Quote:
Originally Posted by Martina
I was thinking about your arc and how mine is kind of the opposite. Less intense, I think, but kind of sad.
I had no problem identifying with older femmes. They kicked ass. I did not myself ID as femme for a while after I came out. But the femmes I had met impressed me. When I came to ID as femme, it was uncomplicated and somewhat liberating. Now, I do not like what it conjures in others when I say I ID as femme. I do not like the assumptions they make. I know as many or more kick ass femmes, femmes to respect. But the identity seems less liberating. On the contrary. And as a result, over the last five years or so, I have felt myself become less attached to it.
I liked when HB said in one of her posts something like yes, she is femme and beyond that "meh." I am not the kind of person that people now think of when they hear the word femme. And I am way too old to be educating. I am still quite happy with lesbian and dyke. It's nothing that I have done to change. It's more that the world has changed and the understanding of the ID has changed. It really no longer fits me.
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I don’t think I said I had trouble identifying with the older butches I knew/saw growing up. I identified pretty strongly. And by the time I could get away with getting into bars I followed them around like a puppy dog. But there were other mitigating factors for me that caused me to question if this was a road I wanted to go down. One was my inability at that young and impressionable age to understand as you explained “material power differences are what maintain oppression, not ideology alone.” So what I saw from the butches at the bar looked to me like macho behavior and I translated that as a belief in their inherent superiority over their femmes and women in general. I have no doubt it wasn’t ‘exactly’ like that and there was much more going on, but I could not understand that yet.
Then I had this insane period where I married a man or should I say boy, because we were both still teenagers. I came to my senses rather quickly and realized there was never any doubt that I would partner with women. How this partnership would look was up for negotiation. I would always choose women to love, nurture and support. I had no interest in wasting energy on men. And the butch/femme dynamic, as I was wrongly interpreting it, looked like it had no place in my ideology. When I was wrestling with my identity and trying to decide if I was a butch or a lesbian it was the 1980’s and gender theory was still a thing of the future. I had no idea yet that being both a butch and feminist were not mutually exclusive. I became very interested in feminism and feminist theory. Looking back over butch femme history it is clear to me now that the butches and femmes of the 40’s and 50’s could easily be considered early feminists. They certainly took sex, a pretty much male focused act, and made it about women. All about women, but in a very hot queered version of opposites attract. Pretty cool that. However, I missed that point too as a young feminist lesbian.
One thing about the butches of my youth, they were all she’s. Nobody was male identified. In that time frame being butch was just that, being butch, it was about carrying female masculinity. It was liberating and uncomplicated, end of story. A much simpler time. There was never the question of an end game, of the possibility of transitioning. Fast forward twenty years and once again I find myself confronted with another challenging and very complicated twist. Big changes. I am still pulling apart and examining my place in the new butch femme world. I will say this much about butch femme culture, it is never boring.
And there have been times when I wondered if butch really fits me anymore. But I took such a long difficult road getting here, I fought my female masculinity so hard, I confused owning female masculinity with maleness. I had so many issues surrounding men/male to work through I didn't think i would ever be able to hold masculinity comfortably in my body. What I failed to realize is that it was there whether I chose to honor it or not. Masculinity is not owned by men or by patriarchy, femininity is not exclusively reserved for women. Femmes can hold femininity and masculinity, butches can hold masculinity and femininity and all the mixtures you can fathom. Now that i have worked that part out, at least most of the time, and made peace with it, I don't want to give up butch. It's a part of me and one I will fight for, just like I fought for woman as an identity that was mine, that no one could take. It was funny as soon as some family members adjusted to my butch identity they wanted to take away my female one. Like they can only handle one at a time, like identity is a singular sensation. Perhaps it's cognitive dissonance for them if I am a butch woman who holds female masculinity. They would be much happier if i picked a side. That's why I enjoy dressing in both men's and women's clothing. It's why I wear both men's and women's underwear. Not at the same time of course. I think I wandered way off the point of this thread. Sorry.