Quote:
Originally Posted by Martina
When I was coming up, at the very beginning when I heard about and was exposed to the butch-femme dynamic, it wasn't about gender roles or norms.
That incredible self-righteousness and tendency toward intense self-examination -- that came with my generation of dykes. I think that older folks had enough serious economic and physical threats to their well-being that they didn't look for silly reasons to exclude.
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That’s not how I remember it.
I grew up in a poor and working class neighborhood with the usual variety of society’s throwaways. In the projects it was all families on welfare but the surrounding tenements were a mish mash of fringe. I learned a lot about alternative life styles. I learned a lot about a lot of things really. I was always a watcher and I processed what I saw in depth even as a kid. I saw queens tormented and beaten for fun. I watched homeless guys get beaten for fun. I watched drunks get rolled and beaten for fun and profit. I watched junkies on the nod get left alone. I watched bull daggers get tormented and sometimes beaten, but much differently than queens. Kind of like one would poke a junk yard dog, carefully and always with a back up plan. There was this one butch everyone talked about how tough she was, how she could kick any guy’s ass. They despised her because she was different, queer and masculine presenting, but there was also reverence and grudging respect because she was dangerous and tough. She was impressive looking that’s for sure.
I identified mightily with the neighborhood butches called bull daggers or diesel dykes. I wanted to grow up to be like them. They were tough and they lived like men. As I got older I watched the butch/femme couples in the neighborhood. They may not have said gender roles or norms but they sure as shit acted them out. Butches didn’t cook and do laundry or go grocery shopping and they sure as hell did not do housework. They drank in bars, worked manual labor and fixed their own cars. And when their femmes got home from working in factories they took care of the house and their butches. When I got old enough to get away with drinking in bars I had occasion to see butch-femme dynamics a little closer and it sure looked like heteronormative behavior to me. And without any of the accompanying examination or soul searching to water it down that we see nowadays. No nod to gender equality or angst over misogyny. How I processed what I saw led me to deny that I was a butch who loved femmes. I often dated and/or partnered with women who were attracted to female masculinity, but like me they did not identify with the butch femme dynamic. I refused the dance. I thought it was sexist and misogynistic and not at all in line with the person I wanted to be. It was a long road home. And I’m happy to have arrived a proud butch woman married to a proud femme woman. It’s our dance and sometimes I lead and sometimes I follow. And I’m happy either way. I do not live the butch femme relationships I grew up seeing, I don’t share the ideals of the butches I knew and listened to as a kid. They may not have spoken about gender roles or gender norms but they lived them. And they did so unapologetically without any thought to what they were perpetuating. So personally I’m glad we do some naval gazing nowadays. At least there are alternatives to the hyper masculinity I saw growing up. There may have been then too, but I never saw it and nobody talked about stuff like that. So I’m glad we talk about it now.
Masculinity has always been revered. It didn’t just happen with gender conversations. Roles were always a part of the butch femme dynamic, at least in my part of the world. They weren't thought about they were just done, just lived. But now we have an awareness of what it means to play that way. There are many of us who don’t think femmes equal hetero women and butches equal men. Just like I'm sure there were many who never thought that way when I was growing up either. But nobody talked about that. It was assumed to be exactly how it looked. Examining stuff is empowering. Masculinity has been separated from men and patriarchy. Femmes parse femininity in their own image. It’s not perfect but it’s better.