Amongst us butches ..

[intrigue_in916]

Originally Posted by Chazz

Exactly.

Hiya Heart.... Your post made me think about how the use and misuse of language shapes our self-concept, and our understanding of ourselves in the world, in overt and covert ways.

Gender training starts at birth. A zillion old and new studies confirm that: Boy and girl babies are spoken to and treated differently, described TO themselves differently, by care givers and the world around them. This profoundly affects self-perception; our understanding of who we are in a gendered world.

I often wonder how I might have evolved had I not been tagged a "tomboy" in childhood. I suspect I would have been spared certain inorganic experiences and freed to explore others that were more organic to me.

We become unwitting (if not witting) agents of dominant culture constructs/values when we use it's language to describe ourselves and one another.

As always, thanks for the thought provoking post, Heart.

SEXY isnt just a femme thing, because I know hot sexy butch women. However by that persons own definition of their sexuality, some ppl arent comfortable with some nouns or pro~nouns,that others may 'SAY' to describe who they see. All we have to say is ...im not comfortable when you call me ... or say to me, whatver it is your not comfy with. Does that make sense, to anyone, but me? cuz now I feel kinda dorky But with an opinion.

[Chazz]

Hi, Intrigue_in916

Thank you for the discourse. And, thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak to something that has been on my mind, though it's not directed at you, per se.

Originally Posted by intrigue_in916

SEXY isnt just a femme thing, because I know hot sexy butch women. However by that persons own definition of their sexuality, some ppl arent comfortable with some nouns or pro~nouns,that others may 'SAY' to describe who they see. All we have to say is ...im not comfortable when you call me ... or say to me, whatver it is your not comfy with. Does that make sense, to anyone, but me? cuz now I feel kinda dorky But with an opinion.

Yes to this, sorta.

FOR ME, the pronoun dilemma is a symptom of a false presence-absence dichotomy - a byproduct of Western logocentrical thought, linguistics, and representation.

Terms like good/bad, white/black, male/female, him/her (ad infinitum) were coined to denote "binary opposition". It is a long, established fact that Westerners (like us) think and speak in oppositions.

Butches like me make a lie of binary oppositions; in this case, the binary opposition of gender constructs.

Feminism, post-colonialism, post-anarchism, and critical race theory argue that binary dichotomies perpetuate and legitimize Western power structures that place "civilized" white men at the top of contrived hierarchies.

Post-structural (not post-modern) butches like me are not interested in a reversal of binary constructs, but their deconstruction.

I don't care that this is not necessarily so for all butches. I do care that it's true for butches like me. Not to assert this is to render myself, and those like me, invisible.

I'm not masculine or feminine, I'm Butch. My definition of Butch need not comport with anyone else's.



(I'm not comfortable with the term "Two-Spirited" because it feels like cultural appropriation FOR ME.)