#persistence: all the ways butch and femme

[androgynealienfemme]

"I was barely a dyke then, let alone butch, but it was the lure of female masculinity that drew me out and into the queer world. When I was coming out, butch was no longer new. There was both popular knowledge and an underground cultural understanding of what it meant to be butch -- and there were books written from both perspectives. I may not have known it intimately, as a late-blooming queer who grew up in an extremely straight southern-US town, but I knew enough to feel self-conscious about claiming butchness.

You see, I was never a tomboy. There, I said it. I was never a goddamn tomboy; I never resisted the dresses my mom wanted me to wear, never hid in my dad's closet trying on his clothes. I did gender conformity without any real fight, and when I came out to my mom, she used it against me-- "But you were always so feminine!"

Maybe I didn't have the fight in me, maybe I wanted to fit in more than I wanted to know myself, but until I was well past twenty, I wore my hair long, with earrings dangling, and makeup on my face. I wore spaghetti-strap tank tops and flowing skirts. I flaunted my cleavage.

The butch narrative I had absorbed, the one I began to furtively read about as I came out, wasn't mine. I wasn't a rough-and-tumblr butch kid, all scabby knees and hardness, fighting against mom over Sunday dresses. I wasn't good at sports, didn't have trouble being friends with girls, didn't feel more "boy" than "girl." So when I slowly started easing towards the masculine side of the spectrum, I was self-conscious as hell. I felt like an imposter. I felt like a phony. I had similar feelings when I came out as a lesbian, but my fantasies about women quickly assuaged my fears of being a queer fraud.

With my gender presentation, I couldn't get over the feeling that I was trying too hard. Even as I slowly shed the layers of femininity in my presentation, the self-consciousness still affected what labels I used. I knew what butch was, and I still felt it couldn't be me. I had dated me. I wore a pink dress to prom. I was short and chubby and more giggly than tough.

It was a fierce femme who bossy-bottomed me into the role of butch top. It was easy to be the butch to C's femme, and she delighted in my enjoyment of her high hells, pretty dresses, and makeup. In those moments, when my insecurity was stronger than my sense of self, the contrast between my budding masculinity and her strong, well-articulated femininity were just what I needed to feel whole, strong, even butch. C didn't change me, exactly, but our gender-play heavy sex gave me room to figure out what my gender could look like in those private spaces we shared."

“Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme: Coming Back Around to Butch” by Miriam Zoila Perez, On Butch and Femme: Compiled Readings, (edited by I.M. Epstein) (2017)

[snowqueen]

Doctors can grant or deny you access to safe transgender healthcare. They often do this based on their own prejudices, among which may be the belief that butches are malfunctioning women. So when I see a doctor, I leave the necktie at home and say, "I'm... tomboyish."

I have said this with a shaved head and singed cargo pants, so the trick may have been transparent. I'm fortunate to have lived in Vancouver since 2006, where practitioners of trans medicine were more interested in helping patients live honestly that exist conventionally. I thought of transition before then, but most other places and times would shun anyone who aimed to transtion into a queer identity. Sometimes I hear dykes rail against transgender pediatrics. They fear it will force ("our") young butches into mannish roles and bodies. I very much agree with the objections to forcibly virilizing girls, but it's not FtMs we should worry about. They aren't forced to transition, they want to. And most of them aren't girls. Where trans medicine does force manhood onto girls is when it stalls or rejects young MtFs, leaving them to go through the wrong puberty, while being bullied into the wrong gender-identity.

— Amy Fox, "I NEVER SAY I AM A BUTCH TO A DOCTOR" from "Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie." from Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman, 2011)

[macbxth-pdf]

“One is not born a woman, says Simone de Beauvoir. One becomes one. I was born a femme in a long line of angry, fucked up femmes. I never got the hang of being a woman.”

Author and Editor, Chandra Mayor

Source: ‘Me, Simone, and Dot’ from Persistence: All ways butch and femme

[campgender]

Butch. Sweet, protective, hot, needs met, desire contained and loose all at once, conflicted and simple, heart beating, swishing, sweaty, solid, dirty, right there in the tightly knit pocket of my goddamn fluttering gut, my deepest connection, and only home. Where did i start to get over the hotness and start feeling shame for the connection? When did that shame become more important than the truth? Where did my truth go that a person of any bodily configuration can be butch? How have cissexism, transphobia, and ableism caused me to doubt and judge myself as a butch? Butch, which, despite what anyone else may have to say on the matter, if i just gave it half a chance, could certainly contain this fucked up broken-ass disabled trans body, right? This body that feels so […]

from “Home/Sickness: Self-Diagnosis” by romham padraig gallacher

published in Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme, ed. Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman (2011)

[sourcedecay]

trying my best not to give this woman lesbian homework to do

[malaisequotes]

“Faggy butch was good. It accurately described my pink button-down shirts, my giggles, the fact that I talk with my hands.”

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Miriam Zoila Perez

[queersatanic]

Changed Sex. Grew Boobs. Started Wearing a Tie.

by Amy Fox

Remade by biochemistry, surgery, cultural study, and ribbed tank­ tops, I now look pretty much like any other freckled butch. Most dykes accept me without question. But sometimes they discover that I'm MtF, that I transitioned to butch by escaping manhood, and then they brand me as an immigrant, an outsider, a threat-or a confidante. Dykes find me familiar in that I am butch, yet refreshingly alien in that I am transsexual. So they give me the public tour and show me their hidden demons. From what I've seen, I know that butch is not male-lite™, but dyke culture fears it is. And this fear shapes the butch-femme spectrum.

Bold Tomboy versus Bewildered Boy

Born in 1980, I was fortunate that my mum was a feminist. Toy robots, baby dolls, one book on emotional communication, another on dinosaurs; she inspired me to ignore gender stereotypes.

1986: When they say "those tinfoil wrist-wraps look like Wonder Woman," they mean that this is bad. But they block bullets. I thought that would be cool. The struggle between butch versus man started when Mum gave me a book for boys entering puberty. It was like a horror novel, like David Cronenberg was directing my body. I was left with a problem: if biology isn't destiny, why would any feminist regret zer sex, let alone change it? Why would a boy pine to be a tomboy? Do I just need a father? And why don't I smile anymore?

1990: Yes, I think we should draw a girl wizard too.

In interests, manner, and politics, I held to subtle acts of gender­ defiance, though I was increasingly alone. Does this prove I was a tomboi trapped in a boy's body or just an androgynous kid who flipped the bird to sexism? I don't know. But I scour my childhood for evidence that I always was a butch. I do this because one of the problems with being MtF and butchy is that people may question whether you're genuine or just a man playing a prank. And your harshest accuser may be yourself. So I dig out examples, arguments, and try to look fearless, even when I'm looking in the mirror.

1995: Ripley from Alien is the most awesome sci-fi hero ever. She's not like most women, but she's not like most men either ... What's the word for that?

It took me a decade and a half to beat puberty's isolation and depression and make the following distinctions between butch and male:

Playing with the boys doesn't mean I want to be one.

If I see myself as a ladette who gets misread as a lad, my life makes sense.

It is valid, both personally and politically, to change your sex, especially if you then screw with a whole new set of gender norms.

Transition followed. And once safely away from being labelled a "man," I learned to tie a Windsor knot.

I Never Say "I Am a Butch" to a Doctor

Doctors can grant or deny you access to safe transgender healthcare. They often do this based on their own prejudices, among which may be the belief that butches are malfunctioning women. So when I see a doctor, I leave the necktie at home and say, "I'm ... tomboyish."

I have said this with a shaved head and singed cargo pants, so the trick may have been transparent. I'm fortunate to have lived in Vancouver since 2006, where practitioners of trans medicine were more interested in helping patients live honestly than exist conventionally. I thought of transition before then, but most other places and times would shun anyone who aimed to transition into a queer identity. Sometimes I hear dykes rail against transgender pediatrics. They fear it will force ("our") young butches into mannish roles and bodies. [31] I very much agree with objections to forcibly virilizing girls, but it's not FtMs we should worry about. They aren't forced to transition, they want to. And most of them aren't girls. Where trans medicine does force manhood onto girls is when it stalls or rejects young MtFs, leaving them to go through the wrong puberty, while being bullied into the wrong gender-identity.

Femme Trail Guides

Eight months into transitioning as far as I could get from male, I developed a strange interest in power tools and short hair. But I was too scared to say I was butch. I learned otherwise by dating a femme.

We'd met years before in student organizing, but only shared tea after I'd started transition. She was a big bi femme; a broad who fucks who and how she wants. Her mum and dad thought that it would be kind and freeing to raise her as they would a son. She disagreed and out­ femmed this attempt. But even though her femininity was, from the start, a rebellion, in queer spaces, it started the process of her erasure; the men she dated finished it. Consigned to the "quiet ally" seat, she was left dating bi-curious women, whose curiosity she offered to satisfy, sans underwear. Her dates declined, remaining bi-curious rather than bi­ informed. She remained frustrated.

Dating a tranny-a girlfriend with stubble and a necktie-made her smirk. She clarified my doubts and explained to me that I fuck "like a girl." She was my anchor in women's circles where I would not be welcome were she not beside me, calling bullshit. Dancing with her, fisting in washrooms, it felt right, intimate, honest. Together, we were bold. We were femme and butch.

Still, I was scared to call myself "butch." Wouldn't that be a contradiction? An Eddie Izzard joke? But she saw the butch and named it. I owe her.

I encounter femmes who shepherd friends and lovers through the FtM spectrum. When they see the butch and smell the trans on me, they discreetly offer a rolodex of gentlemen and genderqueers, friends and exes, to whom I can talk if I, y'know, need to talk. I explain that I am changing the other way. They are happy to hear this, to know that I can honestly be myself right now.

I see how many butches lean on femmes, whether we know them romantically or platonically. I feel like a bulldagger Lois Lane to their Superwomen. Escorting us through everything from washrooms to transition, I wonder and marvel at how femmes save us over and over and what they get in return. Visibility? Help moving boxes? Someone who is not femme who will say, "People see butch and expect male, but I am not. People see you and expect conventional, and you are anything but."

I wonder what we can do so that they could openly lend their help at dyke gatherings, rather than catching our ears in private.

Border Control and Fragile Flowers

If I get read as trans at a "queer women's event," dykes assume I'm a straight transsexual guy. Ironically, this grants me free access. I bear no resentment toward my FtM brothers, but I do grind my teeth over women's spaces and dyke circles that welcome them yet which exclude my transsexual sisters. I am infuriated by the underlying assumption: my brave FtM brothers, who have sacrificed to become men, are just conformist women, and my bold MtF sisters who have fought to be women, are really men with a fetish for being marginalized. Are we dykes so fragile, so afraid, that we cannot allow anyone to enter, leave, or even explore? When we imply that FtM men are still gay women, how can we also fear that "we are losing our butches"?

Our butches? Whose butches? Does the dyke community own its members? Our sex lives? Our genders? Does it control us for our own good?

Dykes are not fragile flowers. Many femmes wear the flaming rose. It's a flower, but it'll fight back if you try to crush it. What tough flower would symbolize us butches? Or do we fear that butches are the fragile ones, anxious to leave dykespace?

We fear men will undo us, erase us; that we must guard against their entrance into our spaces, or our sister's pants. But men have been part of butch-femme for as long as I can remember. Pre-electrical lesbian spaces contained trans-spectrum men who feared presenting as male in public, and butches who feared looking mannish because of laws, written and unwritten, that prohibited putting a vagina in a pair of pants. Medical transition has been around since the 1930s, and it has not destroyed us. There were gay men who shared our bar scene, and their business kept many of "our" bars afloat. The lesbian communities that most feared men were those that also feared femmes, butches, transsexuals, and every other stripe of gender freedom.

Butch-femme is tough. We are tough. Our culture has survived alcoholism, homophobia, beatings, corrupt vice squads, poverty, and the sex wars-plus all the other problems of living. I think we can survive transgender medicine.

The happiest butch-femme spaces I've seen are those that embrace the gender spectrum. There we find butches and femmes who go by "she" and love their unmodified bodies. We have FtMs who've done the works—T, top, and crotch—who may be men or butch or femme or more. They include me and others who transitioned into being butches. They include femmes without questioning their taste in lovers. And it works.

Men will not undo us. But an unchecked fear of men-of becoming a man, dating a man, having been forced to be one, looking too much like one, being too attractive to men in general, or aiding and abetting any of the above-can and will make our community unliveable if we let it. But we should not fear or police ourselves. If we did that, there'd be no butch or femme in the first place.

Sipping Gender with Butches

When I meet with butches, there is often herbal tea. Some of the butches are happy; some are not. The distinction between the two is based in their struggle between self-honesty and the fear of ostracism.

The Happy Butch is tickled to hear that I transitioned into butchhood. Happy Butch chuckles to learn that I too explain to straight friends and family, I know people mistake me for a teenage fag, and I'm okay with that.

The Unhappy Butch is relieved that "my transition" referred to how I joined, rather than abandoned, her and her gender.

Both Happy and Unhappy Butches know a compatriot. He was younger and genderqueer. Now he's on T and has a new name.

Happy Butch and I will grin, knock cups, and speculate as to just what and who will emerge from transition.

Unhappy Butch sinks into her chair: "There goes another one," she utters, hollow like a cavern. Silent over a steaming cup, her eyes say, "At least I know you're here for the long haul."

In my experience, the difference in attitude runs as follows:

Unhappy Butch wants to mend the holes in her gender, but won't. Whether it's new pronouns, T, or surgery, she'd feel more honestly herself in some other body or identity. She denies herself this out of a sense of duty that is really just fear-the fear of losing friends who accepted her as who she tries to be but who won't accept her as who she needs to be, because that would be accepting a man or something similar enough to a man. She tries to turn her fear of isolation into a virtue. Noble and alone, she will stick it out, the last surviving butch ambassador to the world. But she knows it's a lie, and she mourns her lost brother because she mourns her lost self. I know this gender-martyrdom. I lived in it. And I threw it out when I transitioned into being happy and butch.

The Happy Butch? This butch doesn't mourn our brother's transition but celebrates it. Happy Butch is present in body and pronouns as-is, be they modified, unmodified, or under renovation. Happy Butch knows that any "friend" or "community" who rejects her/zer/him/them/it isn't a real friend or community. Happy Butch crackles with an honest, brave joy that extends to seeing someone else come into zer own.

My Home Is Not an Airport

The fears that haunt us stem from mistakenly equating female with femininity and male with masculinity. When we do this, we see butch misdefined as a waiting lounge for the next flight to manhood. If butch is just pre-male, then all cissexed butches are looking for a way out. And MtF butches? We don't exist-we can't exist. So we're invisible, even to ourselves. It's stupid and it's silencing. [32] Yet many people live in butchspace happily; some growing into it, others arriving after a long journey through other genders.

Do butches go male out of a thirst for privilege? No. T and "he" might get you a little extra room on the sidewalk, but will probably also get you called "fag," with words or fists. Every trans guy knows that when he gets read, whatever male privilege he has can vaporize quickly and violently.

Alternatively, some people cunningly fake one gender in public, then are themselves where it's safe to be honest. But this is desperation, not transition. I know from experience that if you're not really a guy, trying to live as one 24/7, let alone forcing your body into the "M" box, will make you so sick in the heart that anything else seems worth the risk.

Society doesn't pressure butches to transition any more than it pressures gender-odd kids to be gay. What's changed is that "transition" is now a household word. Friends and family may confide that they'll understand if that's a road you need to take. If they think you're in the closet, they may call you on it. That's not pressure. That's acceptance. Or love.

If I have not already ruffled enough feathers, then let me start plucking: there is no such thing as butch flight. There are transsexual dudes who cheat themselves out of a full life for fear of being ostracized. There are butches who fear to live beyond male and female because dykes might assume they are guys. There are FtM-spectrum folk who have never been butch in their lives. And there are genderqueers who want nothing to do with our decades-old identity wars. But there is no butch flight.

There is, however, butch arrival: people who have tried other genders, most often femme and/or guy, who made the switch and joined the ranks.

So if more butches is what you want, I can get you butches.

Is your community short on butches? First, we need to remember economic class. Most of the butchless lesbian spaces I've seen, at least the ones strangely lacking harder butches, are also moneyed spaces. Butches, being gender-variant, tend to be broke.

Second, we need to help butches transition in. We must celebrate former femmes who want to dance the boi's part. Like any dancer who switches roles, she'll probably be more graceful than those who haven't.

We also need to help MtF butches make the trip. Their roadblocks are (1) an underfunded, ageist, and rigorously heteronormative transgender medical system and (2) a lack of accessible radical gender education. You need to be a gender radical to grasp that it's possible to transition into gender variance and come out as an unconventional kind of trans and/or woman, but most radical gender education is aimed only at those who already are out as trans and/or who the educators read as female. Why are there so many more flaming FtM dudes than butchy MtF women? Most of the trans-flamers started their critical feminist education among women who read them as gender-bending butches. And while they were included, this education did not welcome my untransitioned MtF sisters. So the swishy FtMs transitioned and most of the boyish MtFs assumed they couldn't. But this is changing; every year, I see more MtFs in boy­ drag, neckties, and mullets than ever before.

So what we do now is keep fighting gender-normativity in the medical system and orient feminist education to grasp that many "boys" are actually girls who are stuck in the closet. We do this, and the world will not only be a friendlier place for all genders, it will also have more butches. They'll even be tall and stubbly if that's what you're into. And they won't re-transition to male. Probably.

Like freak weather, Amy Fox blows through Vancouver every few months. The proprietor of Tricky Vixen Metal and More, she crafts toys and sculpture in steel and bronze. She is also a co-writer and producer on The Switch, a kinky, genderbent Canadian sitcom produced by Fire Thief Studios. At present she is working with Trans Connect in Nelson, BC, to produce a documentary on health and social service access for rural trans people.

[31] Never mind that most trans pediatricians don't give sex changes to kids. They forestall puberty so the growing teenager has several years to think over where ze wants to take zer body.

[32] But it can be damned convenient. As a transsexual, I appreciate a gender that expects stone genitals, a packer bulge, and stubble.

“Men will not undo us. But an unchecked fear of men—of becoming a man, dating a man, having been forced to be one, looking too much like one, being too attractive to men in general, or aiding and abetting any of the above—can and will make our community unlivable if we let it. But we should not fear or police ourselves. If we did that, there’d be no butch or femme in the first place.”

— Amy Fox, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

[mercymornsimpathizer]

a non-exhaustive list of butch literature

a (very ad-hoc) list of butch reading and writing, (mostly) by butch authors. books I've read myself in bold; take the rest with a grain of salt. additions, addendums, and commentary welcome :)

(you can find my list of femme literature here)

general/literary fiction:

mrs s by k patrick

stone butch blues by leslie feinberg

boulder by eva baltasar

running fiercely towards a thin high sounds by judith katz

tipping the velvet by sarah waters

a crystal diary by frankie hucklenbroich

godspeed by lynn breedlove

cha-ching! by ali liebegott

the ihop papers by ali liebegott

greasepaint by hannah levene

lucy and mickey by red jordan arobateau

the bull-jean stories by sharon bridgforth

development by bryher

notes of a crocodile by qui miaojin

america is not the heart by elaine castillo

the slow fix by ivan coyote

the swashbuckler by lee lynch

old dyke tales by lee lynch

sci-fi, fantasy, and horror:

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

the unspoken name by ak larkwood

vermilion by molly tanzer

metal from heaven by august clarke

scapegracers by ha clarke

the unbroken by cl clarke

fire logic by laurie marks

the seep by chana porter

these burning stars by bethany jacobs

feast while you can by mikaella clements and onjuli datta

non-fiction, memoir, and autobiography:

hijab butch blues by lamya h

gender failure by ivan coyote and rae spoon

fun home by allison bechdel

butch is a noun by h bear bergman

female masculinity by jack halberstam

burning butch by rb murtz

when we were outlaws by jeanne cordova

leaving isn't the hardest thing by lauren hough

odd girls and twilight lovers by lillian faderman

another mother tongue by judy grahn

boots of leather, slippers of gold by elizabeth lapovsky and madeline davis

the persistent desire ed joan nestle

persistence: all way butch and femme ed ivan coyote and zena sharman

dagger: on butch women ed lily burana

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

first of all, this is all legit, and not bait, though i have a feeling it may come off that way, this did happen to me. please don't publish if tumblr sends it off anon.

i'm a lesbian with gender dysphoria, and while i haven't had much sexual experience, i would consider myself a stone top. in the last year and a half i began reading "terf"/radical feminist writings and reading "terf" tumblr blogs fairly actively, largely out of frustration with misogyny i was experiencing IRL. though i never engaged with the community i did stop identifying as genderfluid and started understanding my dysphoria as stemming from the trauma of being bullied by other girls for having a high-androgen DSD, and using different pronouns/transition thoughts as unhealthy coping mechanisms. i'm happy with this, but i also don't know if i'm attracted to women anymore.

i've always been attracted to women in a way that's stereotypically guy-like; i find feminine women very attractive and not so much fellow(?) butches, want to penetrate with a strap on, don't like bush much, cursory interest in BDSM/daddy kink. i read/watched het erotica and porn sometimes and identified with the man. what i read problematized pretty much every aspect of that- femininity as a cage, penetration as violence/straps as disidentification w the female body, infantilization of women, bdsm as abuse etc. also, desisting making me more conscious of dysphoria/knowledge of how extensive sexual dimorphism is putting me off both women with larger breasts and hips AND smaller breasts and hips/unrealistically masculine body types as well. so a lot of what turned me on before isn't arousing anymore, or i feel guilty about it, and i haven't been able to find butch4butch stuff which is much healthier very interesting.

i consider my sexuality healthier now on a political level but my ability to get aroused/jerk off has plummeted (used to be i could jork it sunrise to sunset) and thinking about being in a relationship w another woman makes me feel uneasy and weird, especially since a lot of what i read emphasized reciprocative cunnilingus/tribbing (which i don't like) as the healthiest sex options. i also think about both my dysphoria and my sexuality issues 100x more than i did before, even though i was promised the opposite (freedom from dysphoria and feeling happier as a lesbian), and it's stressing me out day-to-day. i'm aware based on your general ethos that you probably think i'm a terrible person right now, but i figured it'd be useful to seek the opinion of someone who radically disagrees with what i've read on what i could/should do next, since i admittedly miss being at peace with my sexuality.

thanks for reading.

hi there anon,

it's a bummer that you'd think I would assume you're a terrible person based on everything you've told me here. I generally try not to consider people terrible unless they're actively being shitheads or hurting other people, which doesn't sound at all like you're describing. from what you've told me, you've been up to your eyes in some information that's made you feel deeply uncomfortable in your sexuality and now you're seeking out a new perspective to help you make sense of that hurt. that describes most of the people who send me questions!

it's so striking to me that much of what you're describing is very reminiscent of what's recounted in The Persistent Desire, an anthology of writings on butch/femme identities edited by femme historian and archivist Joan Nestle that was released in 1992. in various essays and interviews countless butches and femmes recount their discomfort with the feminist turn against butch and femme identities that too place in the 70s, when both roles were declared problematic recreations of heterosexuality and summarily decried as politically "incorrect" for lesbians. it's shocking to me how much what you've described echoes these accounts experienced by lesbians half a century ago - the disowning of women who are "excessively" feminine or masculine, the demonizing of penetrative sex, general insistence that there are "correct" sex acts that every lesbian is supposed to enjoy, and the deep discomfort and insecurity that this causes among people who don't fit into the very rigid standards of proper lesbian identity set forth.

here's a link to a PDF, if that's interesting to you at all. it's very long, so feel free not to read it straight through; it's a great project to skim and an incredible way to get in touch with the lesbians who came before us. their accounts of their lives are so wildly different from the boundaries of "good" queer representation that feel so universal today; in discussing their own lives many of these women speak very bluntly about their experiences with abuse, drugs, sex work, and violence. it's a great glimpse into the lives and history of a lot of very ordinary lesbians just living their lives, and I'm very grateful it's been preserved.

now, as for what you're actually gonna do: hey. listen. first of all, if you haven't given up reading this stuff yet, you've gotta. you simply cannot keep internalizing stuff that makes you overanalyze your own sexuality so hard that you feel uncomfortable about being attracted to women. that's not "healthy," that's conversion therapy lite. there are other places to talk about feminism without being made to feel ashamed of yourself.

listen: there's nothing unhealthy about anything that you described about yourself. being a stone butch, being attracted to certain looks and aesthetics, watching porn, wanting to use a strap and roleplay during sex and not being interested in other sexual activities - all of those thing are completely normal and, yes, healthy. certainly healthier than feeling the need to repress your sexuality so hard that thinking about being with a woman doesn't feel right!

should we run through that list?

femininity as cage - sure, okay, femininity isn't for everyone, and there are parts of it that suck. that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with women who like to wear dresses or put on makeup or shave or whatever, or anyone who's attracted to those women. genuinely I cannot think of anything less interesting or important to feminist organizing than getting hung up about what people want to wear. it's clothes, dude. it's fucking clothes. pick a more important hill to die on, I implore you.

penetration is not the same thing as violence. there's just nothing to debate about that one; it's patently absurd to pretend that every act of penetrative sex is rape and you'd have to fundamentally misunderstand how consent works to believe that.

straps are not about "disidentification with the female body," they're about augmenting a sexual experience. a strap-on is not more problematic than a vibrator or a massage oils or a pillow used to prop up a body part. unless those are also bad? are those bad? are pillows disidentifying from the female body also? I'm not up to date on this.

straight up I don't even know which part of your whole deal the infantilization of women is supposed to address, but a thing that I've always found interesting about a lot of radical feminists who are deeply distrustful of sex is the way that many of them seem to assume that women can't be trusted to understand their own sexual desires and need to be taught what's appropriate. seems kind of condescending to me, personally.

BDSM isn't the same thing as abuse. abuse, crucially, is not a situation that people can safe word out of or negotiate the constraints of. it's kind of like how, you know, I purposefully pay people to shove needles in my skin when I want a tattoo, but I wouldn't be stoked about it if somebody just ran up to me in public and started stabbing me without any warning or conversation. context is crucial. there can certainly be abusive people within BDSM spaces, but that's true of people of literally every sexual proclivity on earth, and certainly not an innate feature of BDSM. it's just make believe, dude. it's dress up. it's sex LARPing.

also, psst, hey. that thing about being attracted to women in a "guy-like" way? no such thing. men are humans, dude; they experience attraction in as many different ways as anyone else. for every dude interested in the same stuff as you there are men yearning for hairy women, muscular women, masculine women, women who will dominate them, women who would rather be eaten out then penetrated, and so on. to say nothing of the men who aren't into women at all! and, as is obvious from your own experience, men don't have a monopoly on those kinds of feelings, anyway! there are no men or women feelings, dude; it's all just people having feelings and fighting for their lives trying to figure out what they're into to.

I want to particularly talk about that last bit, where you mentioned not enjoying or wanting to engage in cunnilingus or tribbing. that's totally fine! people like different shit in all kinds of combinations - I'm personally a huge fan of getting eaten out and scratched up or bitten, but I don't do penetration and I've genuinely never met anyone who actually liked tribbing - and there are absolutely people out there who will, to paraphrase the poet Tinashe, perfectly match your freak.

(have you heard about the perpetual, critical shortage of tops that the queer community faces? you'd be a godsend, just saying.)

also, actually, hey I wanted to circle back to another thing as well: it's deeply alarming to me that whatever radfem stuff you've been reading has you feeling "put off" of women with wide hips and large breasts as well as women with small breasts and hips. what is wrong with either of those? both of those are just ways that women naturally look. women just look a wide variety of ways, and it's sad that that's upsetting you now. just thinking about this, conceptually, is giving me hives.

having been up to your eyes in all of this, I can definitely understand why you'd feel the urge to overanalyze you own gender and sexuality to the point of completely talking yourself out of identifying with anything that feels good for you. as I said, that's actually not healthy in any way, and as a sex educator I can't say that I think anyone genuinely invested in your well-being would want that for you.

entirely aside from their feelings on trans people, which I obviously disagree with pretty vehemently, one of the things about radfems that's most endlessly vexing to me is the insistence that such an extremely narrow range of sexual behaviors are appropriate. seems like a miserable way to live, and I sincerely hope you can detangle yourself from the morass of shame it's landed you in. you deserve better.

[that-butch-archivist]

"Femme correspondents connected with me in a different way. Many were grateful for my past work and for the opportunity to announce their identities in their own voices. Their statements reflected one bitter irony: if, in the straight world, butches bear the brunt of the physical and verbal abuse for their difference, in the lesbian-feminist world, femmes have had to endure a deeper attack on their sense of self-worth. Leather and denim, flannels and vests--butch women could easily adapt these prevailing signs of feminist gender resistance into superficial passports to acceptance, but the femme woman, in her lace and silk, high heels, and lipstick, had no place to hide. Many learned to pass as a "dyke" in public while in their homes and in their beds, they flew their flags of color and sensuality. The femme voice is underrepresented in historical records, though markings of her presence abound. Often, she is the security behind the butch display, the one who makes the public bravado possible. Lady Una Troubridge's words to Radclyffe Hall, while spoken by a white, upper-class, Christian woman, capture some of the enduring aspects of femme power: "I told her to write what was in her heart, that so far as any effect upon myself was concerned, I was sick to death of ambiguities ..." Yet to others, the femme woman has been the most ambiguous figure in lesbian history; she is often described as the nonlesbian lesbian, the duped wife of the passing woman, the lesbian who marries. Because I am a femme myself, I know the complexity of our identity; I also know how important it is for all women to hear our voices. If the butch deconstructs gender, the femme constructs gender. She puts together her own special ingredients for what it is to be a "woman," an identity with which she can live and love."

- An excerpt from "Flamboyance and fortitude: An introduction," written by Joan Nestle, the introduction essay for The Persistent Desire: A Butch-Femme Reader. (Emphasis in bold my own.)

[androgynealienfemme]

"Faggy butch was good. It accurately described my pink button-down shirts, my giggles, the fact that I talked with my hands. I once saw a tape of myself in which I made a gesture that looked more like it belonged in A Chorus Line than in the middle of an interview. Faggy butch was like genderqueer -- not quite this or that, a little of both, maybe. A friend once said to me, "I access my femininity through my masculinity."

I feel lucky to have grown up in a world with butch pioneers, and I feel lucky that I had an idea about what being butch might have meant. But instead of making me feel part of the community, these constructions of what butch was -- stereotypes really-- pushed me away from the word and identity. Instead I chose a newer term, genderqueer, which had yet to be defined; it was in flux, it was a new frontier. I may not have been butch "enough", but genderqueer was all mine to rewrite and redefine.

I still like the word "genderqueer," still claim it and own it and love the way it makes room for me, in all my complexities. But I'm coming back around to butch. Maybe its because the years of pink prom dresses are further and further behind me, maybe its because i'm learning from butch elders who talk in terms that make room for me, giggles and all. Maybe its because the people i know have no idea (unless I tell them) that i was never a tomboy. They only know me -- my short hair tightly bound chest, and button down shirts.

I think that every new generation feels the need to reject their elders, reject what came before them, and feel that they are knew gender rebels. We invent terms, we create new spaces, and sometimes, we come back to where our big brothers started -- home."

“PERSISTENCE: All Ways Butch and Femme, Coming Back Around to Butch” Miriam Zoila Pérez, On Butch and Femme: Compiled Readings, (edited by I.M. Epstein) (2017)

[snowqueen]

Let me tell you what femme has meant for me and what it could mean for everyone. Let me stretch the word.

Let's say that femme is dispossessed feminity. It's the femininity of those who aren't allowed to be real women and who have to roll their own feminine gender.

Rolling their own is what cis-femme lesbians did in the fifties. By class and by sexual preference, they were dispossessed of real womanhood. For what woman is complete without money or a man? So they learned how to improvise, how to sew; how to turn a thrift-store sow's ear into a vintage silk purse.

Rolling their own is what contemporary femme dykes do. Invisible in straight spaces and frequently trivialized in queer ones, they must voice their femininity in a way that does not get shouted down or ignored. No easy task.

Rolling their own is what drag queens and trannies do and have always done. For what woman is complete without hairless skin and a cunt? We too learned how to improvise, and when we were mocked as caricatures of real women, we often became skilled caricaturists, owning the insult, engulfing it.

And this is what femme gay men do, too. Dangerously visible in straight space and often ridiculed in gay male space, femme gay men take shit from all sides. The straights dish it to them because they're visible. Second-wave feminists dish it to them because they're both feminine and male, and have thus sinned twice. Other gay men dish it to them for acting like, well, chicks.

What these groups share, aside from a fondness for eyeliner, is the illegitimacy of their femininity. That's how I understand femme: badass, rogue, illegitimate femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't supposed to be feminine, who aren't allowed to be, but are anyway.

Second-wave feminists used to slander both feminine dykes and transsexual women as "female impersonators." And this is true. What they missed is that female impersonation is what femme is. Femmes can only impersonate real women because we are, by rules beyond our control, not real women. But broke-ass homos, trannies, and drag queens won't be real women until patriarchy is smashed, heterosexism is on its knees, and class counts for nothing. Until then, we are other. Our cleavage is an uncanny valley. And the more passable and invisible we are—the more like real women we find ourselves seeming—the greater our supposed deception.

This sucks. We don't mean to be deceptive. But, like Jessica Rabbit, we're just drawn that way.

— Elizabeth Marston, "Rogue Femininity" from Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme (edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman, 2011)

[macbxth-pdf]

“I mourned for you worse than lovers. Because femmes are each other’s wealth. Riches. Gold and fake gems that glint purple, amber. Food in the pantry. Massage on tree brown limbs. The effortless bliss of each other. My rock, my oxygen, my dearest and most passionate love. You left, and I am hungry. And I will feed myself and feed others and be fed. But part of the hunger’s consummation is this. Because femme is about honour. And I honour this love.”

Sri Lankan Author/Poet, Educator, Disability Advocate & Cultural Worker, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Source: Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme edited by Ivan E Coyote and Zena Sharman.

[campgender]

I find myself telling these anecdotes—and there are more of them—over and over, as a way of asserting something: The time I got called “sir” when I was wearing a skirt; the two bank tellers, one in the small farming community of Woodstock, Ontario, the other at a big-city dyke-central intersection, who said to me, “Anne. That’s a funny name for a boy.”

What am I trying to assert?

That there’s something about me that is read as masculine—a gait, a manner, a mien—even when I am not trying, even when there are contrary indicators like long hair, skirts, or earrings. That this “read” matches my own sense of self. Until I was in my mid-thirties, my mother and I had this recurring argument: “Why are you trying to look like a boy?” she would ask. “I’m not,” I would say. “I am trying to look like myself.” That there are girls and women who get this—who love this—whose eyes sparkle at this, and who know, long before I do, just what it’s about.

That I have what feels like a natural, in-born masculinity that even my mother’s long, relentless siege could not vanquish or disguise. That I like and honour this masculinity. That it exists universally in women throughout time and space.

from “A Dad Called Mum” by Anne Fleming, published in Persistence: All Ways Butch & Femme, ed. Ivan E. Coyote & Zena Sharman (2011)

[diamond-dangeresque]

me, externally: i'm fine

me, internally: aveline is an intensely proud woman who wants to protect those she loves and feels herself die inside every time she believes to have failed them. she takes her role as guard captain so seriously because she sees the face of her dead husband in every guard who fails to come back from their route alive, sees the soldiers of ostagar who fight and fight and fight until they're mowed down by darkspawn, is persistently haunted by all the people she failed to protect in her life. she is a woman who is very butch without really trying but also doesn't LIKE that this is so prominent about her, she WANTS to feel femme here and there (especially given who she's named after) and Isabela's needling comments about her physical aggression and body frame and such are both highly disrespectful and misogynistic in their own right. like with many characters in DA2, Isabela and Aveline are both purposeful mirrors of the other, different halves of femininity on display and the ways in which they approach life and its stressors (e.g. tackling the problem head-on to solve it vs "if it sucks, hit da bricks"). but tumblr users hear "Shut up, whore." and make up their minds right then and there.

[malaisequotes]

“Faggy butch was like genderqueer—not quite this or that, a little of both, maybe. A friend once said to me, ‘I access my femininity through my masculinity.’”

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme by Miriam Zoila Perez