#like I’ve being saying dyke for years bc I knew that I could reclaim it y’know

[lovequeerindigo]

slur reclamation is so jarring lol

[barbedwirechain]

hi!!! I've been questioning some uncertainty in my identity and you were the first person on t I saw when I looked into the "butch fag" tag, I'm really curious about what it means to be butch and on testosterone, or being butch and navigating the world passing almost as a cis man? for lack of better terminology, sorry if it's not right.

I've been out as trans since I was a kid (almost 22 now.) and I've always went back and forth on my identity bc I don't relate with other trans men or cis men in general but I knew transitioning was what's right for me. detransition doesn't feel correct at all, I'm so happy being on testosterone. im uncertain in my sexuality but have always found comfort with lesbians and butches, and I've always felt the explanation of butch dysphoria sounded more clear to me than wanting to wake up with the body of a cis man. what I mean is I think I'm a butch fag but I don't know what that means, I don't know how or if I'm ready to come out with that. I'm afraid of my future with dating or navigating queer spaces if I claim to be butch or lesbian aligned while still presenting full beard and no desire to change that.

I don't know how to navigate exploring this at all, especially because lesbian spaces online kind of scare me since its so easy to end up following terfs if you don't know what to look for. I don't want to be harassed or make anyone else uncomfortable with my presence. I want to connect with other butches on T. do you know of anything I could do to reach this kind of understanding?

i’ll say if you already see uh butch fag in yourself or find whatever it is in me, in you you’ve already started to reach that understanding. exploring online spaces where you have unprecedented access to people with these more “complicated” identities (more accurately—identities that are generally less referenced than others or not recognized outside of the community for better and for worse) and hanging out in adult oriented city spaces helped extend my understanding of myself as butch.

the longer i understand myself as trans the more i’m comfortable frankensteining my identity (for uh lack of uh better term). i say this to explain why i call myself the most appropriate word for me “dykefag” but butch fag… or faggot butch (on T or not) has uh community precedent. there’s articles and quotes of people saying that term or uh form of it and they’re also transsexual and/or lesbian, although this was something i found only after seeing myself in the phrase.

i understood myself as uh dyke for most of my life and uh lesbian as the most neat version of my sexuality; dyke is something i’ve reclaimed being called that as uh child and call/ed myself that for over ten years now (aside from uh brief period of bisexuality). after being on T though for almost two years i noticed people are less likely to see me as uh dyke so that word begins to feel more personal and intimate for me. but butch?

butch is always exactly right. its not something i reclaimed or have complicated relationship to, i just am.

i am and i mean it with no irony or “meh”-ness; i am butch and i think i’ll die butch.

uh good two years after beginning to call myself butch and right after starting T I leaned into my lifelong attraction to butches, already holding an interest in “‘queer’ masculinities” via research in college. eventually i realized i wanted to be that. i wanted to be masculine ina way that never didnt hold uh layer of unspoken queerness. even in my current “mostly cis-man passing” form (i don’t take it as an insult, i present more masculine than androgynous like i used to for comfort and safety) i’m always butch. most people assume ima cis gay man or uh very hairy bulldyke and at some point i was like… these lines are so easily blurred because of how i decide to embody butchness, on purpose, and (what’s read as) faggotry through my attraction to other butch and queer masc people. i experienced the difference between dyke and fag fade away and began to tag my shit with dyke fag and butch fag to be in the same spaces as other gay trans people who had this line also fade away.

maintaining my attachment to being butch and loving butchness led me to follow “butch4butch” pages and explore butch4butch tags and see myself as a butch4butch gay more and more solidly. and the more i searched for butch4butch, the more i came across trans fags and nonbinary butch lesbians (and both!!). similar to going on tumblr in 2011 and finding out there were people who didn’t believe in the christian god, lex and tumblr specifically led me to uh set of trans people who embodied this faggot butchness, whether dyke (lesbian) or faggot (gay boy) identifying— not to mention all the gay boy dykes and the fagboy trannies. i found/find myself relating to their appreciation of masculinity and consideration of transness and gender noncomformity more than any other space, including ones that are for lesbians which, in my honest opinion, always end up catering to terf-bubbles or narcissist echo chambers that define themselves through gender essentialist ideas about masculinity/men of which i no longer see any viability in.

inside, exploring tags online or apps for Gay people who do Gay shit and have Sexy and Fucked up understandings of gender can help you understand yourself further by identifying and also dis-identifying with others without having to “conflict”. outside?… i rarely explain what i am. and for better or worse, i don’t try to. i let people think i’m whatever they think unless someone directly asks or when cis men try to approach me and to conceal my agab and also deny them i kinda just straight up lie and play cishet man. i recognize we exist under 20 million ___ or ___ binaries, both imaginary and tangible, new and old, outside and inside—shit even nonbinary and binary began to feel like another binary to me recently and the only thing that alleviates that is 1) going through butch(4butch) tags and seeing cis, trans, and who knows butches loving each other in coexisting without pretending they’re at war and 2) being in community with other dykesfags, or fagdykes, and butch faggots irl. and like, lesbians in person are also jus way more awesome. *whispers* like most people. i understand this is, unfortunately, only as easy as your access, space, transportation, and work and personal life allows. most of my adult queer experience is in non-sober spaces ina city that i lived around or in and that can't be disregarded or forgotten.

to wrap this up, i didnt look for em (us haha) til i felt i was one of them but We’re Everywhere. not uh majority but uh presence, and that’s enough. and if i’m being honest even if i never found any of these people, i felt so intensely about being uh butch faggot and uh dykefag i saw myself simply going with it—but going with it with the knowledge that it’s near impossible to make anything up at this point. someone has almost surely shared the idea or identity regardless of if they publicized it or let it be archived. and even as much of this response IS about that, i can’t overemphasize that even if it’s something you did made up, all alone, 200% you, the feeling is true, yea? the beauty of frankensteining your [trans] identity is seeing that you can kinda be whatever the shit you feel as long as it’s truly comfortable and honest to the time with reasonable respect to yourself and your community.