2006
A Lifelong Lesson in Gender Dysphoria
I’ve never been one to really care about the assumptions people tend to make about me based on their visual assessment of who I am. Now, don’t get it twisted, if someone passes me on the street, I would like to think that they find me attractive and even that they might think about having sex with me, but since they don’t know me, It makes no difference to me who they assume I am or what they assume I care about.. I’ve approached life this way largely for two reasons: 1) assumptions are based on stereotypes and therefore something people make when they don’t know your truth, and 2) as a black woman, my experience has been that people are always going to assume or expect me to act or be one thing or another.
When I first came out – well more accurately, when I first discovered the gay community early in my 20s, all I knew was that I wanted to sleep with a woman – any woman. However, I was soon a bit daunted by all the rules (much like those of our hetero brothers and sisters) that determined who got to sleep with whom. Based on your choice of dress, the way you carried yourself or who you were with, you were assigned the roles of either “femme” or “stud” and expected to adhere to them without question. As such, your pseudo-gender assignment determined who you could or could not sleep with. Studs that liked other studs were frowned upon and ridiculed (“what can two ‘hard legs’ do for each other” or “what do two studs do in bed together? Watch TV”) and two feminine women together was regarded as a joke. As a young, recently, out lesbian attracted to tall, cutish girls with tom-boyish traits, I comfortably fit in as the femme my mama tried so painstakingly to raise. Ironically, the dress code, and don’t ask, don’t tell nature of my employer, and intolerant task master, Corporate America, in shackling me into the role of straight woman at work, assisted in helping me meet the requirements of my femme status at play.
Now, 9 years after moving to this smallish, lesbian heavy town and a much required lifestyle change, while the corporate “attitude” remains, gone is the corporate attire which has been replaced by jeans and T-shirts, in which I am most comfortable. I love my wrist cuffs, ripped jeans and ties and political T-shirts, and even though I still try to make sure I look and smell nice and define my lids and lashes with a swipe or two of maybelline, also gone is my “femme label’ and my subsequent pleasure at being able to attract those girl that most appeal to me. It seems that now, to my dismay, the “object of my attraction”(the tom bois), and my former “home team” (the femmes) see me as butch, simply based on how I carry myself - and as one of my best ‘girlfriends’, Dave, would say: “I’m mad about that“. Mad about what? Mad about the fact that on the inside, I am still the same person I was 9 years ago – a bottom who is completely turned on by strong, sensual and aggressive women. Ironic that description seems to stare back at me each morning as I begin my daily, cosmetic rituals. Mad that our community (myself included), which fights so hard to be accepted for who we are not who we sleep with, finds it so easy and necessary to add further limit to each other with labels and expectations we didn’t necessarily ask for or approve. Mad that even though I don’t necessarily take issue with being called butch, I don’t want the type of girl I’m attracted to to get the wrong idea. Mad that the “femme”, and mostly straight identified girls that are attracted to me, not only expect me to make the first move but automatically expect me to be some amazing top (don’t get it twisted - I can bring it when I have to, but I would rather not). Mad that even though I keep hearing about this wonderful phenom called the femme top, I have yet to meet her.
Is it just me or are other butch labled lesbians out there sick of just watching TV with their ‘buddies’. Hollah if you feel me.
I hear ya. I’m relatively new to all this I suppose but I’m already tired of this butch and femme business. I never really got it, and don’t really intend to spend the energy to find out. I’m not as active in the community as I’d like to be, but things like this scare the hell out of me before I even start. I have better things to do with my time than getting frustrated over it though. But then I end up cursed with forever falling for straight girls.
p.s. i’d probably qualify as butch but i can only tell because i get mistaken as a guy. but my friends always tell me, “stine, you’re SUCH a girl!” which i don’t disagree with. So i don’t know what that would make me