Clothes do not Maketh the butch ....

[Bit]

Originally Posted by Merlin

People argue with me here butch is a look not a gender, I also get told I chose to be this way ..

How dismissive. I'm sorry that's happened to you.

In my experience over on this side of the pond, people have said such things--or the equivalent: that a femme cannot wear men's clothing without magically turning herself into a butch--because they have rigid ideas about the meaning of "butch" and "femme." Some people have been open to a discussion and to broadening that definition; some people have used it as a wall of defense to avoid talking about it, a way to categorize and dismiss me.

Mostly these days I don't run into such nonsense anymore. Hope it gets better for you, too.