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Thank you all for sharing yourselves here.
Every time I take a gender test I score androgynous. I certainly had a long time of rejecting my femaleness and I am very thankful for having had my children - not just for the amazing experience of parenting children into adults, but for growing me into a fuller human being and for coming into accepting and liking my femaleness. Being pregnant and breastfeeding is amazing. And yes, there were times when I struggled with society's perceptions, parameters, and projections. Yes, I worked seriously on the idea of "looking better" with make-up on my face....and getting to the place of "No, I don't want to do that" and what it means for me (please do not read any judgement of what others may do). And yes, at this point I love it when someone in a store calls me "sir" - then realizes and apologizes - and I say "It's all right - REALLY" in hopes of readjusting the paradigm just a bit. :hammer: Sometimes being unique is difficult, but it gets easier - it's one of the good parts about getting older...much of this stuff gets to a more "settled" place...and these kinds of discussions and sharings are part of how I got here. Thank you. |
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this is ONLY MY thoughts/feelings
First off , thank you for this thread . It's very interesting and thank you for all of the butches/bois/FTM/he/hy/she for stepping out and sharing your feelings ... I just want to NOT offend anyone and before you read this , please comprehend that this is about ME ONLY . How I feel only about ME . :) ok I think that opening paragraph clears me :) wow , I don't talk about really who I am as a person really , I'm pretty closed down unless you know me very well in real time . This is a big deal that I'm sharing something personal . I have one brother , who I am very close to . It's just he and I as siblings . We are 3 years apart and a few months . He should have been a girl and I should have been a boy no doubt . With that said my brother is not gay , he is a heterosexual married male . We grew up in a very small area and there were about 20 boys all close in age and only one girl my age in our neighborhood. At 3 to 4 years of age is when I can remember things of toys , what I played with and how I was . I can remember being extremely upset that my mom put a dress on me and I told her boys don't wear these and I stripped naked . She said to me " you're not a boy , Blake " ( well she shouldn't have named me Blake right :) that's my real name by the way , I'm lucky :) ) anyways , when she said that , I flat out didn't believe her in the least . I only was around the boys , played with boys toys etc... I was too young at that point to know the anatomical differences . My mom said that she couldn't put any dresses on me because of the scene I made as a young child. All that changed later but that's a story that ill never go into here . Anyways , as I grew older into elementary years I looked like a little boy . I played football , strong as an ox , the little girls chased me and treated me like all the other boys and the other boys treated me as alike because appearance wise that's what I looked like . Well junior high hits and my facial structure changes and my body starts the big change . Except my face which still was the boy face really . My gosh I hated the body change . I knew at this point the anatomical difference between boys and girls were and I was not happy at all. I lucked out in the sence that I have a masculine body structure naturally with how my shoulders , arms , legs , thighs are. I never had prominent curves like the female body structures tend to have so that's good . Where I am from , being so small , we all grew up from K-12th grade . Nobody really viewed me as being a girl nor did I view myself as one even though I was aware that I was born a female . At 12 I was diagnosed with having a gender identity disorder . This was my mothers way of coping with a butch child , to make herself have the clarity that it was nothing she did wrong , and to make it known to me that I had a serious mental problem that needed corrected . At 27 , I paid a visit to the same doctor to diagnose him as uneducated , unsympathetic, and a quack :) . I took t shots for some time , had a top surgery alteration as well trying to correct what is flawed with me . I'm now 36 and feel I'm not flawed at all . I'm perfect . I'm me , I dress how I want which is how your typical male dresses , I smell how I do , which is how your typical guy smells , my hair is how it is which is well short , brown with some silver coming in here and there , I soft pack sometimes when I feel like it , I never bind my chest , bc I don't care for one and for a second there isn't much there to bind . Was a born in the wrong body ? YEP NO DOUBT ... Am I upset about it ? NOPE , GOD WANTED ME LIKE THIS FOR HIS REASONS. Do I like my body ? LOVE IT ALL 5 FT 1 IN OF IT :) . Do others like my body ? I DO NOT CARE. Have I been called a freak from people on the streets ? YEP OFTEN IN APPALACHIA ,. does that offend me ? I LOVE FREAKS :) NO !!!!! its taken me a ling time to be in this mindset but this is something personal about me. Thanks for reading .....RNguy ( Blake )
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Regarding body image and self-care:
I'd just like to take a moment to pour a cyber-libation for my butch sisters ive known who have died. I knew many butches who wouldnt/couldn't go to the ob/gyn, and died of preventable and treatable cervical and breast cancers. Also, I've known many butch women who struggled with addictions. When I think of my years of being a young butch, i remember the older butches at the bars, and in the softball leagues always hed a beer and a cigarette. I imagine the butches I knew who have died would be happy that so many young people go to the doctor. One of the reasons I support Planned Parenthood is because for many of us butches, it was the only health care clinic where we felt comfortable. I'm glad this thread is pointing out how proud butches are of their bodies now. Because for a very long time our butch bodies were a battlefield, and many good friends lost the battle. |
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Regarding Body Images....health care
Thanks for that post dykeumentary (hope I spelled your nic right...:)....)
I have always have my yearly screenings done..labs/pelvic with pap/mammos. As far as that , my being butch has nothing to do with the choice of getting or not..it is MY choice to remain as healthy as I possibly can...as a womyn! :). I was in health care field for 21 years..and I KNOW to get those screenings done! Last year, I had female issues that led me to a uterine biopsy, that netted me being sent to a Gynecological Oncologist at a nearby major teaching hospital. Before I saw trhat doc, she ordered a colonoscopy! I hadn' t had one of those in "years" but went on and had it. Luckily for me, a mass was found, biopsied, and WAS malignant. So I had TWO major abdominal surgeries Dec. 9th back to back..with an abd hystero done then a colon resection..I lost 16 inches of colon...BUT am alive and "unofficially" cancer free. I am having scans and labs done May 8th to check for anything new...the surgeons said I had dodged a major bullet, having that colon malignancy found as early as it was...and I didn't have to have nay chemo or radiation. So, my point? I urge everyone of us to get those yearly screenings done. Mine literally saved my life... I, too, have lost friends to the dreaded C...which may have been prevented with screenings done regularly! So I am with you on that one....thanks for the reminder!!! |
Who knew?
What an interesting thread, in content of course, but also in that so many femmes are responding to it! :)
It triggered a memory of a butch I knew a long time ago. She was a young, thin person, and talked about feeling pressure to put on weight! Big butch women teased her for not being "butch" enough, because she was small. I realized then that oppression around body image was not limited to the cultural pressure on feminine women, to be thin! |
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That's because femmes go through this stuff too. We do. :) |
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I am opening up two resale clothing shops..one for plus sized females, and one for all sized males.
I fully expect males to be shopping in the female store, and females to be shopping in the male store for themselves. I want my stores to be a place where people feel valued for who they are, not what number they wear, or what gender they need to costume up as. I have gone thru such an incredible evolution over the past few years. I am as femme as they come yet I certainly dress quite different. At times, I could almost pass as butch, if wardrobe were the only thing that would define as such. My sub is a bio male who is 6'5" and MASSIVE. And femme. I buy him lingerie as well as carharts. He is all muscle but hates the outdoors. I wear nailpolish and heels and live to be dirty, either gardening or at the barns. He wears red lipstick. I wear pink. He has long hair. I have short. We both are round bellied. I am enchanted by him. He desires me. We both feel good about ourselves (now)...and that is where worth comes in. It costs us so much when we value ourselves thru others' eyes, but its priceless when we treasure who we are ourselves. The enormity of this treasure is one of the many reasons we are so drawn to one another. Regardless of how we fit in the world, we fit with each other. Yet, first and foremost, we had to journey on our own, to where we first felt we fit as Our Selves. in the past we both have felt like the world disowned us by gender because we didnt fit the norm. We both felt at different times in our lives, we were freaks and felt shame over it. And yet we also fit the "norm" as well. We could "pass" as "acceptable". Yet what we realy wanted was to be defined as acceptable by not "passing" but simply "being"... People can live in dual realities that split open like atoms depending on who is viewing us, and that includes ourselves. |
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Great post - all of it. I go through this as well. One time, I stopped the clerk and asked him to look at me. He immediately apologized profusely, embarrassing me even more, but I persisted and refused to shrink away that day. He told me he didnt see me, that he wasnt paying attention, that he saw the hat and assumed. I told him that was the point - that, instead of just glancing up and assuming, stop for a moment and look at the human being in front of him. I have heard the excuse that it's my short hair, or it's my hat, or it's my clothes, or it's my stance - but in reality, people are just in too much of a hurry to stop and really *see* the people around them. Because when you actually look at me, you can see the masculinity, sure; but you can also see the woman in which that masculinity resides. |
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But please, please, please don't neglect your bodies...i'm grateful that Clay did not. |
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i can only speak for myself. i am a girl, a woman, a femme ... thats who i am. i didn't go out and find a label then try to conform to it. i am me and if there is a label out there fine i don't care, but i can't live up to someone expectations of what the label means. i also like to play in the mud, catch, clean and cook my own fish, i want to drive my own boat thank you. i can change the oil in my truck and am very mechanically inclined. i fix things. i am just as comfy in overalls (sometimes i even wear a shirt with them) and workboots as i am in a sundress and sandals. i don't cater to long nails but my toes are well taken care of. i guess at tomboy at times, i've always been that. WHen i left my job as a banking officer i ditched all of my dress up clothes and enjoyed a life of not having to deal with all of it. i love jeans, a nice shirt and boots, i cuss, i cut my hair off if it gets in the way. i have been with butches who felt my being less than high femme was not acceptable. i will never forget the look on my exes face when she walked in and i had my hand in a fish's gut. She was horrified and said femmes just don't do those sorts of things. i was told to get fingernails and wear more *feminine* clothes. One day a butch was at my house visiting when it began to pour down raining. My boat was filling up with water... she went out to bail it... i grabbed my pump and hooked my battery up to it like i always did. Afterwards she told me i took away her butch card by doing that. i suppose i was to let my boat sink so her so called pride could stay in tact? She said i kill her pride. There was a butch on the forums somewhere that said she asks if a femme has long nails before they even start talking. i thought that was so sad. The day i have to be someone else to validate my partner is a sad day indeed. |
dee, thank you so much for this... all of it... I am many things... most of all NOT afraid to get dirty... so my friend you are not alone...
For me I have been told that because my hair was short/shorter that I wasn't femme enough... Yet, when I came out I was told because I wore makeup, heels, skirts, and had long nails I wasn't a lesbian. I wear heels, skirts, my nails are long, and my toes are polished... mind you there is so much more to me than those things I have listed. I can work most power tools and I am not afraid to pick up a hammer... I hate labels... I don't want to feel like a can of soup that can be removed from the shelf, looked over and put back because I am not femme enough... I hope I have made some kind of sense as I have yet to have a full cup of coffee... Lets all take a moment to truly see the person in front of us, no matter how they id... Quote:
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While I really enjoyed both Cajun Dee's and justkim's posts, and I understand that Dykumentary invited posts on femme experiences with body image, I think that these posts would be more appropriate in a different thread.
This is the Butch Zone. The OP started a really important conversation about butch body image. It seems that we femmes are far more experienced at discussing body image issues. It would be easy for us to overwhelm this thread, which is about a subject butches aren't often accustomed to addressing. |
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For me, it is quite present the depth to which people are hurt by being put out of community and/or told they are not a "proper ______" - fill in the blank. I believe our lives are for us to figure out who we are and that we do that in relationship with other beings. In this society (of course this is a generalization), there is more rejection, judgement, and damage than in some other societies where people are kinder and view young people as spiritual beings to be nurtured into healthy adulthood. In my life, I try to be present and really see people and value who they are because we are all in different places in the process of learning how to be better, more full and conscious beings and I believe we should be helping, not hurting, each other as best we can. I believe identity formation, be it butch or femme or anything else, is central to who we are as human beings. ...even if we end up letting go of said identity later on...it's all part of the process of becoming a more full human being capable of loving ourselves and others. When I had someone tell me at the age of 14 when I was in a wedding in a lovely dress - that I looked so grown up - I needed to figure out why that compliment bothered me. I decided that what bothered me was that I was the same person that Saturday as I was the Sunday before when they saw me and that seeing me in a dress had nothing to do with who I really was at the time. They were not really seeing or knowing me. And without these types of incidents and without spending the time thinking about them I would not come to know who I am and what I think about things...and for that I am thankful. |
This is a thread about butch body image in the butch zone. There are plenty of threads in the femme zone about femme body issues. I promise if a couple of three butches posted about our body image in a femme thread (even if asked by a femme) all holy hell would break loose.
Please take your femme stuff to the femme threads. Thank you |
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Clicks are everywhere including here. If you don't fit the click you don't fit. There are some who judge everyone by looks and looks only. I find it a shame that anyone feels bad about who they are, how they id and how they think they have to look to fit in. All of us no matter our ID come in all shapes and sizes and that is what makes us all so damn cool! |
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...IMHO |
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I actually addressed that in my post only it was the reverse.....and I will repeat it: Even if asked by a femme.............ALL HELL would break loose if a butch posted about body image in a femme thread. Could we please continue talking about butch body issues and not get side-tracked. Thank you. --------------------------- I have always believed my comfort with my body came as a result of the strong women in my life and the fact masculine women (straight and lesbian) were not uncommon in the farm and ranch communities I was raised in. I had masculine women and feminine women to serve as role models for the different ways a woman can walk in this world. It certainly was a blessing. My maternal grandmother was the first to address my masculinity and sexual orientation when I was about 11-12yrs old. Grandmother was a dancing fool and spent many a saturday night at the shit kicker bar dancing with cowboys. She told me a story about this woman who went dancing with her crowd of friends. It seems this woman wore a suit and tie and always only danced (and lead) with other women. She said it was just fine and that this woman was a great dancer. That is just one story.....out of many others. My mother is the one who taught me to open doors, hold coats, and do all that good manners, how to treat a lady stuff. She taught me by example and how she insisted my Dad treat her. I remember her sitting in the car one day waiting for my Dad to come back outside and open her car door. He forgot to do that.....I tried to open her door and she barked at me and said NO that is your father's job. I went in the house and told Daddy he best go open her car door.....He kinda gasped and ran out the door and opened her car door. My mother was a role model. |
yeah, so life is friggin complicated...
Things happen in our lives and we think, "I'll never do THAT again" or "I sure want to do that better." We learn from others - good and bad.
I seek to heal, to leave the world a better place, to bridge communities, to apologize when I screw up, to love wherever I can, to welcome into community - I always have an empty chair in the circle to be welcoming of all comers... I am responsible for the way I behave and I do not choose to tell people to leave because I know I would be told to leave "their" place. How we learn from each other's identity place is relevant. Once upon a time, I was in a bar playing a video game with an older man. I was winning. He didn't take it very well. I lost on purpose, then I felt shitty about it and swore to my self that I would never have my femaleness defer to a maleness like that again. This is some of how I have learned to be me. And no, I don't think someone should let their boat flood and sink to protect some dipshit's butch "pride," just like I'm not not ever gonna lose on purpose for somebody else's fragile ego again. Do I want to talk about zebras in a car thread - no. But identity formation, figuring out who we are and how we move in the world is complicated with a lot of overlapping areas...and some people might even do some "switching" in the navigating of who and how they want to be when. And I'm up for the discussion of that and all it entails. |
Has anyone read any of the works by Esther Newton. I find her to be wonderfully honest and intellectually stimulating. She has written articles about being butch and the body image issues. She is not afraid to put controversial things in writing so you have to have a very open mind into her definitions.
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/women/faculty/facbio.asp?ID=43 |
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Thanks for the thread..........
I will read on I have felt and tried to deal with all of this and it feels good to talk about it...........
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Did I miss it or has anyone
talked about the bathroom issues ?
Good God I walk into any public bathroom and everyone stops and stares then they go look to see what the sign says thinking they walked into the wrong room and then I get Syr your in the wrong bathroom not sure what to do with this or how to feel or just feel nothing at all............... OMG it is sometimes funny to see the group of women stuck in their footsteps bogged ....... can I just say I'm sexy and I know it LMAO the m&m ad |
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The clean stall is extinct .......at least in my opinion LMAO I'm ocd
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What is really
weird is using the restroom at work.................
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I mostly use the guys rest room. They give a shit less.. Ha ha! <not what I meant>
Less looks. Just shows guys don't really care whats all around them. Get in, do the damn business, get out. Should be that simple. Maybe its a good thing women are aware of their surroundings? ..with freaks in this world such as peeping toms..when I do choose womens restroom I do tend to get looks, people looking to make sure its womens room, someone saying excuse me you're in the wrong room, blah, blah, blah.. Be nice to have Trans restrooms I guess. I adore the ones with no female/male sign. |
Would you believe...
...that over the years I have spoken with plenty of people who dramatically changed their personal presentation to the world (or in their home) at some time or another....and some have changed how they present many times.
For me, I so always felt like a boy when I was young, knew I wasn't a boy, wanted to be a boy, and did the best I could in my circumstance....I can hardly imagine what would have been different if I had gotten those tighty-whiteys and black high-tops ;-) And as life went on and I made sense of things or rejected them I grew into the new a different me. And I still am... ...this granbaby thing has kinda fucked with how male I feel. "Granpa" does not feel right, "granma" does...I am still working on making peace with that. BUTCH? FEMME? I am definitely butch. I am definitely not femme. The rest of me is up for discussion...I like hearing ideas that are different and often better than mine - for me, it is not a crime to change my mind about something. Some folks have told me they would like to post here and that they don't want to get jumped on. I sure wish people would feel like they can express their thoughts constructively here without fear of criticism. |
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My reaction to anyone who questions my presence in any restroom is to look them in the eye and say "excuse me?" My not-so-hidden meaning is to infer "Really? You have all the time in the world to worry about who is in the restroom?" After many years of ME getting embarrassed when I was younger, I decided that if someone indeed DID walk into the wrong restroom, who gives a f**k? Restrooms are there to get your business done and get out, not to socialize. Clearly also, it's UNLIKELY that someone would venture into the "wrong" restroom, so people are getting caught up in something that isn't probable.
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Yeah, I dont give a fuck about people staring at me in the bathrooms anymore either. Hell, I have had women physically try to keep me out of the bathroom, thinking I was a man (I was about to offer to show her my tits when she realized her mistake and let me pass). Usually, I just ignore everyone, do my thing, and get out; but if they want to stare at me, I'll stare right back - after a pretty obvious look down at my rather large breasts for effect.
I am not male ID'd or trans &/or trying to pass, so I wouldnt use the men's bathroom unless it was the only one available &/or it was some sort of a bathroom emergency .... I dont want to spend time in their stinky, nasty bathrooms unless I absolutely have to! :winky: Oh, and speaking of family bathrooms, the VA here has women, men, and unisex bathrooms all over the place - I think in large places and newly built places it might start becoming the "norm." |
Us femmes have it soo easy , ((((((( hugs all of u butchs ))))))) :)
your bodys r measured by a tailor (tailorette ) and ur mind is measured by ur soul : the soul is endless.. |
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