersection of identity massively changes the implications of masculinity and femininity.

That being said, we could really use some butch nerds. Desperatly, like I am begging. Like the type that would spend free time analysing fictional character on tumblr.

Edit: it has come to my attention that the ninth is indeed located underground, which I kind of thought but was unsure about, but anyway just imagine that “has spent a lot of time underground” is in the inner circle

The specificity of this trope continues to amaze me

[butchchase]

To be butch

What butch means to me - My journey.

It took me years to come to terms with my gender identity. I had spent such a long time thinking that I wasn’t allowed to express myself as Butch because I thought that I didn’t fit the standard mold. To me, being butch was to be a carer for my femme, to be muscular and tall, to be feisty and protective. And many other things that I didn’t consider myself to be. So I stuck with calling myself a masc, but it never felt right. It didn’t feel like me.

Growing up I always felt out of place. I was a tomboy in a room full of girly girls. Girls who spoke about boys with bright smiles on their faces and nervous giggles when they found out their little boy crush liked them back. Girls who got excited to go shopping for new dresses and skirts. Girls who wore makeup and asked their friends if their hair looked cute. None of it was me. I rarely found myself wanting a boy's attention, I wore baggy shirts and basketball shorts, I hated makeup and I played typical boy sports (like footy or basketball). I never felt like I could relate to anything they spoke about.

They would ask me things and I wouldn’t know how to answer. Always finding some way to make up a lie and hope they believed it. Everyone knew I wasn’t your typical girl, but they didn’t live to care too much because tomboys do exist and they thought I’d eventually grow out of it. But I didn’t.

When I had started thinking about whether I liked girls or not, I was dealing with a lot of internalised homophobia. I grew up with a homophobic father who would regularly talk openly about his hatred for gay people. I knew there was nothing wrong with being gay and he was just talking like that because he grew up surrounded by that kind of language as a kid and had it rooted in his brain that it was unnatural. (He’s in his late 60s). But there was still a part of me that believed his words, that it was unnatural, that relationships should be strictly heterosexual. Thank the high heavens that my mother wasn’t like him.

During my discovery about my sexual orientation I had come to terms with the fact I was bisexual, I had accepted that. But deep down I knew it was because there was still that hope that I would marry a man some day. During this time of my life I got outed in school, but you know kids they twist everything and by the end of the day people were going around saying “chase is a lesbian”. And if I’m being honest it made me feel like shit, I didn’t want people talking about me, especially about that part of me. And at the time it wasn’t even true.

I identified as bisexual for a few years and during that time I actually mainly dated women and only dated 2 men. I wasn’t with those men for very long but during that time it felt like I was only dating them for the satisfaction of others, like “look everyone I am still into men I promise!” It felt like I had to put on a show and act like I was attracted to them, when in reality I never felt anything towards them other than friendship. But with women, there was a genuine connection and attraction. I felt loved and I loved them back.

One day I sat with my thoughts and truly mulled over if I even had any attraction to men at all, and I realised I didn’t. Someone could’ve shown me the most attractive man on earth and I would've felt nothing towards him. During this time I actually cried and thought I wasn’t normal, even thought “what the fuck is wrong with me?” at times. I did your typical ‘am i gay?’ quizzes, and when answering the questions it was like a switch went off in my brain. I knew then and there I was a lesbian. And for the first time in my life I had accepted myself for who I was.

I was then very open about it, I was proud of myself and my sexuality. I didn’t feel ashamed to just say “I’m a lesbian.” Kids would come up to me in school and ask if I was gay and I would happily answer yes. Some seemed disgusted and some smiled and said nothing else. Either way I didn’t care about their opinions, I was finally happy in myself and nothing they could say or do would change how I felt.

But there were times when the internalised homophobia would come back and I’d start questioning everything all over again. Thinking that I need to still like men or my mum is never going to have grandkids, my dad won’t come to my wedding, and I’ll lose my friends.

I started dressing more masculine and I was comfortable representing myself this way. I was dressing for me and no one else. I identified as masc but there was always that feeling that it didn’t describe me perfectly. Like there was something else to discover that I hadn’t yet. No one seemed bothered that I would dress more masculine, they just saw me as me.

There were times during secondary that my friends would tease me about being masc, say some dumb shit and try to be funny. I would just laugh it off but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that it hurt. And when I got defensive about it they’d looked surprised at my outburst like I was overreacting and it ‘wasn’t that deep’. I called them out on it and they tried to understand why I was so bothered and didn’t say anything about it again.

At my prom I was the only girl in a suit, but it was the first time I didn’t feel like an outsider around other girls. My guy friends complimented me and said I looked great and my girl friends called me handsome. It was then I knew this was for me, I liked the masculine compliments and the overall masculine feeling I got from wearing a suit and I felt comfortable in my own body.

When I left school I downloaded tumblr and began to find a community. I've learnt so much about women like me, about lgbt history, and finding yourself. I learnt about butch women and found myself drawn to them. I wanted to be like them, have their confidence.

And it’s only been recently where I’ve started playing around with using butch for myself and I’m liking it more and more everyday. It feels more me than masc does, like I’ve finally found a piece of me that I’ve been looking for since I was 14. If I could go back and tell myself that one day I’d be comfortable with who I was I would a million times over.

I now know that I don’t need to fit specific characteristics to identify as butch, if being butch is what makes me happy then I’m butch. There’s no questions that need to be asked. And certainly there’s no one way to be butch, it’s a wide spectrum and every butch expresses themselves differently. @butchcody talks about being butch and what it means to him and it has helped me loads with coming to terms with my identity. He has an incredible way with words and I can’t thank him enough for guiding me through my journey.

I wrote this in hopes that my story would be appreciated by those who feel the same or have gone through similar experiences to me. There’s no right way to be butch, we’re all different in our own ways and that in itself is beautiful. So if I could help anyone in any way, just know that I love you and you’ll always be butch to me.

[librarycards]

hi! perhaps you’ve done this sort of thing before but i have been trawling your book reccs tag (and getting heinously sidetracked by other delicious sounding books) and didn’t find an ask like this so! i was wondering if you have any book recommendations (preferably creative nonfiction) for me that would give me hope, or at least provide a glimmer of light in the dark. for context i’m an igbo biafran from nigeria who lives in so called australia. i have identified as a man since i was 14, but my family is very transphobic in a traditional roman catholic way (it is both an affront to our culture AND our religion, so a double whammy) and i think all of this plus being raised in a very sane fatphobic white cisheteroallonormative society (like most people to be fair) has particularly eroded my sense of self and my desire to transition. while i can’t see a future for myself where i do not present as and actively identify as a gay man, i also am crushed by the amount of oppression i have endured. thus i am kind of detransitioning because my family is difficult and the structural difficulties in accessing a life i want has been so difficult that my brain, in an attempt to shield me from further pain, has completely gone the other way on transitioning, and doesn’t believe that i will ever accept myself, or be accepted, as a gay man and find love. all my friends, since i was very young, have been white (often progressive queers raised in accepting families - who were too afraid to stand up for me), which has left me with this sense of not belonging and total alienation. and not to ramble too much but i have faced a lot of structural oppression and pain, and coming to them and saying ‘my parents are transphobic and physically abusive but they are my only connection to my culture which also does not like me but has been oppressed and mangled horribly’ is something that they simply cannot grasp. i have socially detransitioned several times, gone by a variety of pronouns, tried to get on T and failed, had my gender identity chalked up to my ‘mental illnesses’ and been unable to express my gender as i would like, and because my (now ex)friends have not faced a majority of these issues, they have been at best apathetic and at worst incredibly ignorant. thus, i am asking for recommendations that can help me maybe come to terms with both the pain of my past and my present, and also that gives me hope that someone somewhere understands me, and that they’ve been through this and are in a better place with a supportive community, and people that chose them and that they’ve also chosen. i am totally socially isolated, and it is so difficult to motivate myself to meet people and push through my fear of vulnerability and rejection. anyways this is so long i’m very sorry, but i hope it provided some context for the nuance of my situation 😅

totally makes sense, and i relate to + appreciate the long-winded thoughtfulness of your messages! here are some recs that engage some of these themes, mostly CNF.

Nonfiction:

Lamya H, Hijab Butch Blues

Eli Clare, Exile & Pride

Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Dirty River

Samuel R Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Larry Mitchell, The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions

Fiction:

James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room (not trans, but required reading. also is, to me, one of the best pieces of prose in the english language, full stop)

Kai Cheng Thom, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars

Casey Plett, Little Fish

I wrote a trans book about despair and resistance that you might like.

you've probably heard of some of these, but i hope you find something useful!!

[doomsdaydicecascader]

my problem with postcanon jade was that it said she was a cis girl before fusing with bec. i took it as the same "true in a transmisogynist way" troll as transmasc roxy

like, truly, i miss transfeminine roxy every day, and my house is fairly glass when it comes to things here considering i'm writing The Butch Lesbian Jane Comic, but like. the way homestuck fans exert ownership over the text of homestuck is fundamentally what the homestuck epilogues and post-canon are about. act 7 is about the dead calliope saying "fuck canon" and making her own, and she does not know how to care for the characters in question. i genuinely believe reconciling these facts, that what homestuck wants to be and what fans want homestuck to be are tangibly, ideologically opposed, is what post-canon is about

"fans read this character as X identity" is fine and good but that's paratext at best, and making demands of a text that has no obligation to respect them at worst. the epilogues are cashing in that desire to not respect them. homestuck has always been shaking off its readers who exert too much ownership, feel too comfortable with it. this goes way back as far as act 5 act 2 - the author commentary describes switching between walkaround sprites and hussnasty mode in such close proximity as a means of saying "if you always get what you expect, you will become complacent and that's no way for a reader to be", the "come in, go away" routine of homestuck is so repetitive now that i'm surprised basically nobody's caught on - homestuck is always doing insane flips to try and shake people off of it.

and now homestuck is doing that with your headcanons. like, this is a thing i see genuinely, all the fucking time in fandom over the past 15 years or so, people hype themselves up on paratexts and pretend the paratext is the source. the worst i ever saw of it was people having full blown self-harm threatening panic attacks because klance was not endgame in voltron legendary defenders. genuinely, i remember this so well - i think there were still two more seasons of the show after that event too, but i didn't watch it.

i only looked on from afar because what i saw of season 1 wasn't especially novel. castiel was never gay, no matter how many times he was caught leaking omegamusk in walmart or whatever, i'm stealing valor with this joke i was never a superwholock omegaverse girlie. there's so many fandoms i'm not a part of, it's unreal.

anyway, my point is people get really invested in their reads on characters and pretend it's real for the same reason a normie's sports team is gonna go the distance this season. and when they don't, they riot. this is literally just sports fandom 101. we may as well be talking about fucking inflategate here. i also don't go to sports. it's basically just homestuck for me these days.

i imagine this is what it's like to run my little pony before bronies came along: the show was negligible in relevance beyond its capacity to show off the new toys to play with. but the difference is that my little pony is about the toys, it's about encouraging that kind of play, it's fundamentally a set of toys they made a show about, as opposed to homestuck, which was always niche art for webcomics weirdos that caught on, quite literally, with the brony audience. i remember the first time i ever saw dave strider was on fucking ponychan, chronologically it would have been mid-act 5 act 2. it was an image of dave ransacking the lohac stock exchange, which is an a5a2 thing, it was before season 2 started, etc etc.

this is one hell of a tangent to say as far as the text of mspaintadventures is concerned, problem sleuth characters have gender signifiers that are more similar in nature to drag and performance of gender roles than any actual sexual dimorphism. homestuck characters are built atop the gender expression of problem sleuth. jade was a 13/16-year old girl, and that's the only information there was. over time, this changed.

this was an explicit change, too - it's in the change to act 6, passing through the fourth wall, that these characters, who fundamentally are game pieces, that homestuck starts to contend with the fact that people are emotionally invested in them as people. people don't like dave or vriska in the same way that people care about problem sleuth or nervous broad, and this comes out in the text. we get a lot of the best stuff in homestuck out of that change, too, like. the retcon only works because of that emotional investment, and i go so hard for the retcon. the retcon is the coolest thing ever.

and with that change, now, in 2024, she is explicitly a 39 (? i think she's 39.) year old woman with a penis. she didn't go from "cis woman" to "trans woman", she went from game piece to human person. there is no "cis jade" to be overwritten. you're assuming a "cis is default" worldview of a team of transgender and/or nonbinary people and thats just like. its not ideal, really

[gravedangerahead]

I don't know, buddy. I think this should make you rethink saying stuff like "I hate microlabels" in the first place? Not to put you on blast or anything, you're just the latest in a long line of people I've seen making arguments like these.

There's basically no genuine problem you can have with microlabels that does not simply apply to labels in general

I think it's important to be in community and solidarity with people independently of whether you have the exact same label, and to realize there are plenty of shared experiences across different queer identities.

Practically none of it is the exclusive realm of one particular identity and we don't need to be atomized. And it is, in fact, in our best political interest to stick together and fight together

Labels are a way of classifying and categorizing the infinitely diverse range of human experience. That can be helpful and that can cause problems. (I think there are criticisms of diagnostics that might apply, and some of our words actually originate in that realm.) It's important to remember that they are not material reality and they do not define your experiences, but are merely a culturally defined tool to help you understand them, that may be more or less useful given the situation

I'm always quick to tell people that labels are meant to be helpful and if trying to find one is stressing them out rather than helping, a label is simply not required. Those people might still feel like it's important to them to find the right words, and I'm not gonna pretend to know better than them

There are plenty of people who are perfectly happy being just queer, and not trying to figure out their identities any further than that. There are people going through intense anxiety while trying to figure out if they're lesbian or bi. Why do we need those intermediary labels then? Do they just atomize us? Are they unnecessary boxes? Or is that only a problem when it comes to those newfangled ones at the end of the acronym?

I think there are more people who feel like they have to figure out where exactly they fall in the big 4 identities than people who are distressed because they feel like they have to figure out a microlabel they fit in, tbqh. And there's plenty of separatist sentiment among them too

Plenty of people find meaning and expression in being butch or femme. Why shouldn't people choose a new word that they feel best defines their own unique gender identity? Why shouldn't somebody on the ace or aro spectrum try to figure out if other people have a similar experience with attraction as they do?

People having more words to describe their identities is not the problem. At all. If somebody has decided to use a microlabel and is happy with it, what exactly is the issue?

If you actually stand with every queer person, if you're in solidarity with every anti-oppression fight of any kind, the problem of political isolation and community dilution goes away.

If you treat all labels as tools that can be played with, experimented with and not gatekept, taken up and abandoned, changed, or simply ignored if you don't want or need one, the problem of emotional distress goes away.

Neither problem is exclusive to microlabels.

[eurydicees]

he/she trans butch iwaizumi and transfemme oikawa thoughts

for no reason other than satisfying my own desires and also projecting my own shit onto my fictional besties <3

LONG post under the cut. i cannot express to you enough. LONG post under the cut.

first off. wrote a fic about iwaizumi being genderqueer here. read it. it's influential but ultimately not really relevant to this. but read it anyways. im really proud of it. okay now that the self promo's out of the way!

in my mind palace, iwaizumi is a trans butch lesbian and no amount of cis bullshit telling him that's not allowed is gonna stop him from identifying that way

she starts figuring things out in college: getting to california for undergrad and meeting all the different kinds of people he does--people he never would have met in the world of men's athletics that he was in while in high school--introduces him to all kinds of new ideas, some of them being identities they had never heard of before

sometime in her freshman year someone asks him about pronouns, and it's a question he's never really thought to consider before. he's never had to--pronouns were just words assigned to them that she never really had reason to doubt

and then she starts. thinking about it. and kind of freaking out a little. because oh. there are options. and there are so many of them and it's overwhelming, to have this sudden rush of i don't think i know who i am anymore.

because he's never really had to think about gender or sexuality before: there's never been the space and support and encouragement to experiment, or the terminology in general, or any reason to try experimenting

but his friends encourage him to try things out, little by little. a few friends try out using they/them in private. they like it, most of the time, and it feels like it fits, most of the time, but still it's like. it feels like they're faking it. like it doesn't quite cover the entirety of what they feel--but maybe nothing does, you know?

they try introducing themselves by he/they in classes, instead of just in the privacy of his dorm room. he likes that people mix the two together in the same sentence sometimes. they like that he's not boxing himself into one thing

he's figuring shit out! and the journey kind of sucks because people ask him and he doesn't have answers, he doesn't have solid truth, he just has more questions for himself and he just has more to discover--which is frustrating, most of the time, but it's also fun to experiment, sometimes

it's about trying new clothing--he doesn't love dresses, but skirts with shorts sewn in are okay; crop tops and a carabiner with keys are euphoric--trying new words--he, they, genderqueer, transgender, and more--and trying new names--not a fan of his friends' suggestions, which are mostly english word names that he kind of fumbles around saying

notable that he's friends with a decent number of queer people who are so encouraging and supportive of everything they're trying out that it constantly amazes him and sometimes kind of makes him want to cry a little

also notable. he kind of. doesn't tell oikawa about any of this. they just...don't know how to.

she starts trying out she/her pronouns in her junior year of college. this starts , entirely coincidentally, a few months before oikawa comes out to him

oikawa does it quietly, without fanfare, nearly without the confidence to even say the words. she's clearly worried about what iwaizumi is going to think--they didn't grow up in a world where things like being trans or a lesbian were talked about, or were considered options for the two of them

but just as iwaizumi has been experimenting in california, oikawa has discovered an entirely new queer community in argentina, and she's discovered herself in anew just as iwaizumi has

and it doesn't change anything really, oikawa promises, again and again. she's still tooru. she's still the best friend iwaizumi has always had. she's still playing men's volleyball. she presents herself differently, now, when she can, but--

but also, in presenting differently, there's a new confidence about her. there's a new sense of self. there's a new comfort in her own body, now that she has the words to love it right, and--

and iwaizumi gets that. he doesn't want to tell oikawa just then, because oikawa is clearly nervous and this is her moment, of sorts, but now iwaizumi knows that--if they ever get brave enough--it really would be okay to say it

anyways. iwaizumi starts using she/her in addition to he and they and just. she kind of loves it.

most of the time, she doesn't love looking feminine, and that kind of . she doesn't really know how to explain that, doesn't really have the words for it

he likes being perceived a girl, but he doesn't like looking feminine. he likes being seen as masculine, but he thinks if one more person calls him a young man he's going to scream out loud

(he does kind of like fucking with people though. it gives them a little bit of gender euphoria when someone stutters through a list of pronouns, not sure what to use, looking her up and down, until giving up and landing on just his name. it maybe feels mean but it's also a little funny and really validating.)

so its like. she doesn't really know what to do with any of that. they/them feels a little too malleable, in a way. it's not really anything against the word so much as it is that people use it to cop out of calling her "she", and that's just...frustrating. because "she" fits so well on days when she's dressed masc and "he" feels so good when he's in lipstick and a skirt.

(i ran out of characters allowed in one post block apparently. so i am breaking up the list here. oh my god. i can't believe i ran out of characters. jesus fucking christ.)

anyways! it's when he comes out to oikawa that things kind of. fall into his hands and she goes oh. so this is okay. i'm allowed to have this: the unknowns, the multiplicities, the undecideds, the contradictions.

he doesn't really mean to come out. it happens casually: oikawa makes some reference to iwaizumi being cis, and iwaizumi tells her that that's not quite right. he's not sure what he is, but it's...not cis man.

she doesn't really know how to explain that to oikawa, who has become so comfortable in her gender when she's around iwaizumi, but iwaizumi figures she might as well know now. he's always trusted oikawa with everything, and he's not quite sure why this should have ever been different

anyways. oikawa tells iwaizumi something sappy, first, and something kind, second, and something annoying, when iwaizumi teases her for the first two

and when iwaizumi confesses his own unsureness, oikawa says something else along the lines of it's not really about what people tell you your labels should be when you look like yourself. it's about the words you use when you tell them to fuck off.

it makes iwaizumi laugh, and that was the main goal, really, but also iwaizumi is thinking about it long after they hang up their video call

he's been so caught up in "so, uh, what pronouns do you use?" and "hajime, do you want me to set your preferences to male or female or both when i make your tinder account for you?"

his answers have always been so relative to what he wants people to think when they look at her ("they or he are fine i guess" and "fuck off, give me my phone back"), but maybe it's less about that, for her

(this may not be true of everyone, but things start to fall into place when she moves her thought process just a little to the left)

maybe it's less about what he's letting other people see in her presentation, and more about what it is he owns about her own gender

so what does she like about it? what brings her comfort and joy? and what completely shatters all the expectations and preconceptions put on him that she hates so much?

he doesn't really come to a decision about any of those things in one night

but he tells oikawa she/he are what make him feel the most confident in his body and his heart, even if it's scary to say that out loud

the word butch comes not long after that, and he's not sure if it fits perfectly, but it's the first word to come along that feels like it captures the duality of masculine and woman that lives in him, instead of just reaching one or the other, if that makes sense

he's not sure any of it does, but he's decided she doesn't care if it makes sense or if it's "allowed" in the eyes of people who see transness as a uniform look and lesbianism as an exclusive club

it's not about what people tell her she's allowed to be, looking and talking and acting like that, you know? it's about what words he uses to make them respect her, looking and talking and acting just as she damn well pleases.

[kaiasky]

If you think basic feminism of “hey centering men as a distinct victim class of hegemonic power structures is bad actually” is “boys vs girls cootie wars” and “trans women’s oppression can be fixed by removing the stigma around their perceived masculinity” is real I think there is no saving you actually

I think maybe we are speaking towards the same goal in different ways. Like yeah, I'm wholly uninterested in "men are equal victims of patriarchy" shit. & certainly I'm not particularly interested in "ooh we have to make feminism appealing to men we have to encourage Positive Masculinity" stuff I just truly do not care. base and superstructure and all that, if you want to make change you focus on "do dv & homelessness shelters accept trans ppl" and "pass antidiscrimination and bodily autonomy laws" and "build up power and support in ur local area" etc. not "masculinity can b good".

& in that sense I think a correct queer politics is one that places very little political importance on correct identity or presentation. eg almost any sentence that must reference "femininity" or "masculinity" is extremely contingent and is better replaced w more universal values like "peoples presentations are their own" and "consent is important". (note that while these values are neutral, the actions one should take are not since the values conflict with inequalities in society.)

At the risk of sacrificing convincing power for clarity, I'm gonna diagram the argument as best i can and as fairly as I can (since it's hard to talk about while half of the text is sarcastic "not me thinking x")

A. Screenshot

Gender abolition (of some kind) is a goal of the queer community.

Masculinity as a form of expression can be just one form of being.

Within (some) queer communities masculinity is currently seen as something other than "one valid form of expression among others"

People coming to accept masculinity is necessary for achieving gender abolition.

B. Replies

Accepting masculinity is not the most important step for abolishing gender, contra A4

"Accepting masculinity" as queers means accepting patriarchal society, so A2 is impossible.

Gender abolition is a goal (A1) but it does not include accepting masculinity (A4) and involves moving beyond it

C: My reply

One example of A3 is that trans women often receive undue scrutiny to their "masculine" habits/hobbies/appearance.

B2 is false since obviously somebody having "masculine" performance is not in itself predatory.

B2 affirming that masculinity is inextricably patriarchal makes the expression of it essentially a "stain" on somebody's character--a person affirming B2 would be inconsistent if they didn't view butches, transmascs, gay men, etc with suspicion.

This conclusion (C3) means that B as a whole amounts to unproductive infighting.

D: Your ask

C4 misunderstands the context, because A amounts to the idea that men are a marginalized class

C1 amounts to arguing that transmisogyny is entirely due to perceived masculinity.

Things of note:

I don't know who the first screenshot is--I'm taking them at their word, but possibly they're a total shit head in which case I understand the difference in reactions. Notably, A4 just asserts that it's a necessary precondition while B1 calls it the most important one--either that is something A has said elsewhere, or its mistakenly introduced.

I guess I'm not much of a gender abolition believer so A1/A4/B1/B3 don't matter much for me. I think however that broadly I align more with B here in that I don't think gender abolition is something where you can point to specific social preconditions as much as to material conditions that lessen the importance of gender & the strictness of its policing over time.

I'll cop to "boys vs girls cootiewar" not being entirely clear, but D1 is clearly false bc it associates 1-to-1 men with masculinity and supposes that A considers masculinity oppressed globally, instead of rejected by people who might otherwise advocate gender abolition.

WRT D2--C1 gives a limited example and does not claim that this represents most or all of transphobia.

Anyways. hope that makes sense. And more importantly I hope the first paragraphs make sense and are something we share. Shouldn't have posted a snarky reply to a snarky thread--there was no way it would ever be received productively and so the only benefit gained is in being bitter online, a pleasure I probably shouldn't be indulging in. have a nice day anon, if you have concerns or think I misunderstood, feel free to dm me

[multigenderswag]

Multigender Survey Results Dec 2023: Anything else relevant

Participants were asked "Share anything else about your multigender identity that you find relevant" and had the option to respond with long answer text. Some notable responses include:

As a m+f bigender person who uses he/she pronouns, I sometimes feel like the "he" refers to my female side, and the "she" refers to my male side

I am no longer religious/Christian, but the expression “God is Change” resonates deeply with me and my approach to gender as experience. I accept that my gender (holistically) is an amalgamation, something that breathes new life into itself repeatedly and often unexpectedly, sustained by its own willingness to grow past its bounds and taste richness anew. Teaching is part of my work, and as such I consider myself an eternal student: gender is just one avenue for discovery and learning for me.

I feel so boring but it is what it is, name wise I use one (completely feminine) with group A and one (completely masculine) with group B and hope and pray that they never interact

I identified as a 'tomboy' (gender wise) as a child and transmasc as a teenager. As an adult part of my being multigender is honouring these past versions of myself and acknowledging that who I was is an important part of who I am today.

I like to describe my gender like this: imagine there’s a house on a street. the house represents being a boy/male, and being *in* the house means you’re binary male. The road represents a neutral, non-male/female gender. My gender is like the driveway — both part of the road *and* the house

i think this is relevant-ish, but the way i experience gender kind of feels like. there's a man and a woman in my head at all times, not in a system way so much as a (this is very obviously stupid but i can't find another comparison to articulate it) inside out way. they're both always there, and they're both separate, but at the same time, they come together to make the same person, me! nonbinary is a label i understand and identify with, mostly to simplify the matter for others, but in reality, it kind of feels like a... superbinary of sorts. i'm 100% a man, and 100% a woman, but because the binary only "allows" you to choose one, nonbinary is technically correct, isn't it?

I'm multigender in the "one gender that fits into several categories" way than being multigender in a "has multiple genders" way

My gender is the intersection of butch dyke and trans man. I'm questioning things right now, but I'm somewhere in that region, with a foot in both at once. I've always been drawn to butchness and sapphicism as well as transmasculinity. I think most of my journey to understand my gender has been a balancing act between identifying as enough of a guy to feel comfortable in my skin but non-binary enough to not have to abandon my identity with butchness. Recently I've adopted the label multigender, and it's helped a lot. I'm only even a little bit a girl if I can be a boy first and foremost, and I could be just a boy or just a dyke but I would have to kill part of myself to do so. I'm trying to find a way to exist in my gender without blood on my hands. I think I'm getting there. It's hard but I'm getting there.

It is complicated but I love it

Yay I love multi gender people we are so cool. <3

A number of participants also referenced being autistic and how that has influenced their multigender identity, so it is possible that autism may be included as a question on the next survey.

[blood-choke]

Thanks for saying the bit about butch being identity more than presentation. I'm aware it is, like I'm not dumb, but I never feel like I show the fact that I'm butch enough, even if I'm soft butch. Like wearing androgynous clothes means fuck all in modern day since women's fashion is androgynous at a base line currently, plus I have very long hair and tend to keep my nails somewhat long so my identity doesn't show at all and it makes me constantly feel like I'm appropriating the label. But like if I were cis, I'd probably take testosterone for a bit like she/her Lea did; that idea is super enticing. As is I like being trans because it gives some masculinity to my physicality. If it were the past where women wore dresses, I'd definitely wear men's clothes (probably mixed with some parts of women's stuff). Just modern day doesn't let me visibly defy social norms as much as I want. My leather jacket and boots just isn't enough to show my identity.

Sorry for the ranble. Just made me feel way better, seeing confirmation that it's largely identity. Even if I don't have anyone to truly express it with.

you're welcome!

it was definitely something i had to unlearn; especially now with so much of lesbian bar culture having been pushed out and forgotten, a lot of younger people just.. don't know what these words mean, and when i was their age, butch and lesbian both were Bad Words that you never said at all except to demean someone.

reading older lesbian literature helped me overcome that and learning about all of the people that came before us; both about butches and femmes. digging through archives and putting myself into butch/femme spaces online has been hugely beneficial to me. i used to feel the same & like i could never "claim the label" because i didn't look a certain way, but that's just simply not true.

and this is especially not true for lesbians and other women who are already having other labels forced upon them by society; for not being white, for not being skinny, for not being hyper feminine, for not being cis, etc.

one of the things that made it really click for me was picture archives, specifically these kinds of pictures:

(pride, nyc, 1977 by meryl meisler)

this one is nancy tucker & her partner, and the two of them would switch shirts throughout the march. (1970 by kay tobin lahusen)

you can see how similar butches and femmes can look, and this is also what i mean when i say femmes are just as sanitized in popular media. butch and femme can be adjectives, but they are also nouns, they are genders and they are roles that people fill within lesbian relationships and within their community; how they move through the world, interact with society and how they interact with other lesbians and other women romantically and sexually.

this quote is one of my favorites:

“Butch is a trickster gender—and so, in a similar way, is femme. Lesbian gender expressions do not emulate heteropatriarchy, they subvert it. Femme removes femininity from the discursive shadow of masculinity and thereby strips from it any connotation of subordination or inferiority. Butch takes markers of “masculinity” and divests them of their association with maleness or manhood. Butchness works against the gender binary—the masculine/feminine paradigm—and reclaims for women the full breadth of possibilities when it comes to gender expression.”

— Caroline Narby, “On My Butchness”

[epiceneandroid]

radiomogai experiences questions so far

1.) so, for the first question, are you asking "us" or are you asking "me"? because i'm SOME kind of disordered system, and "us" and "me" are partially blurry, partially distinct entities. personally, as ashren, i'd describe myself as some sort of bi oriented, greyrose, panabinary agender mxsc and fxm genderblank person. that makes most sense to me. our system collectively identifies as genderfluid and epicene, even if i don't personally feel the whole epicene thing strongly, and a lot of us, especially me, are objectum. most of us that front regularly have a gender hoard aside from like...sprinkles who feels really uncomfortable labeling pup's gender identity beyond pupgender and epicene and butch.

2.) my personal experience with names as a system is like...names kinda pop into our head for us and they stick. francis george and bonett were both named after a h*talia character (unfortunately), i named myself completely randomly vibes based, etc. our system has a vague fascination with names, so we enjoy seeing a lot of varying names we could've called ourselves. most of our system feels comfortable with they/them except for bonett, who prefers he/him and any neos, and i generally just prefer they/it/null so far.

3.) i guess one of my favorite gender terms would be agender and genderblank, for different reasons. agender is partially kind of a political thing; i want to be treated like a person, after being treated like something to be feared as a former persecutor and current mental illness holder in the system, and genderblank resonates with me because like...whenever i try to actively THINK about my gender, personally, it comes up a blank, empty space.

4.) lol i can't really express my identity through clothing and style i want to buy men's clothes but i can't! i'm semi-closeted and my mom KNOWS our system is some form of transgender but we can't socially transition because she's afraid it'll make us "want a sex change" our desire to get t varies lol most of the time we just want to pass for a sexless, generic person.

5.) i mainly plan for social and legal transition, like, our system's blanket name changing (though i don't know what name we'd use irl; if we can find a suitable one for all of us that we feel drawn to we'll eventually use it), and maybe either estrogen blockers, progesterone, and SARMs or estrogen blockers, progesterone, and low dose t. i'm not sure.

6.) okay, i'm gonna get a little bit critical for a moment, but i'm not fond of the mogai community's pervasive transmisogyny. i understand that there are certain intersex experiences, such as those who are assigned female at birth due to ambiguous sex traits but end up being transmisogyny affected if they desire to still remain women as they were raised (see: eggs at 12 syndrome), that would fall under "afab transfem", but i'm a bit irritated at fellow people who are possibly intersex also like possibly myself, with possible congenital adrenal hyperplasia AND pcos, considering themselves transfem when transmisogyny, unfortunately, and a lot of ways transition relates to gender, relies on assigned sex. it's actually kind of frustrating. at the same time, i feel ostracized from a lot of transfeminist communities for accepting that there are transfeminine nonbinary people who are not perfectly binary, perfectly dysphoric, and perfectly wanting a binary transition, and it irks me because there are so many people i care about who are tma and nonbinary and as a tme nonbinary person, i want to protect them and ally with them as much as i can, and people treat tma women like dirt already so tma nonbinary people are treated like dirt doubly and...people don't get it. and the mogai community isn't very welcoming to the tma nonbinary people who are ostracized from certain communities but ostracized from the mogai community because of this...permissiveness? lack of consideration to tma experiences? it's frustrating.

7.) i don't necessarily think i'll ever find a label i feel comfortable with, but it's like...theoretically, i'd say i'm bisexual, but i and a lot of our system genuinely seems to prefer nonbinary people of any transmisogyny exemption status or even birth assignment rather than cis men, cis women, trans women, or trans men. it's like...nonbinary people 60-80%, binary people 40-20%. but it's not like i'm not attracted to binary identified people, i am, it's just...somehow nonbinary people are far for attractive to us. yet we distinctly feel very multi gender attracted. i don't have a name to put on this label and i don't know if i'll find one i feel more comfortable with than bisexual.

@radiomogai here's mine so far

[dyke-dyke-goose]

What has your (queer) journey been like as a Black butch/dyke, if you'd like to talk about it? I'm curious :)

Thank you for this question! I don’t think I’ve ever really taking about my coming out journey or anything on here.

In terms of understanding my sexuality, I honestly did not know I was queer until I was maybe 13. I feel fortunate that I wasn’t in an environment where people were really talking negatively about being gay. It was always just a “thing” that some people were. A friend came out to me and I was like “maybe am bi?” And that’s the identity I stuck with till I was maybe about 16/17. But during that time I would say my attraction to men and women was a 90/10 split. I was always crushing on unattainable men (celebrities, boys who never liked me back, men who were like 30 years older than me).

I wasn’t out, so I was mainly swiping on guys on dating apps, and it was the most demeaning and emotionally exhausting thing I have ever experienced. I would rather get my heart broken by woman A MILLION times over, then ever go through dating a cishet man again hahaha. Being seen as only a sexual object for their pleasure, having my race used as a sexual opening line, having to beg for attention and respect. Not cute.

But when I had gotten to university, my world totally expanded. I met so many different people with different identities and it felt normal to be myself. I had so many crushes on girls those first couple years, so I gotten quite comfortable in my sexuality internally but expressing that outward was a different story.

As I got older, I was aware of the world becoming more hostile towards queer people, politics had kind of frayed my relationship with my parents; the thought of coming out and being open scared the shit out of me. But I eventually did come out (it was during a fight) and I feel like my life kinda changed from there.

I dated one cishet man and it was truly awful (we’re friends now so I can say that) and from that point I was like “why am I putting myself through this?? Why am I giving my time and attention to people I don’t even really like?”. And so I started dating women and other trans people and have not stopped since.

There was a lot of internal work I had to do, I had so many negative feelings towards my sexuality that I didn’t really know were there. And once I had started to do that work and realized that all these concepts and labels are made up, that’s when I started questioning my gender.

My relationship to masculinity has always been quite complicated, especially growing up as a little black girl. One of my first memories of elementary school was I had taken my braids out and wore my natural hair to school, and was told that I looked like a boy. And I think that really stuck with me all the way through my teenage years. It was this constant feeling of not being enough.

No matter how much make up I wore, how long my braids were, how my clothes fit my body; it was never going to be enough. I am adopted, so the people surrounding me were all white, and I felt myself trying to attach myself to a beauty standard that was not meant for me and was NEVER going to include me.

It got a point in my early 20’s when I said fuck it! I could look like Beyoncé and I would still have ignorant people telling me I looked like a man, so I might as well live the way I wanna live. I fell down the she/her - she/they - they/she - they/them pipeline hahaha. I dyed my hair a bunch of fun colors, wore weird makeup and ended up shaving my head and now we’re here. I’m excited to see where my journey will continue to take me as I grow older.

And if you are a black dyke, stud, femme, butch or WHATEVER, do not let ignorant people stop you from being who you know you are supposed to be🤎

[scuderlia]

haircut!anon again: ok. wow. had to slam my phone down in my uni computer lab and wait until i could string together a coherent thought again. first off like au itself on back burner your MIND and the way you construct this narrative is INCREDIBLE and so raw adn true and pulling on the queer (as in deviant and as in gay) hair experince sooo deeply i feel soooooo deeply you are a magician. further. i was PICTURING max in braids and god fuck the tenderness of charles and max setting their mise en place and sitting together and braiding her hair before their prey comes in…. god. jesus. i can't stop re-reading the snippets. FUCK! sorry this isn't coherent thoughts after all. max and control and cutting charles' hair. fuck me uppp….

anon! i spent so long smiling like an idiot because of this ask, at this point you're basically my betrothed <3

but yeah, you get it. at the core of max and charles' relationship is truly their hounded devotion and acceptance of one another. the queer experience really is defined by those you hold close, and it's been interesting (for me) to try and thread that idea through this greater story about desire and hunger in a way that feels genuine. i've pulled on a lot of my personal experiences of being a young lesbian and being guarded about sexuality, but ultimately it all comes back to (like you mentioned) the idea of relinquishing some control and feeling comfortable enough with someone to let go of the safety of doing things alone.

i also love love love giving characters their own little rituals, and seeing as how max and charles both have a lot of emotional connections to their hair/haircuts/etc. the braids were an easy decision.

(more about max and her relationship to hair below the cut)

there's this really interesting article by Amelia Abraham titled 'What butch queer identity has to do with hair' that got put out by Dazed in 2022. it primarily covers a photography exhibition called Close Shave—which centers itself around butch haircuts and identity—but also goes into the cultural relevance of 'masc' hairstyles and their role in queer (mainly lesbian) expression.

i remembered and re-read it when i was in the early stages of fleshing-out max's character. i recommend the article to everyone, but especially people who are maybe looking to better understand the history of butch optics, and kind of where i'm coming from with some of max's characterization.

(see one of my favorite quotes from the article below)

While having short hair and identifying as butch don’t necessarily come as a pair, for butch people, haircuts can be transformational – getting your hair cut off brings you closer to your gender identity.

like I mentioned in the the answer to your previous ask, max's haircut kind of serves as a physical manifestation of her relationship with her father, and more specifically, how that relationship influences her feelings of shame (and eventually acceptance) towards her own sexuality.

part of the reason that max is so struck by charles saying she'd let her cut her hair is in large part because, for max, hair is incredibly representative of an individual's ability to control how others perceive and relate to them. by breaking the ritual with her mother, charles is essentially showing max that she not only finds comfort with her, but also trusts her enough to have her identity placed in her hands.

i could honestly talk about this forever... since body politics and queerness are things i'm just genuinely very passionate about... but i will save the innocent bystanders of this blog from having to read through all of that in one sitting.

(anyways, i'm so happy that people are as invested in this as i am... keep sending me long asks like this... if you couldn't already tell i'll take any opportunity to talk more about this au)

[k0nstanta]

So is Kotya’s gender different in each setting or is she just a boygirl? Is she a boygirl in the robot setting too? Or, does she just also like he/him sometimes? Also, what is Shurik’s gender:)

vlad: kotya has been through a gender journey since her creation, going from cis guy to feminine cis guy to boygirl to mayyybe a little transgender and has now arrived to being a trans woman for real. their default setting is grounded in real life (specifically my experience of living in an intolerant country) so for safety and convenience reasons i can't imagine her ever publicly coming out or transitioning there, but i feel like she doesn't mind it that much, or is at least used to it. she doesn't hate being a guy but obviously likes being a woman more, so the secondary identity is kind of always just there, and she dons it like a work uniform when necessary. so for her, she/her is preferable, but he/him is like, well, if you must, i guess. depending on the setting though she is either out or in the closet or lacks the knowledge and vocabulary for it, but she is always a girl, just with different levels of intensity in expression. you know that one butch to femme scale? you can kind of think of all the different kotyas as on that spectrum, with robot one being the most feminine.

senya: shurik was created with a purpose of being an average guy thus you'd probably see more art of him being masculine... he's 70% guy with occasional crossdressing on the side; depending on the setting the degree of crossdressing may go up a notch. think of it as a personal outlet... as for pronouns shurik defaults to he/him but would be fine with any 🤷

[farmerlesbian]

Sorry if this is a bit controversial or the wrong blog, but I just need to vent a bit. As a butch who's never dated/had sex, it's really disheartening to feel like so much of how people view someone as being butch or butch identities in general in relation to other people. Dating and doting on a femme. Giving pleasure effortlessly in sex. Constantly helping out with physical tasks. It's really frustrating. It's hard for me to explain, but my journey as a butch and discovering what I want out of my butch identity is for ME. I get it- I believe in centering compassion as a part of my masculinity. But that's not just for dating partners: it's for my friends, family, and strangers, and for ME. It's just frustrating for me to feel like posts that try to affirm butches end up coming back around to what butches can do for other people. It's extra heartbreaking because I'm butch4butch, not butch4femme. I love femmes as friends and community members, don't get me wrong, but I feel like so many posts just reinforce this "ideal" of a butch for other people rather than what we're actually like. I don't want to say all femmes are like this or even maliciously post like this, it's just a generalization of what I've seen in sfw/nsfw circles. I dunno, maybe I'm not getting at it right. I just don't feel like my being butch relies on who I'm dating, or how I'm having sex, or what I do for other people. It centers around how I express myself and how I express masculinity. Yes, that includes compassion, helping others, kindness, and being connected with my community. But that's because that's what I want to include in my masculinity, not because being butch requires some kind of service to other people. I just feel like there's some pressure to perform my gender a certain way, when I identify as butch because I rejected pressure to perform my gender a specific way.

i think everything youve said here makes a lot of sense to me and i understand. what youre feeling is very understandable and you are . for lack of an alternative word. valid for feeling uncomfortable!

i think this arises because people make posts (or talk about things) in a way seeking like.. broad relatability. people want to make it apply to all butches. so then we get posts that are vague and just these common denominators. what someone appreciates in YOU dearest anon, is going to be unique to you.

here i can show you the difference. I'll talk about my wife - I love the confidence and swagger she carries when she moves in the public world, the charisma she holds and the way people are drawn to her without her even trying. I love the quiet confidence and her ability to not over-speak in the way that I do haha! I often describe her as a "woman of few words". Her passion for her hobbies, and the care and attention she has for her interests - her plants, her fish and fishtanks, her dog, her bowling, her new career in carpentry, her bikes. I love the shape of her body and the solidity of her arm when i hold it, i love resting her head in my lap in the evening after we watch a tv show or something and i massage the stress out of her head and her body relaxes and she falls asleep cradled on my chest. i love the way she smiles at me over a plate of food she has cooked for us. i love the way her body feels in my hands when i touch her. i love the tattoos covering her arms and the way they ripple over her muscles as she reaches to grab something. i love her big giant mirror-lens sunglasses that nobody can see her eyes through. i love giving her fun dangly earrings as gifts over the years and the joy she has when matching them to her outfits. i love the intentionality she has in what she wears, how she styles herself each morning, and the care she has for her leather boots. i love the sweetness and cute moments we share when we are home with our animals, the soft inside she has under her tough shell, which she shares with me. i love wearing our sparklies together and i love going through our gender journeys together. i love the way she holds me accountable and expects me to be a better person, and we work to demand better from ourselves and each other ever day. all these things and so many more!

see i can't make this a relatable post because it's about one specific person! so what someone is going to appreciate about you, or things your friends and family already do love about you, are going to be unique to you too. they're not gonna be a relatable and generic post and tens of thousands of other people are going to also relate to. butches/mascs/studs are so much more than only the things yall can do for your people. you are appreciated and loved in your own right.

i hope that this makes sense

hang in there 🧡

send asks / #ask farmer lesbian

[caffeineandsociety]

It is rapidly coming to my attention just HOW much a certain subset of trans people who are really, really into the Oppression Olympics straight up do not believe in gender nonconformity. Like, they'll pay lip service to it and swear it's valid - but when push comes to shove? Acknowledging that people can be mistaken for transitioning in the opposite direction than they are? Not happening. They'll swear up and down that nonbinary identities are valid, maybe even make a passing acknowledgment of intersex people - but suggest that maybe it would possibly be a good idea to give up their latest "trans-positive" way of categorizing people and trying to extrapolate their entire mentality and personality and life story based solely on what's in their pants? Well THAT'S just more unfathomably transphobic than the entire US Republican platform. Gender nonconformity is valid...but if you choose it you're making a mockery of trans people, tends to be what's expressed an inch below the surface.

But even deeper than that, I realize, a lot of them don't believe gender nonconformity actually even exists, as a long-term thing. A lot of them repackaged the old "bi women are just straight girls looking for attention; bi men are just gay but not ready to come out yet" stereotype with a dash of new lavender scare "find the enemy by hand-based phrenology" thinking into "AFAB trans people who don't eschew EVERYTHING feminine are just stupid transtrenders who will give it up and betray us as soon as it's what's popular; AMAB people who get the SLIGHTEST bit of joy from ANYTHING feminine are just trans woman eggs waiting to crack, and intersex people....[checks notes] Huh I got nothing I guess they don't exist after all!"

The belief just below the surface really does seem to be that, sure, it's fine to play around with a very specific kind of androgyny...if you're a skinny white teenager or EARLY 20-something, but eventually, you'll just grow out of it. You'll settle into being a binary gender, and give up those silly ideas of doing anything that isn't stereotypically aligned with it. AMAB nonbinary? Please, you're a woman, you will always be a woman, you're just too scared to admit it! AFAB nonbinary? You...are also a woman. But the bad kind. The kind it's totally okay and not misogynistic at all to be misogynistic to, because you're hurting REAL trans people by reducing it to a silly girly frivolous game. Nonbinary without a disclosed birth assignment, or intersex? Then we're going to DECIDE which of the OBVIOUSLY only two REAL possible things are in your pants based on what's convenient to make us look right. Transfem butch? You're just afraid to fully stop boymoding - yes, even if you've been on hormones for so long it's literally impossible to pass as a cis man and being more feminine would be safer. Femme transmasc? Literally doesn't exist outside of "annoying" 16-year old skinny white kids on the internet; no one has EVER gone on testosterone long enough to have meaningful changes and still came out of it liking pink and cute stuff and not regretting it and immediately detransitioning and becoming a terf. And cis GNC people? Might as well not exist at all; GNC men are just eggs waiting to crack and cis butches are mostly just a rhetorical device.

In short I hope I don't have to explain that and why this is absolute bullshit.