Here is what I have learned:

Some people see Butch as their gender in the same way that some people see Femme as their gender.

I can vouch for that.

My read? It's complicated.

Let's not assume what people are talking about. Let's inquire. "when you say X do you mean Y?" goes a long way toward more understanding on both sides of a discussion. Unless someone is being clearly dismissive and down right ignorant when using labels I choose to believe they mean well and they have a different take on the issue than I do.

Me? I am a woman. I don't separate woman from female. I know others do. Cool. Respected. I'm not attempting to disrespect when I say something about butch women. I'm just lucky to get pronouns right these days. Don't ask me to keep track of whether you separate gender for sex and what you refer to your naughty bits as. Please and thank you.

this thread is very useful to me, since I have in the past used the word him/her and butch/femme wrongly, I dont know everything about them.

No worries, Ruthie. :)

Amen AtLast! Woman is not a dirty word.

I think what is causing the recent consternation (and it isn't just one particular person judging by the responses and thanks) is butch women speaking up and people are uncomfortable seeing butch and woman in the same sentence without a bunch of qualifiers a few times and then needing to say, no, no, not me. Really? I don't know why people would worry about what they are not instead of what they are.

On a related note, every time someone mentions the word lesbian I just set my egg timer and just wait for people to come racing in to announce "I am not a lesbian." Lesbian isn't a dirty word either.

I use butch and woman together a lot, not just because that is how I id but because the way butch women are treated is a symptom of a larger problem- sexism and misogyny. And yes there are feminist transmen and male identified butches. They are not bothered by butch women speaking up. It doesn't threaten them in the slightest.

I think that if people stuck to speaking for themselves it would be fantastic.
What annoys me is that some people tend to want to speak for me too which I see as a tad misogynistic on their parts. Collectively no one should get to speak for ME as a BUTCH, as a WOMAN or as a FEMINIST. I have a say, I am here too. Your version is not the only version. Your way is not the ONLY way. So the collective "I have it all figured out and you don't sweetie" crowd should speak for themselves and let me speak for ME. No one holds the patent on what a butch woman is for the rest of the world or how all butch women feel or what every butch woman experiences.

I am tired of too of this sense that there is some sort of war going on between male and female IDs. Male IDs are NOT about sexism. It is NOT about superiority in butchiness. It IS about how people are born and how they FEEL inside.

interesting
 

I find this subject very interesting, of course. It hits really close to home for me.

I havent been around this online community, that has been busy being built into what it is, for many years. When I started coming to these sites I started figuring out what kind of labels I would use to describe myself, especially since that is one of the very first things it was demanded that I do. I gotta tell you that it took me a few days to register the first time; I didnt have any idea what i identified as, I just knew that some things I definitely had an aversion to saying about myself.

When reading here I admit to still being confused about gender and sex and what is PC. I am butch. I am a big manly butch woman. I take pride in being a woman. I dont want to be a man. I almost choke when i have to fill out a form and say that I am female. I don't feel female.

As I am reading, I realize that the way I think of butch is opposite to what I see is others definition of butch.
To me my gender is a woman. My sex is a butch. I am a butch woman, not a female woman.

OK.

I said all of the above to show that with best intentions and with everything that I feel is right I may inadvertently say the wrong thing to someone - May? Hell, I have, surely.

This to me is as simple as the live and let live philosophy that we should all adhere to. A newbie in the midst may say all kind of things that they have never considered and have never been exposed to. These folks should be educated about the fact that some of the members are touchy about things and feel strongly about pronouns. That said, we can all tell by now, thru the reading of many posts and statements, whether someone is trying to hurt or is just saying their truths. Some of us just dont have the time or the brain function to take notes or remember exactly who wants what.

I, personally, had to smile when i read the OPs statement. I tend to be overwhelmed by how much male/man is celebrated in a site that is named after something that is traditionally a lesbian group.

We each live. We each learn. We each fuck-up, often, thats why we learn.
I wish for the benefit of the doubt.
I dont want to say that we should all do any one thing. I dont want to suggest that we all shouldnt have to put the disclaimers in each post.
I do wish we would all just live and let live.

And. in closing, let me add the disclaimer that i know i didnt say this as eloquently and as directly as i envisioned in my head, that means i probably stepped on some toes in my attempt to tread lightly on an issue that is sensitive to many. I apologize in advance for anything hurtful or insensitive that i may have said while describing my take on this matter.
hmmm...
I think that covers it.

Sincerely,
rlin

Damn, if that isn't the truth. Not excusing anything, but it's so much better than it used to be when people made fun of lesbians. There were THREADS on the dash site devoted to it when i first joined, and it was not an infrequent exchange on chat.

i used to report on the threads and complain to the chat monitor on chat. Nothing. Nothing for a long time. Until there was a mini-insurrection (i know that is overstating it) in the threads, thanks to Heart and a few others. People finally started realizing there were quite a few lesbians on the site who really did not enjoy being demeaned.

It SO felt like a reluctant administration finally having to deal with something they didn't want to. It's so ironic that the owner of that site is now in business with lesbian enterprises like Olivia. It's just ironic to me.

Well the more people who speak up about butch women, women and feminism the better. Different perspectives are good.

Previous post deleted because I'm not going to tip-toe around that someone might assume you're speaking for/about them.

There's a need for butch women (women) to speak about their issues, and w/o having to qualify that not all females are women when saying "butch woman". If just saying "butch woman" with out all the "and/or but not them" is making peeps think all females are women seems the problem there is with the ass-u-me (r).

On the other site I'd bet I've probably said "female ID and/or butch women" more than anyone else... seriously. BUT I wasn't separating sex and gender actually but speaking in ID terms, in that I was saying I'm speaking generally about or to female ID butches and butch women ID's both.

Martina, agreed on the lesbian thing. The one single post I ever reported on the other site was blatant lesbian bashing... not a damn thing was done. It is better here but I look forward to the day when it's as un-PC to bash lesbians etc. as it is other groups in this community.

Better yet, when peeps just grasp mentally it's not ok to bash or discriminate against peeps based of their sexual orientation.

Yep more irony,

Metropolis

For most butch women our biological sex is female. To me it is what it is, it's biology. If there are females who don't feel they are women, isn't it up to them to speak up as to how they feel about themselves and their gender if they want us to understand instead of being afraid people are going to mistake them for a woman because there are butch women speaking up? That feels very anti-woman to me.

I don't really know what any particular individual means when they are say they are female bodied but not woman. It's up to them to let us know what they mean by that if they want to be understood.

I think I used to use the phrase female/woman identified in a similar way that Metro says. I just don't find it useful anymore because it leaves people out and also may assume more commonalities than are actually there.

Is there Lesbian-bashing going on somewhere?