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HB mentioned American style butch femme. I wonder if it is cultural to a degree. There may be more emphasis on gender in general in the US than there is say in Europe. I’m not sure, never been. But it is possible. Certainly the people I’ve had as friends who were from European countries as opposed to the US or South and Central American countries seemed less gender concerned. There interests were more generic and less gender specific. But I don’t know if that was just my personal experience. But if it is true it might account for the more gender post traumatic stress symptoms found in American butches and femmes. Gender is so much more of a thing for everyone in America.
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Completely. It boggles and hurts my mind sometimes when I come here. It feels at times like a kind of gender obsession. When I have had the company of butch/femme visiting from the states to London I knew that they were going to get very weird looks for the constant gender talk coming out of their mouths. I would get looks of "are they on crack??" from others. They insult people by saying things like "so, where are the butches?" at a table that has many butches at it. I wince and smile and make a joke and try to move the conversation politely on. But since they don't dress/act in an american masculine manner, they don't "catch" it. If they go up north, it's more recognisable to them, because of the factory work and mills history. Also, I think if any of my partners had been referred to as "bro" by another dyke they probably would have stared with complete bafflement and slight disgust.
masculinity is
not a constant. it's expressed differently. but people seem to think where they are is the bog standard man. And yes, masculinity is based on male behaviour - it may not belong to them but they are the ones that set the bar that women and queers grade themselves against. Which is why many of my butch friends in the UK wanted their own word.
Pronoun use is mostly she. Except for the ones who are transgender. And I didn't really see too many people in relative comparison who considered themselves that way. I knew a very small smattering of people who used "hy".... and the rest wince at it and call it an "americanism." People don't do american masculinity (repair, hunt/fish, steak, etc) because that's a
pioneer type background. And they have a church of england or atheist back ground, not
puritan/calvanism. These things make a big deal in how people see masculinity.
I just left a b-f singles group on fb that is supposed to be global. yet when I asked privately, the members who aren't in the states, why they don't post, the answer was "there's no point." what they talk about will just be ignored or whoosh past people as irrelevant.
Canada winds up being somewhere between the two. I find canuck reserve to actually be more, in some ways, than english, but less in other ways. But we also have a pioneer background so in vancouver, every dyke and their 6 dogs wants someone to snowshoe-kyak with while bench pressing a killerwhale. It's not really my thing. I'd rather do the walks you describe, Miss Tick, that sounds fabulous. I like history.
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I do know that I have more in common with my straight male and female friends who like to go to museums or walk around Old Montreal, Harvard Square or Faneuil Hall than I do my butch friends who like to fix cars and walk around Home Depot. I also have butch and femme friends who find visiting museums enjoyable as well. The difference for me is that while I would have no use for straight male friends who only want to drink beer, fix cars, shoot cans and take in a grand prix or straight female friends who spend the day baking, shopping, doing their nails and talking about their men, I would be able to be friends with the butch/femme versions. They have something else for me even when we don’t share common interests. Without common interests straight people just don’t have anything for me. Not so with butches and femmes. They inherently have something in common with me. A shared life experience. Not a shared life. Not the same life, but a similar interaction has occurred between them and the world, at least enough so that they get where I have been because they have occupied similar space.
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Again, for me just depends on their background more than anything. I've been with femmes who do nothing but talk about butches, shopping, baking and how cute their shoes are and I frankly want to open my wrists.
I do want some butch and femme friends, of course. there are some political things - if they are wired that way - I like to discuss with them. But the ones that are gender talk (in a non analytical/deconstructive kind of way) I can't do. It drives me a little bit mental. I'm really not interested in talking about my gender and butches. I like most of my conversations to pass the bechdel test, in terms of males and butches.
Also, I can often talk about some of those politics with non-ID'd dykes. feminine lesbians who don't ID get the same stick I do about most things. Masculine dykes who don't ID still get policed in the bathroom. But they don't talk to me about gender qualifying.
ID, since going to a place where I was accepted, is not the issue it once was. Coming home was hard because that acceptance was yanked back to a degree and it really hurt, but I've also learned a different view that is far more relaxed. And when I talk to people in seattle, that gets hyped up even further. I have tried to date south of the border but the constant butch, butch butch, butches do this and femmes are that, that I get puts me in a bloody bad mood. And I just don't have the patience. I find it less so here, but even lesser still in the UK and Holland.
I was actually considered to be the extreme of my queer friends in the UK. I had the piss taken out of me for talking about it more than anyone else. So... !!!
Goes to show, hey? If I'm extreme, then...