[imperfect_cupcake]

I have seen the term used a lot on tumblr with the under 25 kids cautiously coming out as "not feminine". I read their blogs and I love all the new fashion sites they are building, taking notes from DapperQ and others.

I'm for whatever people want to use. I know way too many people that do not believe they are butch or want to use the term. For them, it means something else. I used to argue with partners "but you *are* you are just misunderstanding what butch means..."
No, to me butch IS an umbrella term. to them it is *not* and they don't wish to use it. Just like many people in the UK find the term "butch" to actually mean "american masculinity" (not all, but a good chunk of people I knew in london) and thus came up with their own.

I cam home to find all these women who I would say had a more "rugged" style masculinity expression than the ones in uk, france and netherlands and yet they do not see themselves as butch... but they know they ain't no girl. I called them boydykes, they even fidgeted at that. Nothing they could gab onto makes them comfortable. But MoC they nod at, ok yeah, of course.

It does not hold up under deconstructive scrutiny but ... so the fuck what? there's a ton of people out there that actually really need open terms, like genderqueer and MoC. Who am I to pick their terms apart like femme has been ripped at over the time I have used it?

There is no way I'm going to do that to someone else's like what was done to me. Femme torn apart like some label terminology, politically deconstructed and chewed and put on the table to show me just how weak it was.

not gonna do that to a term that other people need or want. Centre of a line that I don't believe exists? so what. it works. I get the metaphor. I understand the gesture that is trying to be made and the hand signals.

I personally dn't think "Masculinity"is a great word either as I don't think many of my partners wanted to adopt the term. they wanted their own word for what they projected but there wasn't one. so in lew of that word they grudgingly accept that is just the category people see it under. A gesture for a poor language.

That's what MoC is, to me. it's an attempt to decribe something in brief terms so that people will "get it."

if someone called themself "FoC" - have at it. I don't own femininity. if they want to include me in a metagroup? meh. sure. no skin off my nose. it doesn't stop me from going to school or wearing what I do or loving who I love.

I dunno, call me a fucking waffle if you want. Doesn't change anything. A rose is still what it is no matter what you call it. And the same goes for me.

And I think it's great there is more space for people, especially the young ones, to come out into while they find their feet.

I'm going to a massive dragking show on saturday and it will be full of tomboys, androgyne-boys, bois, MoC, genderqueer and all kinds of people who in my brain are butch, but for them, are very happy being called something they don't feel has any rules around it. And it makes them more comfortable, then I'm happy.
I still see them as I always have when they are in bed with me, can't help it, I came out when I did so to me, butch is the umbrella term. But I keep that to myself and don't force anyone to adopt what their dictionary says doesn't fit.

their definition is waaayyy different than mine but I gave up arguing that mine was better and right. it's just mine is all.