#i’m just a butch dyke and it’s the best!!! it’s amazing it’s liberating it just. yeah wowza enough rambling!

[coolcarabiner]

it’s bonkers to me that people will say oh but you don’t have to look/be like that!!! to butch lesbians/lesbians who present masculine. they will look u in the face and essentially say you can be a lesbian without being an ugly yucky self loathing stereotype!!!! and it absolutely just boggles my mind because like. i’ve fucked around with my gender presentation a ton. i’ve had my head shaved at a two and my hair past my shoulders; it’s also been every color imaginable. i’ve let my body hair grow out and also shaved everywhere, even my arms, from ages 13-23 because i was bullied for having dark arm hair in middle school. i’ve worn “boy clothes” and “girl clothes” and weird lesbian mixes of both. i used to have to be wearing makeup to ever leave the house and i’d work myself up into a literal panic at the idea of people seeing me without it. i used to have a very persistent and active eating disorder furthered by extreme dysmorphia and a lack of self worth because i thought my body had to look a certain way, be a certain way, to be good enough.

but butchness brought me fucking freedom from so much of that. learning about butch identity and reading posts from other butches taught me that i can exist just like this, without doing an exhausting myriad of uncomfortable things that felt more restrictive than affirming. seeing femmes and butches and people in between online express desire towards butches made me realize it’s not just some anomaly my partner is into me; butches just are hot and desirable. i can look and dress the way i want, and embody both feminine and masculine traits without having to worry about adhering correctly to a performance i don’t think i ever got the right script for. i can be butch and be seen for what and who i am and there’s just nothing ugly about any of that to me.

it’s like. yeah, i don’t have to be butch, but i’ve tried everything else and this is the first time in 25 years i actually feel some semblance of comfortable with my body and myself in general. i don’t have to be butch, but it lets me set aside familiar self loathing and exchange it instead for the same love and appreciation i can extend to other masculine lesbians. i guess don’t have to be butch, i just don’t see why i’d wanna be anything else.