Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyclopea
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).
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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.