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Butch-Part 1

I know a great many of my readers think me loud, obnoxious, an asshole and opinionated on just about everything, and they would be right. But there is a subject that I have only minimally written and modestly spoke: the Butch!

What is butch? What is a Butch? What is female masculinity? What is a masculine female body? What is visible Butch invisibility? Am I Butch because I say so? Am I Butch because I date Femme? Can I be a Butch because I dont? Is Butch the clothes I wear? I will attempt to discuss/answer these questions and more from my POV as a female masculine (Butch). I will also try to answer why I have shied away from this subject in the past and why I am discussing it now.

The Butch/Femme community is a relatively small sub community located just outside the larger lesbian community. I say outside because to say within would be a lie. The Butch/Femme community continues to remain a thorn in the side of the lesbian community and its desire for acceptance from a hetero society that only values the lesbian as a patriarchal masturbatory image for the male gaze.

The lesbian community first shunned, then divided from the Butch/Femme community 30 plus years ago when Femmes and Butches began showing an active interest and participation in lesbian feminist politics. The dominant bourgeoisie lesbian voices of the day were desperately trying to get themselves heard within hetero feminist circles, and quickly began to distance themselves from proletariat Butch/Femme women out of a perceived classist shame and an ignorant idea of hetero mimicry, whereby little has changed.

You might be asking yourselves what really does any of this have to do with the Butch as an individual? It is in these early days of feminism, lesbian feminism and lesbian separatism ultimately that caused a deep shift and ripple within Butch identity that is still sadly to great negative consequences being played out today in Butch/Femme communities everywhere!

When lesbian feminism began concentrating on its own feminist issues as lesbian women and less on the feminist hetero issues of straight women, feminist lesbians took a few steps in a different new direction from feminism as a whole. This is around the time where the whole andro idea/look first made its public appearance. Butch women and Femme women still very much wanted to be a part of lesbian feminism and lesbian change. This was all fine and good providing Butch women and Femme women changed their behavior/appearance to suit this new found lesbian utopian gender limboness.

While this uniform andro look may not have been to the liking of Femme women many could and did pull it off in order to be a part of the lesbian feminist movement. This andro feat however was not possible for many a Butch women interested in the lesbian feminist movement. They could not alter their physically masculine bodies and masculine foibles enough to “pass” as andro in feminist lesbian spaces. Butch women were then named as feminist traitors because their masculine natures were not trusted by lesbians and deemed to be part of the patriarchal problem rather then feminist lesbian help towards a feminist solution. Butch women were then shamed by lesbians into leaving lesbian feminist meetings/spaces regardless of their potential contributions to the lesbian feminist cause.

It is this Butch shame created within lesbian spaces and lesbian contexts that Butch women began to feel alienated from lesbian women and ultimately from their own lesbian bodies. If lesbian women refused to see Butches as the lesbian women they were, what was the binary society suppose to make of them and what were Butch women suppose to make of themselves??? Butch women were made to feel by lesbians and by hetero society alike that masculinity automatically defaulted them to a “male” position. It was and remains ignorantly believed (even among lesbians) that men have cornered the market on masculinity and female masculinity is nothing more than an aberration to be corrected either minimally with breast mutilation or maximally with the addition of a life time of drugs.

The female shame Butch women felt first from patriarchal society, then the lesbian community in the last few decades (especially the last 10 years with internet accessibility) has made its way into every Butch/Femme community RT and virtual. Butch women everywhere are internalizing patriarchal misogyny to the point of erasing the “female” from their female masculinity. Whether through the use of male pronouns, the unhealthy act of binding their breast or worse breast removal as well as the added pressures from disordered hetero women and their invasion of the Femme ID in Butch/Femme spaces or the ignorance and invisibility of REAL Butch women!

Butch-Part 2

But how can Butch women exemplify when even within Butch/Femme spaces many remain ignorant of the tried and true blue female masculine? When we have andro dykes, and softball dykes and dykey dykes now IDing as Butch because they believe it to be a default ID since they do not fit the patriarchal prescribed male gazed IDEA of woman!

So what then exactly is a female masculine (Butch)??? She is a natural occurrence, first and foremost. She came into the world a tiny masculine creature, as masculinity can ONLY be created within our mother’s gifted wombs. As man has desperately tried to distance himself from nature’s superiority, so man has generated artifice where he has found himself lacking, this includes masculinity-male or female.

Since it is nature who decided the female masculine, we should remember that Descartes much touted Cogito ergo sum need NOT apply here! I could call/ID myself the second coming of Christ and have copious amounts of whores drying my wet feet with their hair, but I still aint no Jesus! Yet this is exactly what we have filling up our Butch/Femme communities everywhere!

In the same way and for the very same reason the lesbian community has found itself steeped in the occupancy of bisexual women, straight women and disorder males, so to the Butch/Femme community has been with the straw Jesus and Marys. Play nice girls, be good girls, accept, tolerate, consent, share, even it is to our own sweet demise.

To be honest I dont blame these straw butches, I blame misogyny and a skewed patriarchal male gaze of women which together equals Butch invisibility. The female masculine is very much a visible invisible. And by that I mean when one generally thinks of dyke/lesbian they most often think of the “mannish” dyke/lesbian. There exist a visual idea in society’s(the lesbian community as well) minds eye of who she is and what she’s after. Yet in reality, the female masculine, because of her visible masculinity and society’s ignorant belief that men have cornered the market on masculinity, the female masculine easily “passes” as male rather than the sex she is, rendering her invisible to society and often times even to her lesbian peers.

This Butch “passing” is partly due to masculine attire combined with society’s casual eye, but more specifically it is due to the female masculine body. Yes the female body can be (and sometimes is) masculine. While the female masculine’s masculinity often times is described in terms of her “masculine energy”, and thats not to say there isnt a decided difference between masculine and feminine energies, there exist also a distinct and distinguishable female masculine physical presence, build and gait.

The Butches ability to easily “pass” has much more to do with her masculine physical presence than it has to do with what she is wearing. Even as little girls young Butches stand out in feminine attire. As adults it is literally impossible for the female masculine to don feminine attire in any way, shape or form and not look absolutely ridiculous and out of place doing so. This is because her masculinity is a physical property of her masculine nature which cannot be changed or disguised in efforts to appear as anything other than masculine.

Does female masculinity dictate the female masculine’s sexual attraction? No and yes. Female masculinity in and of itself does not prescribe sexual attraction. But the female masculine, Butch with a capitol B, of which this is truely written about, does. The female masculine Butch’s romantic and sexual attractions are primordialy and powerfully tied to Butch/Femme pairings. At first glance it may seem to some the Butch/Femme pairing to be nothing more than hetero mimicry because of a visual masculine and feminine similarity. But NEVER forget both parties here are WOMEN and there isnt anything within this very special, very delicate lesbian Butch/Femme union that resembles MALE/female bonds.

In closing it isnt until the female masculine has a modicum of visibility in which to solidify her soma reflecting her Butch image to all, the Butch ID will continue to be appropriated by the unknowing.

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