Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyson
Aishah, I am glad to see you posting a bit more again. What I am going to say may offend you, I hope not. Many people here from this site were at the first BV conference here in the SF Bay Area. Some of the people that are founders of BV and/or Board Members are members from this site and/or the old DASH site. Brown Bois is not BV but Brown Bois and BV do have members/participants active in both groups. Here on this site when BV first started to use this term MOC there was much discussion on this site. Maybe someone who has the technical savy will provide the link for you.
I am an older POC Butch and I am not fond of the MOC for my own identity. I came out and of age in the early 70s primarily in a B-F POC community in Los Angeles. There were many of us that used the term Butch for our self identity. It was not a popular or venerated label/identity back then with white lesbians. Mind you, this is my experience. We do have female identified butches here that have another experience.
I have had brief communication with Cole about MOC and she knows how I feel about the term MOC. Cole is younger then me and said this is how it was for her growing up in Oakland. POC not being comfortable with the term Butch.
What I don't understand is I see many people claiming the right to ID as they desire but yet when they see someone that may not see the identity of Butch as they do for themselves, all of a sudden it is not okay to "self identity." ( I am not inferring this is your bias.)
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thanks for your input, greyson...it definitely helped me understand more about the history. i am not that familiar with the history of butch voices but am with bbp.
one thing that has occurred to me is that i wonder if anyone has ever brought up the fact that the "butch" in "butch voices" could be excluding a lot of people who don't feel that the term butch includes them because they've been pushed out of butch spaces for being poc?
which leads me back to the issue of - everyone's going to find something to hate about every term. (the generational issues with masculine-of-center make me think a lot of the generational issues with the terms queer and dyke.)
i am wondering - you brought up people being biased about who gets to self-identify and when. i have not personally ever seen anyone who uses the term "masculine-of-center" pushing it on others or disagreeing with others' self-identities. i do know that bbp's way of understanding/constructing masculinity is probably not something everyone agrees with. but i have never seen them say that people cannot do it in other ways...?