One Butch... Two Butch... Three...
How Many Butches can there be?
I like to use the word "Butch" as much as possible, mainly because I never hear or see it anywhere. Never hearing or seeing one's identity across the lifespan and only for a brief blip - too closeted until my twenties to understand myself as Butch - and too young to experience connection to older Butch/Femme community - I occupy my thirties for the first time with a full conception of my Butch identity in all its non-normative glory, and very little community to share with...
In large part, this is why I have been excited to move to a bigger city and try something new by seeking out and creating space with my co-organizer Sheree to bring all manner of Butches and Femmes from the queer womyn and trans community together to celebrate. I have avoided B/F spaces because of the generational divide, my conceptions about what it means to be Butch based on stereotypes (and sometimes bad behaviour) perpetuated by our own communities, and what I have perceived to be the exclusion and marginalization of Trans narratives.
I was interested in creating space to honour shifts in identity, re-center Trans narratives within B/F community, and acknowledge and celebrate our commonalities across various generational and label divides. Despite our many wonderful variations of gender expression, masculinity, femininity, transness, queerness etc. - I believe we have things in common as self-identified members of a Butch/Femme community. We have shared experiences around busting through and re-formulating gender dynamics in our relationships and in our selves; how we navigate and fight for space to be seen in our entireties; and how we validate each other in our dynamics, for starters.
That said, in seeking to create new spaces for us to gather and celebrate I think it's poignant to recount dominant narratives on Butchness: what it means to be Butch, who gets seen as Butch, how Butch is framed, what community do with the label, and how we internalize these notions and the impact on our identity expressions.
I keep hearing that "Butch" and "Femme" are throwback terms to early days of dykery. Images of hushed entrances to underground bars where tuxedoes and evening dresses revealed the taboo lust of this particular manifestation of lesbianism, come to mind. Tales of brawls ensuing over misdirected, wandering and curious gazes, and blood splattered washrooms hint at the potency of one aspect of B/F history and space taking. During these early days it also seems the birth of community politics around who gets labelled Butch or Femme took root... often lumping all masculine folk into one category, and ignoring differences and oddly reinvoking discrimination against sexual preferences, presentation and desire outside newly established norms.
Butches who were into butches, androgynous folk, femmes into femmes, transfolk who id'd as butch/femme all received harassment, degradation, and diminishment from those who didn't recognize a diversity in identity in these early days. When I am speaking, thinking, and writing about B/F community I bear this in mind - for example, that Butch/Butch community, and Femme/Femme community have particular dynamics that are not spoken for and hold their own space, importance and history. I believe it is okay and important to hold space for all of these communities and they must not compete with one another.
Something happened early on in our communities around holding space and fighting for visibility - in which we started policing ourselves and forcing one another into perceived categories of butchness or femmeness as if they were the only options. In fact, I still hear our communities harassing each other around identity.... "Well, what are you? You must be the Butch. You look kinda butchy" and "You dress femmey, so you must be the Femme."
Alas, looking "kinda butchy" does not make one Butch, nor does "dressing femmey" make one Femme. It isn't mandatory for anyone to choose either a Butch or Femme identity, as if these were the only options. However, this myth has been perpetuated across generations and we have largely done it to ourselves. Calling each other Butch when we perform certain behaviours, mannerisms, activities, styles of dress etc. as an adjective reinforces this idea that there is only one way to be Butch and ironically, express masculinity. Queer masculinities have suffered from this notion of norming Butchness, but it is evident that there are many more ways to express masculinities these days than we have allowed ourselves previously.
Many more identity labels have centred themselves to fill in the gaps of normative Butch masculinities for those assigned female at birth. Bois, Andros, Genderqueers, Genderfluids, Soft Butches, Sissy Butches, Femmefags, Trannyfags, Aggressives, Studs, Machas, Bofinhos, Dykefags, Glitter Butches, Daddys, Papis, Nelly Butches, Butch fags, Andro fags, FTMs, Trans Butches.... you fill in the blank. There are many more ways to express queer masculinities and sexualities, and thankfully, many more ways to inhabit Butch identity than ever before.
One does not have to embody a Butch uniform of sorts in order to *be* a Butch... and conversely, expressing one's queer masculinity does not have to mean one *is* a Butch.
If you are a tea sipping, spikey haired, limp wristed, sensible shoe wearing, pink-loving, glitter wearing, bottomy, cock-loving, sissy boi who id's as Butch - you are, in fact, Butch - because you say so. And if my Butch identity (hypothetically) doesn't include any of those things... I'm pretty sure we still have a lot in common.
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