re: butchness

[bookhobbit]

I have more thoughts that I cannot put on tumblr because I don't want to be yelled at by the "butch is only for lesbians" crowd so please forgive me dumping them here.

I've been thinking a lot lately about butchness, and reading a lot lately about butchness, because it feels like the kind of thing you can't develop in isolation. And I've been reading all these essays from places like autostraddle from people who identify as masculine-of-center in some ways. And a lot of them say things like "I don't use the word butch to describe myself because I don't feel like I've earned it because I'm not dysphoric enough", or "I don't use the word butch because my masculinity is softer than that", or "I feel a sense of disconnect from butch-ness because I'm middle class and have an academic job" and stuff like that. And how common it is for women especially to use the phrase "soft butch" to describe their masculinity, feeling a need to qualify it.

And I'm thinking about like....I've shied away from identifying as butch -- in a major way because it's popularly connected with "woman" and specifically "wlw" in ways that are messy for me as a genderqueer aro ace person, but also, very much not insignificantly, because I don't feel like I'm masculine enough, no matter how I dress. Even now, when I don't think I've worn anything from the women's section in about six months. Not that that's a good marker, but it's like, I'm demonstrably not presenting in a way that anyone's liable to read as feminine and I haven't in quite a while.

But in my heart I feel like I'm not masculine enough not just because I used to dress more feminine than I wanted to, but really because I don't have an emotional masculinity in some way. Like...I'm disabled. I can't drive. I'm EXTREMELY anxious. I'm chirpy with strangers in a way that I hate because it feels strange and foreign but it was trained into me and it's hard for me not to do it. I'm desperately accommodating and terrible at protecting my boundaries. I'm not intimidating, I'm not aggressive, and I've never punched anyone in my entire life. I don't like yelling at people and when they yell at me it makes me cry. So it feels like I don't have any of the characteristics you're Supposed to have, the ones I encounter when I read about what it means to be A Butch. Even people who deconstruct these concepts tend to do it in a way that I don't feel applies to me -- like "yes butches are tough and strong and the provider but they also have tender hearts" etc.

And, also -- a lot of butches talk about how they get read as men and misgendered. And that makes me feel so utterly inadequate because despite not being a woman, I've never been read as a man. Not even now, nine months on testosterone when my voice has broken, even binding, even by complete strangers. People still ma'am me confidently and regularly, and I have no idea what I'm doing to create this impression. It makes me feel so inadequate, and like "clearly I am not masculine enough, because I'm not even being misgendered in the man direction no matter how I dress or what I do."

(Plus personally I'm not an wlw, and what does it mean to be butch when your sexuality isn't centered around women? Mine isn't really centered at all, but I'm slightly more conceptually into men than I am women, I think, in the sense that .6 is a larger number than .4, even though both are very small numbers. But I'm not into men as a woman. It would be closer to say that I'm into them as a man, but "butch" is a very not-a-man gender style in some ways because it's usually contrastive -- it's masculinity people don't want you to have. My masculinity isn't gender-conforming even when I'm....positioned in man-ish contexts by the fact that my relationship is Gay and my partner is a Man. Which is. weird. And hard to get my head around, let alone get anyone else's head around it.)

And it's just like...making me think about how standard of masculinity are so harmful and so strong that even when you're not a man, when you're in this space of being a masculine non-man, they still impact you! It seems to be an incredibly common experience to think "well I'd like to be considered masc/butch/stud/ag/whatever but I'm just not masculine/tough/strong enough." It's a mess. Do femmes experience this? I know there's both external and self-driven policing of femininity, absolutely, but I don't know if it takes the specific form of queer folks saying "I can't call myself femme because I'm just not delicate and gentle and emotional enough" or if it's different.

Anyway. I want to be butch. Not a woman, but with the same "well you didn't let me have this but I'm taking it anyway" relationship to masculinity that butch women often have. It's a label that feels good to me. Even though dom and top and butch are not interchangeable, there's a lot of dom top butches, and that makes me feel good. I'm from a working-class background and the roots of butch in working-class culture make me feel more at home, less pressured (even as I simultaneously feel imposter-y because I have an academic job). I don't want to be thought of as soft, and I don't want my masculinity to be soft. It's queer, sometimes leaning in the direction of Obviously Queer Guy, which is obviously less intense and unambiguous than straight men's masculinity. But I don't think that makes it soft. (I'd honestly rather describe it as flaming.) And it's not that I think I need to be un-soft, but rather that I want permission to be un-soft when I need to. I want to be allowed to be hard, and unyielding, and have those be positive characteristics. I want to not have to accommodate everyone and not fee guilty for it.

So, to me, butchness offers a way of healing from Enforced Softness, and that means a lot to me. And I don't want to give it up, even though I don't feel I've earned it or am allowed to claim it. But it's also like, what the heck is a gender, you know?

Comments

[obstinatecondolement]

"But it's also like, what the heck is a gender, you know?"

Ahh, I feel this so much. I have also wrestled with similar feelings re: butchness. I used to wonder if that's how I would have reconciled my gender if I'd been around decades earlier and came to the devastating conclusion that I probably would have become a nun rather than openly defy the status quo. In that sense it feels like a legacy I can't claim now.

[bookhobbit]

There's probably something here about how incredibly, incredibly difficult it is to go against the social script specifically as an autistic person who has been heavily impacted by Compliance Stuff. It's difficult to navigate one's relationship to an identity that's specifically Distinctly Noncompliant when you have spent your life being trained into intense fear of the concept.

[obstinatecondolement]

Ahhh so true!

[shadaras]

I dunno, I feel like "I want to be butch" should be reason enough to claim it, y'know?

I know I come at butch, specifically, differently than you because I do like it for the connotations it has of queerness related to being into women.

But I also know that butch is a term used outside the queer community for other things, too. 'Butch' doesn't need to be specifically part of the butch/femme dyad; it can also just be... a particular kind of masculinity, I guess? Like. That's okay. It isn't a word that is used solely by wlw or nblw; it's a word that doesn't need to be gendered/queered that way any more than you want it to be.

I do understand the drive to say "I'm butch" as a way of enabling/accepting the strength/sharpness that it conveys. There's comfort in knowing that acting that way is celebrated, instead of simply tolerated at best (or squelched at worst). There is healing. And I think that's meaningful, and I think that's a perfectly good reason to reach for calling yourself butch—especially considering that you're going after it for the same reason any butch does, which is claiming a space where society says there isn't one, and making it fiercely and fundamentally your own.

[shadaras]

(this is getting added as another comment because for some reason that sits better in my brain than editing)

I mean, also, I spent a long time going "can I identify as butch when I wanna have long hair?", SO LIKE I think that the Tumblr Definition Of Butchness is awful and too constraining and fucks everyone over. If you get meaning out of the word, use it; identity is always and only what we make of it. <3

[bookhobbit]

Ahaha JUST TODAY I was being like "does having chin length hair compromise this though??" so you're very right about constraints. I think this partly goes back to this idea of like, gender policing and Am I Masculine Enough, but tumblr/other similar circles do just like to constrain, I guess. Anyway, thank you <3

[shadaras]

look the gender stuff is part of why I cut my hair originally (and definitely part of why I kept it short), but fuck that I can be a long haired boy-ish-thing, that's what I always wanted to be in the first place anyway.

(honestly, watching chinese historical dramas, even when they're fantastical, is helping with this a lot? to create the historical period, everyone wears long-haired wigs! all these long-haired prettyboys! it's. nice. I want that. for me.)

[bookhobbit]

Long haired pretty boys and boy-ish things are SO good.

[bookhobbit]

Thank you so much, I'm really glad of your words because I really appreciate your thoughts on gender generally but also your thoughts on butchness specifically. So I really appreciate that you commented!

especially considering that you're going after it for the same reason any butch does, which is claiming a space where society says there isn't one, and making it fiercely and fundamentally your own.
Ahhh, that's a really good point and makes me feel good. Thank you. <3

[shadaras]

<333

I really like seeing your thoughts about gender, because in some ways I think that a lot of my thoughts about gender are reactive? Like, do I even have a gender save in response to others' genders? (Again, this is why butch works well for me; it inherently aligns my gender in conversation with others, and thus makes it more stable and less nebulous than it can otherwise be.)

I'm glad my words are helpful!

[rugessnome]

...I think mine are fairly reactive as well. (To the point I was going to say I second the comment, but as I haven't much contemplated labeling myself butch, it would make little sense to second that part...)

(btw, I started watching a little of The Untamed and yes yes the long haired boys! I have to wonder if that was also a factor in my Harry Potter phase (probably.) The LOTR elves? (probably.))

[bookhobbit]

That's something I think is great about butch, but also very scary about it for me, is that you're tapping into a very long history. It helps stablize things a lot, but then you also have a lot more people who are invested in telling you there's a way to do it wrong, compared with something you just invented. In that sense I think I understand the drive to create extremely specific labels, because then you *know* you're not doing them "wrong". But then, then """"anti-mogai"""" crowd likes to judge that too so I guess there's always jerks.

[shadaras]

Mm, that's true. For me the flip side is: If I'd been born even just one or two generations ago, when nonbinary wasn't so known a thing, I absolutely would've identified as butch. It's an identity label that would've fit me during those times, and I see no reason why it shouldn't fit me now, too. And if people tell me that I'm doing it wrong, then I'm just going to shrug, because it seems like there's a number of nonbinary butch people around today, so... fuck that, it's just fine.

[starshipfox]

I don't know if it takes the specific form of queer folks saying "I can't call myself femme because I'm just not delicate and gentle and emotional enough" or if it's different.

This is a really interesting point. My wife has talked to me about feeling like she had to present as butch once she realised she was a lesbian, and that she wasn't allowed to try to perform femininity and be a lesbian. And over time, she's become a lot more comfortable with a femme identity. I don't think that's exactly what you're talking about, but I think gender plus queer identity is really hard for all of us, even those of us who are cis.

I think all of these ways of looking at ourselves and how we are perceived, by both the queer community and the straight community, are constantly in flux. Butch, twink, futch, otter -- they're labels that encompass a spectrum of ways of being and I think we cause ourselves and others pain when we try to police them too stringently.

[bookhobbit]

That IS really interesting. It's a side of the issue I've never really considered but it absolutely makes sense. I'm really glad your wife is more at home in her identity now.

That's so true, I think. But people really want hard boundaries often I think, which I do understand because ambiguity is uncomfortable. But it's also essential, because human experiences *are* so often ambiguous and hard to classify with hard lines as one thing or another.

[starshipfox]

Yes, when I read memoirs by older members of the queer community, like Quentin Crisp, it can seem like at one time line were more blurred, and that you might just think of yourself as "queer", and that could cover a whole spectrum of different identities. I think sometimes being able to break things down into very detailed identities can be reductive -- I'm comfortable saying I'm a lesbian because it feels like a really broad identity, but sometimes I feel more like a cute twink who wants to be fucked by a bear, and sometimes I feel more like an ace homoromantic woman.

[owloflspace]

Oof, that part about 'emotional masculinity' is probably the main reason why I can't bring myself to consider myself masc/butch. I don't always want to be, but even when I do I can't *possibly* be, because I don't have the... attitude or whatever. I have a lot of other feelings about butchness (re: whether it's worth investigating) but that's a big part of it. But at the same time I don't feel like much of a femme either, for gender reasons.
Anyway, these are interesting thoughts, and I don't know whether I have any right to say this but I think you do have a right to claim it if you wish.

[bookhobbit]

It's rough. And really when you get down to it, it's unfair to police people on that, because we obviously as people supporting gender equality don't tell *men* that they're less masculine for having soft emotions. In fact there's a lot of "being soft doesn't compromise your masculinity!" in feminist and etc discourse, because it's such an important thing for men to learn and so contrary to what they're taught. But then for masculine non-men there does seem to be this subconscious idea of like, "to be masculine you have to have masculine emotions" in some way. It's odd.

[manicule]

I totally feel you on wishing that traits/behaviors associated with masculinity weren’t viewed as wrong when enacted by others. I’m straightforward and concise in my communications, which rubs people the wrong way since I am a confident 5’ woman who enjoys sharing knowledge. Makes me a smug, rabid bitch in their eyes.

[bookhobbit]

That's VERY frustrating. It seems to be to be polite to be straightforward and concise with people because it saves time and annoyance.