The Strong Butch Female/Woman in a Patriarchal World

[Jett]

Originally Posted by BullDog

Great thread and opening post Metro. How to carve out space as a butch woman? I have found that process to be a very difficult one in butch femme spaces, although I certainly don't think it should be.

Butch women are not a small group of butches sitting around worried that we are about to go extinct, as it is often claimed when butch women speak up about visibility. We are everywhere.

The male defaults for butches are due to sexism. Full stop.

I claim masculinity, but it is specifically within the context of being a woman, a female, and lesbian (and queer). It isn't something I can separate out from being a woman and female in any meaningful way.

I have at times struggled with claiming woman as part of my gender, but never as part of my social existence or as the human beings I most closely claim solidarity with. I am not sure, still, all the reasons for this. I think part of me was over thinking gender, and as Metro said, even butches fully claiming to be female can feel like they are looking at woman from the outside. I am sure there is some internalized sexism in their somewhere as well, no matter how hard I have fought against it.

However, in the face of some very harsh criticism I experienced when speaking up on behalf of butch women visibility within the last couple of years, I have fully reclaimed womanhood for myself. It is very empowering for me and does not at all take away from my butch identity.

To our allies, to me what is important, and what I believe is important to many butch women and female identified butches as well, is that we be recognized not just as masculine beings but as women and females as well. Simultaneously as Metro said. We are not butch lite because we are females and women, and when female and woman disappears from what is seen and acknowledged as butch, it is a very high price to pay.

Truth.

Unfortunately what it seems like to me from what I hear on the streets is Female ID'd butches are less likely to invest in spaces that seem to rate butch-ness (often) based on a binary spectrum where openly IDing as a female or women often automatically ends up relegated to the lesser end (being stereotyped). Some peeps just want to chill not feel on the defensive. Doesn't seem it's is a matter of not willing to fight the fight, or lack of numbers, most people just don't hang out if they don't feel supported or feel thought of as less than, it's that simple.

That needs to be changed.

I don't think it's the greater community in the "doing", just that it's less called out... seems like they say the answer is sometimes in the silence.

And then some of us are bull headed, but get tired too.

Ok, I have to run, wood to chop... going to be a cooler week.
Metro

(edited to add : Oh and Jack, it's cedar...