#female masculinity

[trans-androgyne]

People have insisted to me that masculinity is not punished in women/"women" because tomboys are accepted. This excerpt from Female Masculinity puts my thoughts on it into words really well:

Tomboyism may even be encouraged to the extent that it remains comfortably linked to a stable sense of a girl identity. Tomboyism is punished, however, when it appears to be the sign of extreme male identification (taking a boy's name or refusing girl clothing of any type) and when it threatens to extend beyond childhood and into adolescence. Teenage tomboyism presents a problem and tends to be subject to the most severe efforts to reorient. We could say that tomboyism is tolerated as long as the child remains prepubescent; as soon as puberty begins, however, the full force of gender conformity descends on the girl...for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint, punishment, and repression. It is in the context of female adolescence that the tomboy instincts of millions of girls are remodeled into compliant forms of femininity...as even a cursory survey of popular cinema confirms, the image of the tomboy can be tolerated only within a narrative of blossoming womanhood.

-- Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (1998)

Yes, it does look different from the way "boys" are punished for expressing femininity regardless of age or context. But tomboyish girls being accepted in some contexts does not mean we don't still get the gender non-conformity beat out of us when it can no longer be considered some girlish phase. And it certainly doesn't speak to how masculinity is treated in adult "women." All I'll say is I got called a dyke at age 11 and I still get called one now.

[unapologeticallygay]

Butch: Another way to be a woman

Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds by Judy Grahn (1984) / Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of the Gay and Lesbian Experience by Russell Leong (1996)

[butchingdyke]

i would be nothing without the approval of tumblr lesbians

[bratprincedyke]

Roman Manfredi We/Us

Butches and Studs from working class backgrounds within the British landscape

Co-curated by Ingrid Pollard

Exhibition: 9 March – 3 June 2023 at Space station 65, Kennington, London

Opening hours: 12 – 6PM, Wednesday – Saturdays

Free to visit. Accessible. All welcome.

We/Us is an intergenerational photography and oral history project that celebrates the presence of butches and studs from working-class backgrounds within the British landscape. The project explores the experience of female masculinity through the structures of class and race all over the UK, capturing our diversity as well as our commonality.

When searching for images of butches and studs online, most that come up are from a bygone era, or from the US. Conversations around gender and identity today are often academic and London-centric, sometimes forgetting that our identities are informed by our every day lived experiences.

Our history and our lived experience is our gift to the world.

– Joan Nestle, Restricted Country

Exhibition audio - Participants were interviews about their lives and experiences,

Instagram

Vice uk feature

[lesbianlenses]

Jennifer Barber, a 21 year-old English major at Colby College, from Newton Centre, Mass., a Rhodes Scholar. She was one of 12 women chosen... the second year women have been allowed to apply.

[trash-and-trash-accessories]

The fear of the masculine woman predates any modern conception of transness and gender. There are stories about monstrous women with masculine traits from the ancient world, they were objects of fear or disgust or hatred. This is not misdirected transmisogyny, it's not transphobia misdirected at cis women, it's a fear of female transgression and masculinity. The two are inter-related and trans women are affected by this fear of female masculinity too, and cis women are affected by transphobia but the fear of the masculine woman didn't come from transmisogyny. It predates it. It could be seen as a fear of transmasculinity, even those early examples of women becoming like men and taking on or embodying masculine traits. But it's also not necessarily that. It contains aspects of intersexism, but isn't strictly that either. It's a fear of female masculinity and the transgression of gender norms and fear surrounding women's control over fertility, and so many other things.

Anyone who sees the way masculine women (and transmasculine people) are treated as purely a result of transmisogyny is mistaken, or actively engaging in misogyny, intersexism, and erasure. It's so much more complicated than that.

I'm sorry but not everything is about you.

[thenatureofbutch]

You playing ball with these handsome ass studs or you watching from behind the fence?

Screen grabs taken from ‘studs world’ a lesbian masculine off centre series on YouTube.

[mackmacd]

The ways I'm which I've seen people talking about Sedona Prince and Emily Engstler recently are...wild. And the Paige as teen hearthrob hot takes from ASW have been questionble as well. We need to have a serious discussion about several things:

-The difference between being attracted to men and being attracted to masculinity.

-Why treating masc women as inherently dangerous and automatically guilty is unacceptable.

-Why racism, ironically enough, is why y'all are treating these two white girls so weirdly and one of them so nicely.

-Why a lot of the verbage y'all are using to convey your distaste is the same as the people who think queers should be "cured".

-The reason y'all have such issues with queer women being seen as sex symbols that are actually depicted as and fantasized about being sexual.

-Why there's a whole entire private Discord devoted to KB because the fans didn't want to deal with the racism of writing/editing for her on main.

-Why Paige, Emily and KB turning into sex symbols is actually a good thing that's contributing to the alphabet mafia in a good way. (Even if the fandom is doing the absolute SuperWhoLock most🤣)

-The difference between hey mamas and Paige/KB/Emily/Tasha.

-Why y'all are too comfortable exiling masc women from queer spaces when they fuck up. (Remember lesbian plant dad?)

-Why y'all seem think that pillow princesses are lesser than and not desirable to anyone.

-Why getting salty about strangers not holding your fanworks (about then!) in super high esteem is weird. (The edits are funny if you're not in the middle of the fandom)

-Why the personal choices of famous people are not your business unless it's your business. They're 20 somethings. They don't owe y'all adherence to the standards of your fantasy version of them.

-The difference between "speculation" and "private but not secret".

-Why this is all super normal because every generation does this with pop culture figures and the key is to be thoughtful and introspective about the hows and whys of fandom.

So I'm clearly going to be making a lot of TikToks.(I wish y'all behaved better. Because y'all got me out here having to defend messy famous white girls🤣🙃🤣🙃)

[mascflowers]

please ignore if i’m asking too much

i’m curious if you could give me more information on what it feels like to be butch? i have a hard time understanding gender but butch/femme identities are even further from my comprehension. i know what it feels like to want to be treated as strong, capable, and intelligent (things that unfortunately are lacking when i’m read as a woman). i’ve also had chronic pain and fatigue fuck those things up. how would you define your butch identity? especially in visual presentation, actions, and your internal world. are there any resources you’d recommend?

thank you so much and i hope you have a good day

I'm absolutely delighted to answer your questions, don't worry!

The thing with butchhood, like most queer identities but butchhood in particular, is that it's VERY difficult to define. I step outside what is typically defined as butch, not only because I'm not a woman but because my butch presentation and overall masculinity is very... flamboyant, shall we say.

Overall, what defines a butch is that they see the word butch, hear it, and think "Yes, that's me." The word is home to them. It brings about a sense of comfort, joy, and especially pride. And when we see other butches, we feel a sense of kinship, because that's what community is. That's what we all share.

But this sense of "Wow, this word is me," isn't unique to butchhood. That's just how every queer identity works. That works with bisexuals, aromantics, transgender people, everyone! It's usually the first sign we get of figuring out we are that identity. There's no secret rulebook on what defines what. We simply are.

This is gonna get kinda long, so I'm going to link resources down bellow the cut. Hope you like reading, because I sure do love typing!

Butch is a Noun is an excellent read into what butchhood means to most butches. Unfortunately, it's riddled with toxic masculinity (as in the "I must be strong to be masculine" toxic masculinity) and just a taaaad of fatphobia in the chapter on treating femmes, and it doesn't speak too well on the singular they/them. It's an old book! But these flaws are very small for what the book does in sharing butch experiences, and showing love to butches of all genders, especially the transgender/non-binary ones.

Stone Butch Blues is a classic in butch and transmasculine literature, and it's well loved and received for a reason. Leslie Feinberg is an incredible communist transgender butch whose ideals are well- and beautifully- defined in this work. Would highly recommend.

Female Masculinity is something on my to-read, but from what I'm aware of it's a series of essays by Jack Halberstam on transmasculinity and butchhood alike. (I believe "female" is being used like we would AFAB.) I've read one essay from the work, Transgender Butch, which is about how the FTM and butch community are at odds with eachother and how trans butches often have to toe the line between this "border war". Good stuff, would recommend at least the one essay, but I'm sure the whole book is fantastic too.

My fingers are getting tired, so I'll reblog this later with my own experiences with butchhood. Sorry if it's a long wait! I'm kind of busy with college these days. I'll try to get it out in at least 24 hours though.

[trans-androgyne]

An excerpt from Female Masculinity about butches' and other gender diverse people's experiences in women's restrooms when they fail to meet standards of femininity:

"Ambiguous gender, when and where it does appear, is inevitably transformed into deviance, thirdness, or a blurred version of either male or female. As an example, in public bathrooms for women, various bathroom users tend to fail to measure up to expectations of femininity, and those of us who present in some ambiguous way are routinely questioned and challenged about our presence in the ‘wrong’ bathroom…having one's gender challenged in the women's rest room is a frequent occurrence in the lives of many androgynous or masculine women...queer literature is littered with references to the bathroom problem, and it would not be an exaggeration to call it a standard feature of the butch narrative."

The author also shares his experiences with being challenged in bathrooms, with security being called on him in an airport on two different occasions. Personally, I've only gotten funny looks when entering and exiting both binary bathrooms. There are a lot of stories out there about transfem experiences in bathrooms, but would any other trans men, transmascs, butches, or anyone with similar experiences by willing to share their stories of using public restrooms--men's, women's, or otherwise?

[fleshadept]

female masculinity by jack halberstam is a very interesting book. dense but i accidentally got like 40% through it in one evening. very illuminating about how there were distinct subcultures of masculine women and women who slept together for at least the past 200 years, enough so that there are a multitude of stories of women having loads of female partners. i knew that these women existed, but halberstam makes a convincing case for prominent cohesive subcultures with their own signifiers and ways of knowing and identifying each other as far back as the early 1800s. also a fascinating look at the range of relationships women have had with masculinity and their own womanhood or non-womanhood. definitely a necessary documentation

[butchingdyke]

is this a wolverine enough outfit for tumblr...

[kismetic]

Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Paris Magazine, February 1991

[lesbianlenses]

Womonspace, 1986

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Kimberly

Published: Dec 18, 2021

Between 1995-2006 I was a part of the butch lesbian community. During those years, despite my life-long and sometimes intense gender dysphoria, I hadn’t given any serious thought to medically transitioning. It wasn’t even on my radar as a possibility until after 2000. The idea of medically transitioning seemed fringe, far-fetched, and risky.

Most of the butches I knew also had gender dysphoria (GD) or rather, Gender Identity Disorder (GID), as it was called then. Many butches I knew in Winnipeg, Halifax, Toronto, and later Vancouver, were strong, stoic people. I admired many of them. I know that their lives weren’t always easy, but they carried themselves with dignity. They had butch “brotherhood” and femmes who adored them. Many were “stone” which meant that their GID made it difficult for them to relate to their female anatomy so didn’t allow themselves to be touched by anyone, or rarely. They were often harassed and abused for being masculine women, as I was. It was often stressful using female public washrooms, because our gender ambiguity made people so uncomfortable. There was a term “butch bladder” to reference the ways we’d avoid using bathrooms in public.

In the early-mid 2000s, more and more FTMs were appearing in the community, alongside the butches. Many lesbian spaces welcomed them, some didn’t. It seemed to me at the time that butches were presented with two options: we could choose to be butches, or we could choose to be FTM “trans guys”. Why people chose one or the other...that was very individual and personal. It really came down to which option solved a problem and made life easier. The problem could be homophobic parents, fatigue from being harassed, differing degrees of dysphoria and bodily discomfort, not understanding what GID is, poor social or occupational functioning, trauma, other mental health challenges like depression or the anxiety that seemed inevitable for us. Some transitioned but still identified as butch women. They chose medical interventions to look more masculine, not to identify as men. Some trans guys said they never had GID at all. I don’t know what their motivations for transitioning were. Some said “political reasons”. There were some who were big fans of Queer Theory icons like Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam. Those women adopted male personas - intentional “female masculinity” - as an expression of Queer Theory, not to be men/male. I chose to transition soon after a gay man was beaten to death in a nearby park.

If kids with gender dysphoria today are anything like who we were 20 years ago, I feel saddened by their trajectory. Others see benefits: Access to medical interventions has been made easier. They no longer have to do a “real-life test” (live their life as the opposite sex for 2 years without medical assistance). They don’t have to go through months or years of therapy and assessment. More is now known about the effects and risks of hormones. The surgeries have improved, are easier to access and now paid for by insurance. (I paid for my own mastectomy out of pocket, and was on the SRS surgery waitlist for 10 years.)

But, what have we done? Have we eliminated all of the conditions for why a butch girl would find their innate masculinity hard to live with? Have we made the lives of butch women better and safer? Have we eliminated homophobic families, communities, employers, clinicians and policies? Are we educating young people what gender dysphoria is, in evidence-based terms, supporting them to integrate that into a healthy identity and self-image? Do we tell masculine girls how attractive they are? Do they have an abundance of healthy role models? Are they fully embraced and integrated into their workforces, educational settings, faith communities… or, are butches still getting weird looks from strangers? Are they still getting yelled at in public bathrooms? Are young, obnoxious young men still yelling slurs out their car windows as they drive by a butch woman? Do gender non-conforming women still fear for their lives in some places? Can they get Brandon Teena out of their heads? Can they travel the world freely? Can they find clothing they like that fits their bodies well?

I’m not convinced we’ve made any real progress at all. I think we’ve just made it easier for people to jump ship, younger and faster, and gave it a different spin. We now call that “self-actualization”. We’ve facilitated a better illusion. We’ve convinced more and more people that the illusion is real. We continue to push for better surgeries. Penile and uterine transplants are on the horizon. Young people are flooding into clinics. They can’t keep up with the demand. Activists have pushed Queer Theory as an explanation for our difference, displacing evidence-based clinical definitions of GID/GD. It’s no longer talked about as a condition that requires treatment but a natural human variation that requires affirmation in whatever form we demand (often life-long medicalization). I’ve travelled that road to its end, and its hurt just as much as it’s helped.

The surgeries available to FTMs right now are awful. A double mastectomy and phalloplasty or metoidioplasty are gruesome procedures to go through. The US surgeon I went to for metoidioplasty boasts low complication rates, but the anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed (myself and everyone I know who had the procedure there and elsewhere) is close to a 100% complication rate. One guy at the surgical recovery centre I stayed at started to hemorrhage and was laying on the floor unable to reach the call bell when another FTM patient found him and advocated for him to be rushed to hospital. Fistulas and strictures are the most common problem. I chose metoidioplasty because it’s thought to be the less risky of the two options. I immediately developed two large fistulas (meaning that my urethra burst open in two places) that needed additional surgery to repair. I couldn’t bathe or go swimming for a year until those openings were repaired. I have chronic perineum pain, altered bowel function due to changes in my pelvic muscles, and no sensation in most of my chest. When we have complications, local physicians and surgeons don’t know what to do. So we have to wait, and travel to whoever can help.

Listen, I don’t doubt that sometimes medical transition is helpful for people. It’s not my place to say they can’t or shouldn’t. But let’s not sell this like it’s a Disney park ride. The marketing of everything trans is ridiculously misleading. Don’t put sparkles and rainbows over real pain as though that helps at all. It’s insulting.

If we really want to help these kids, we need to make it easier for lesbian kids. Butch kids. All gender non-conforming kids. The quirky and awkward kids. Kids who feel they don’t fit it. Let’s get better at working with parents and preserving families. Be honest about what medical transition is really about. No one really changes biological sex and these procedures are really hard to go through. Why are we putting all of our resources into escaping brutality rather than eliminating brutality? We’re cutting up our bodies because our lived reality is worse. Why do we celebrate that?

Medical transition is but one option for those with GD. We need to reclaim our understanding of GD as a condition so that we can have reality based-conversations and solve real personal and social problems. “Trans” as a concept, masks many underlying issues. A queer theory-based understanding of myself worsened my GD. Medical transition became an addiction. The illusion only works if we’re lucky enough to pass and everyone else plays along perfectly. It’s an exhausting game of whack-a-mole to dodge the reminders of my female past and female biology. How is that kind of dissociation desirable? Some people may benefit from medically transitioning, but we still need a reality-based understanding of ourselves, to keep our feet on the ground.

Our children deserve better. If this sounds transphobic to you, you’re a part of the problem. Owning our reality for what it is isn’t self-hatred. It’s self-acceptance. Having different ideas and a different vision of how to move forward isn't hatred. Hatred was the skinheads who circled around us at the small 1992 Winnipeg gay and lesbian march, long before Pride was a parade. Hatred was the men who drove from the suburbs into Vancouver with the intent to "kill a fag" and murdered Aaron Webster in Stanley Park. I’m well acquainted with phobia. This isn't phobia. This is love.

[dutifullysuperpeach]

"Masculinity, of course, is what we make it; it has important relations to maleness, increasingly interesting relations to transexual maleness, and a historical debt to lesbian butchness."

-Female Masculinity by Jack Halberstam