Thank you for your post Bit, and I appreciate your experiences shared and your points about how some male identified butches need to change pronoun usage in different contexts to negotiate comfortably and safely in a hostile world.
Just a quick note about something you said which I've enlarged in your quote above. You mentioned " ..for some Butches, what is invalidated and devalued out in the world is not their "womanness" but their masculinity"...
and I wanted to mention that for me as a woman, my butchness is part and parcel of my womanness.

It is not separate from that of which it is part, nor is it in opposition to itself. (I realize that you may have been speaking here not of butch women but of transgender or two-spirit butches ? but thought I'd use the opportunity to express something about my experience as a woman.)

What IS in opposition to my butch womanness is a social construct that denies the naturalness and authenticity of my very existence as a woman. And yet here I am. Here we all are. Perfectly natural women. I look forward to the day when all women are accepted as they are and that butch women are not neutered by the language used to describe us.

(Bit I know I veered wildly from your post and hope you don't mind me using it as a jumping off point to share my reflections).
:)

Here's what I don't get.... we have a pronoun spot now. People wanted it. People got it. But, most butches do not use it. Why?

I think there could be lots of reasons:

1) They are unsure which pronoun matches them the best.

2) They feel that "she" should be the default and so it is insulting to even have the pronoun space there (Toughy's always makes me smile!)

3) People worry that others will judge them/make assumptions about them, based on their pronoun choice.

4) Other reasons

The reality is that some butches prefer he, some she, some hy, some shi, and some zie. I don't think that we have any other choice than to work within that reality.

I say, write it in the space, or take what you get. It is not fair to get upset if someone calls you by the wrong pronoun when we all have a very easy and visible way to let everyone know what they prefer. I feel that it is almost unfair to expect others to have to work within a guessing game. If it is important to you, write it in.

Be proud of your pronoun!

Disclaimer: I went against my usual rule of never posting prior to reading a whole thread first, so I hope this still fits in with the current "groove" of the thread! I haven't read past the above quoted post. This has been in my head for a long time, and seeing Arwen's post triggered these thoughts.

Not at all; thank you for mentioning that. Sometimes it's hard to know whether someone is building on previous thoughts or disagreeing, so I always appreciate when someone tells me which it is!

You said: "and I wanted to mention that for me as a woman, my butchness is part and parcel of my womanness.

"It is not separate from that of which it is part, nor is it in opposition to itself."

Gryph has never mentioned anything like this to me, so I don't know if he would share this viewpoint with you or not; he very well might. And yes, he does identify as a Two Spirit, although I have known others who said they were "both female and male" who simply identified as Butches.

This sounds fine, but that's not the way it works. Often the DEFAULT is male pronouns. Some people's default is "she," but on the previous site anyway, that was much less common. So that's the situation. It's not sometimes -- randomly someone gets called by the wrong pronoun.

I had to read this twice and then walk away and think about it before I had even a glimmer what you're talking about.

Are you saying there are happily female-ID'd Butches who go by male pronouns only online (or whose partners refer to them by male pronouns only online)--and that these Butches are not in any way male identified?

I've not come across anything like this, so I'm mystified.

Did I totally miss your meaning?

I think we as a community need to remember that for some Butches, what is invalidated and devalued out in the world is not their "womanness" but their masculinity

For me, its the opposite... and especially so in the B-F community and on B-F sites. And I don't want either to be invalidated. Yes, this is true for some butches, not all. And the thread is dealing with female/woman aspects based on the short man with boobs statement.

We all just don't fit neatly into a box or have the same life's experiences. Which is rather kewl. And when I say all, I mean every butch identification that a member might have on this site.

I'm not meaning to be snide, but, it seems that every time butch gets discussed, it ends up male in some form even when the OP posed a conversation about the female/woman aspects of butch!

Hummmm, the point, right?

No, I don't believe June is happy about it.

I think what June is saying is that it is grody bullshit that we have created an environment where Female-ID'd Butches are perceived as "less Butch" than Male-ID'd Butches, and that this grody bullshit environment causes some Butches to succumb to the male pronoun even though they aren't necessarily feeling it, in order to avoid bullshit/drama/ridicule/etc.

EDIT - duh. you weren't saying that June was happy about it.

yes, I do believe you heard/read June correctly. yes, I am QUITE positive that happens.

The parts of Cyclopea's post in bold are the crux of the matter for many butch women. We are butch and women- all at the same time- the two go hand in hand. Butch does not modify woman, woman does not make us butch-lite. We are both. When we are compared to men it does feel like we are being neutered.

There is the problem of valuing male over female- the male defaults. There is also the huge gap in understanding or conceiving what woman is and can be. Butch woman is one of the myriad possibilities that broadens and stretches and trangresses what woman can be. I personally believe Femme does as well.

Butch Woman- We live it. It's not something we "identify with." She is not just a pronoun choice.

AtLast, I've seen you referred to as He a number of times on this site and it has completely baffled me every time. You are very clear that you are a She.

grody bullshit is a perfect term--i like this whole post. and i like that we're talking about it. :)

yes! and i was also making the same reference, though not as concisely, here:

once more with feeling
 

[QUOTE=BullDog;105751]The parts of Cyclopea's post in bold are the crux of the matter for many butch women. We are butch and women- all at the same time- the two go hand in hand. Butch does not modify woman, woman does not make us butch-lite. We are both. When we are compared to men it does feel like we are being neutered.

There is the problem of valuing male over female- the male defaults. There is also the huge gap in understanding or conceiving what woman is and can be. Butch woman is one of the myriad possibilities that broadens and stretches and trangresses what woman can be. I personally believe Femme does as well.

Butch Woman- We live it. It's not something we "identify with." She is not just a pronoun choice.[/QUOTE]

No, it is not about pronouns at all and runs far deeper than an identifier. It transcends far more than I ever knew it could. This says it all, Bully. Thanks for helping me find yet another voice to sing with.

You have been in the Bay Area too long. ;)

Even here, i run into butches who ID as butch and know what femme means, but otherwise are pretty oblivious to all the other gender politics we are so savvy to. For a while i was dating a lot. And i ran into a number of butches who were completely befuddled when i mentioned all this.

Back home, it's rare for a butch to male-identify. That's something associated with transitioning. i know people from back home who do, but most are people i met through the dash site. i really rarely ran into a butch who male-identified. Most people are pretty oblivious to all this.

i don't have any statistics tho. i think your sense of being in the minority may have more to do with the online community and the Bay Area butch-femme crowd. That's just my sense.

Even in the Bay Area, I am in an online group of butch women that has hundreds of members. Many of them are from the Bay Area. Most of them are not associated with either the Dash or this site that I am aware of.

Even at the Dash site- with the male defaults and all the anti-lesbian sentiment, there were 2 long term polls with hundreds of votes cast over many years. One was one butch identity- over 60% who voted said they were female. One poll was on lesbians (not just butch)- over 60% said they identified as lesbians. In fact most of the times that I looked at the polls over the years it was roughly 2/3 in each poll. And this in what was at times a very hostile environment for both groups (in some cases overlapping).

I don't believe male identified butches are in the majority in real life or online, but there is often the perception that they are. I don't say this to make male identified butches feel bad or anything. I'm a stone butch. I don't believe very many butches are. So in that instance I am in the clear minority. It's just that the perception and reality are very different when it comes to female/male or she/he and to me it's very jarring.

I appreciate you both responding to my post. I guess I must live under a rock to be surprised by this happening to AtLast? I truly am surprised that with this system in place, and knowing the sensitivities of many male and female idetified butches to pronouns, that people wouldn't take a simple minute to glance at the avatar. People make mistakes and newbies may not think things through, or people post quickly without thinking based on their internal default (that is created by the "world" that they grew up in, I think), but since we have a place for pronouns here?Come on..take a minute to look! I mean, again, I can see mistakes, but.....

Anyway, I really think that if more butches used the spot maybe people would begin to naturally look before posting.

Does anyone else see this as a potential solution to our pronoun default problem...or that it could at least decrease the problem? We can talk about being upset about the default, but here is something people can start doing to try to change the default to there no longer being a default

Last thing is that yes, it does make sense to me, AtLast, that butches might be more conscious of using the preferred pronouns of other butches because for many of us, pronouns are important. Butches have felt the sting of being called "she" or "he". So, it makes sense.

Being TG i like to be addressed as "he", but if someone makes a mistake, it really doesnt bother me...........i know what i am, so its not really important to me at all