For me, my issue with the lesbian as other is from the 70's when I came out--I was not welcome, I was told to tone it down (whatever "it" was) and told to embrace my feminine side because no matter how I tried, I wasn't going to be a man. I remain a male identified butch that has no problem with my butchness and never was trying to be a man.
As a butch leather Top, I still get shit--from the lesbians and from b/f folks, but hey, to each hys/her own. From the lesbians I get, "how are we ever going to get the right to vote when you leather folks show up in the media"...I dunno, how narrow do you want it to be so you can have that brass ring.
As a child of the 60's, weren't we going to tear down the patriarchy, including that need for a piece of paper to define ALL relationships like marriage? Weren't we going to tear down that binary world that said this is what men do and this is what women do? Didn't we radicalize the way we wore our clothes so that men could have long hair and women could wear pants if that's what they wanted to do?
And now oh so many years later, we're still trying to put each other down even within our own ranks for being too butch, not butch enough, the wrong kind of butch, too masculine, too feminine, a butch with long hair, a butch that can't fix a car----puleeese.
I love the fact that I walk through many worlds---I'm a native American, so I hang with my injun pals, I am a leather butch so I hang with leather folks, I am an overeducated liberal arts wonk, so I hang with those folks too, I live in S.F. so it's young vs. older, it's trendy andro vs. queer, it's ftm leaning to bi---it's all good. It's just sad that while we're dicing and slicing and figuring out what we want for ourselves some feel the need to put others down or criticize their way in the world.
When people actually sit down with me, they find that leather butch isn't what they think it is, they find that no, not all native Americans grow up in tepees (seriously, some people think we do), that butch doesn't always mean white collar or blue collar, that some butches prefer hy vs. she and some feel more masculine than feminine and it's all good.
Rope--
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