#the shared experiences of trans women and butches is a long history but I still feel guilty about feeling like I’m trans and like I’m | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cowboyjen68 · 2 years

Note

Hi Jen, can you tell us a bit how was the relationshiop of lesbians with trans ppl back in the day? I was reading how a lot of butch lesbians transisionated due to homophobia and were very much a par of the lesbian community even still, and i GET that you know but i feel like today we dont have the same camadarie like in the past (one or my best friends came out as a trans men and he bery much said that he feels the same for women as he did when he was a lesbian i and understand that at a certain level, but lesbian community today is not that much open witu trans men anymore)

I can only speak from my experience and the friends I have had to either transitioned after we met or before.

There have always been trans men in my circle of lesbians, even at women's festvals, gatherings and music venues. There were fewer and not medically transitioned until after 2015 or 16 that I am aware of. If I had to do a count I would say 4 or 5 in my wide circle and one in my close friend circle transitioned.

Social transitioning was pretty common but most of those acquaintences continued to use woman/female in close circles. I would often hear "I prefer to be seen as a man except in the company of only women/lesbians". They lived life being perceived as men outside the confines of places or communities where they felt safe.I didn’t hear “trans man” probably until after 2010 or later. Not that I recall. Although in fairness I lived a busy and active life and i doubt I remember every detail. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that it would be historically important, at least not in my life.

Moving as a butch woman can carry a lot of push back from society, even well meaning people as to how we can be women and still be masculine. This has been the case for as long as I have been aware of being a “tomboy” and then “not girly enough”, for me and for my friends. Sometimes it is easier (even safer) to physically and purposely support the way we are seen rather than continually try to correct others. Correcting some people that we are a woman and not a man can be downright dangerous in some circumstances so often it is risk management as a way of life.

Not one of my trans man friends who transitioned deny their connection to being butch or using butch before they decided to medically or fully socially transition. Even my closer trans man friend, younger than me by over 20 years, is quite comfortable in our comradery of shared experiences and sees no reason to deny our connection. He and I joke about how I approached him at the gas station he worked at and said “ I need more butch friends, here is my number”. We became friends from that moment on.

In younger circles, on tumblr and tiktolk (social media) I do see a powerful and stricter line drawn, a harsh denial of any ability for trans men and butches to share common past experiences or feelings. I don't know why the shift. I can't tell you what or when that happened. What I can say is it that disconnect saddens me very much.

It was the norm in my younger days for someone to use man to describe themselves pubically but privately to use butch or lesbian and no one really seemed to apply pressure either way. It came down to having friendship and trust with each other. We only knew each other in person. Internet friends or virtual connections didn't really exist to any extent so it was much easy to feel comfortable within nuanced situations since we knew each other as real full humans with complex lives and feelings.

The idea that we need to demand a firm set of roles, rules, physical attributes to a friend with whom we shared a history based on human contact, and physical realities didn't occur to me and wouldn't have if not for social media.

My trans man friendship circle is small now and likely will remain just him since the divide that is enrouraged now is someone damaging to the kind of trust and connection I want in friendships. That saddens me as well.

On an individual level lesbians I know are just fine to have trans men in their friend cirlces but the current insistance that we are completely seperate with nothing in common seems less than conducive to a healthy friendships.

It seems more of a society/community thing and less of a lesbian/trans man thing if that makes any sense.

148 notes · View notes

sapphos-darlings · 10 months

Note

i think i might be both lesbian and ftm (definitely homosexual, female, dysphoric, have considered transition for years and think it genuinely may help - its just putting the pieces together that gives me hesitation). im single, have dated a few other trans men when i identified differently, but ive never tried to date in the lesbian community. im trying to figure out how it would, i guess, work if i did transition? my current plan of "meet women & transmascs looking to date women or transmascs, tell them im a transmasc lesbian immediately, hope they understand what i mean and also mutual attraction is there" seems honest but possibly unlikely to work. am i missing something, or is it just a hard path im considering? i know one of the mods previously lived as a trans man so i was hoping you might have some experience or advice to share

Your identity, while it will sound wildly conflicting by the book, is actually not at all out there or anywhere near as rare as you'd believe. People are rarely black and white or fit into neat boxes, and transmasculine people have a long history with homosexual women. There have been, and continue to be today, butch lesbians who are taking testosterone or who have had mastectomies, and who go by male pronouns. Gender dysphoria and breaking the rules of our gendered society, in both gay and lesbian communities, has always been so prevalent that this cross-gender expression is rightfully part of our recognised cultural heritage, and one of the most rooted stereotypes associated with us. Even with the rise of transgender people's own, clearly separate rights movement, there is much more overlap in reality than these easy to identify labels would let you believe.

You, as an individual, do not have to be "lesbian" or "ftm" or "female" or "male" or "man" or "woman" in any particular way. It's up to you to express yourself, not your categories; while people instinctively assume that a label will cover all that you are, this is never the case for a person. We are so much more than these aspects of our identity.

And yes, the opposite is still true: there are gay men who date transgender women, and gay women who date transgender men. I follow plenty of trans channels to date as it's both relevant to my life now and to my history before and remains an interest, and some of these channels are for partners of trans people. One of the most common topics brought up is how to match one's identity label to the seemingly out-of-bounds relationship that is happening now, and seeing so many of them, and the unique situations of the people behind them, you come to realise that a label is not a natural fit for people, it's just something we make up to find community.

Further... beyond just exclusively gay people, we bisexuals are also here, we are plentiful, and we are absolutely wonderful. Not all of us, of course, are open to dating gender diverse people - but many others are, and we're typically quite relaxed when it comes to label complications simply because they don't challenge how we're expected to be dating, which is often a source of distress for both exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual people when confronted with a relationship that isn't quite what the handbook said it would be.

Lastly, yes, you are choosing the hard path. That's just how things are, universally, for transitioned and transitioning people, and for lesbians, and for anybody else who is not the norm in our society. There are fewer of us, we are less understood, and we have fewer people whose attraction will naturally match with us either because it isn't how they're wired or because they've never brushed up with the idea beyond a hypotethical concept. However, this doesn't mean you're doomed by any means. Just using myself as an example: I'm truly a mess when it comes to gender, both trans and not trans at the same time and which label applies to me more depends entirely on the subject and the alignment of the stars, and though it's taken its sweet time coming, I've now been in a relationship with a wonderful nonbinary/gender diverse partner for well over a year. While they may not always understand the fine details of how my identity works, that can't really be expected of anybody, even somebody using the same label as I hypotethically might. I don't understand how theirs does all of the time, either - I'd say more than they don't get mine, as my struggles are largely of the transsexual variety, more about the body than expression, and theirs are more of the gender variety, where their identity and inner perception of self reign superior to the matters of the meat. But we don't have to be fully up to date on any of that: what we have in common is much more relevant to our everyday life than the fine details of the things we don't, and at the end of the day, what we have is a gay relationship, which - while it comes with its own struggles and difficulties - still allows for an amazing variety of self-expression in gender and identity both, even within this simple overarching label and state of existing in the world.

Whatever you choose, you'll find people you match up with, and in the end, it's better to be happy with yourself than unhappy with somebody else.

#mod sade #ask #gender identity #gender expression #wlw #lgbt

10 notes · View notes

letters-to-lgbt-kids · 4 years

Text

My dear lgbt+ kids,

I came out as trans half a year ago - and I decided that’s a good time to share my coming out story with you! Some of you have been asking about it over the last few months and I am now in a place where I can comfortably reflect back on it.

Before we start, I quickly want to say that this is not a “How to come out” guideline. The decision how and when to come out is deeply personal, there’s not the one right way to do it. What worked for me may not necessarily work (or feel good) for you. This is just my personal story.

The first person I “came out” to was my therapist. I put that in brackets because by coming out to my therapist, I also came out to myself. We talked about my issues and over many sessions, it just became clearer and clearer to us both that many of them were related to my gender identity.

During one session, I said something and he replied “If we cut off the “But” in your sentence, you just said “I am a man”. Have you heard the term transgender before?” and I just sat there like “Oh! Yes.That’s how I feel.”. It was just one of those lightbulb moments. I knew it before - but actually hearing someone say the word trans related to my experience just gave me the push I needed to allow myself to know it.

He offered to call me by a male name and he/him pronouns to see how that feels. I chose the name Oliver - and I loved it! It felt so much better than my birthname and she/her. And yet, I decided to never tell anyone about that. I would secretly identitfy as a trans man but I would just keep that to myself, I thought. I can be Oliver in my head and in the therapist’s office and be my birthname everywhere else. Easy-peasy, no need to make a fuss and actually come out to anyone, right? It’s just for fun anyway.

Well, when I look back, I knew it wasn’t just for fun. But I was scared how the people in my life would react. I was scared of having to make a decision - I felt like as soon as I told someone, I would also have to have a definite plan regarding medical steps and I wasn’t ready to even think about that yet.

But feeling so happy and euphoric about my new name only highlighted how miserable I felt with my birthname. During that time, I published my book and I couldn’t bring myself to put my birthname on the cover. I published under my new name - and it was bittersweet. I was so, so overwhelmed with happiness to see the name Oliver in my bookshelf... and it hurt so much to say “It’s a pseudonym, I just wanted to publish anonymously, so it’s a fake name” when that wasn’t true at all.

My therapist told me to take my time with coming-out, to not rush into it but I knew that I needed to come out, for my own peace. I reached a point where I felt like hiding it hurt me more than any negative reaction could. I didn’t really have a big master plan - my mother invited me to dinner and one of my brothers was going to be there and I just woke up that day thinking “Today I am going to tell them”. Looking back, I am glad I only gave myself some hours to plan and freak out about my plans. Otherwise, I would have had too much time to think and convinced myself to give up.

I actually had a therapy session that day, so I knew they would ask me about that. My plan was to wait for that question and then tell them that my therapist thinks I am trans. In case they react super negative, this would give me the chance to blame the therapist or downplay it and say “Yeah, I don’t agree with him”. Maybe that’s a bit cowardly and yes, I am an adult and don’t need my family’s permission - but I came out as bi as a teenager and it went horrible. It took a while for my mother and me to have a good relationship again after that, I didn’t want history to repeat itself. My family means the world to me, I was scared of losing them.

Dinner came, that question I waited for came... and I hesitated and ruined the moment. The conversation moved on and I didn’t came out. Oh gosh, I hated myself in that moment. I had that plan and just got too scared to actually do it. I had just convinced myself that I lost my shot and would not come out to them at all when my brother said “You look sad, is there something you want to tell us?”.

I actually started crying and went “I need to tell you something but please don’t be mad”. I am pretty sure I sounded like a 8-year-old who broke mom’s favorite vase! My family got really worried. I guess that, based on my breaking down in tears, they assumed that I was either dying or going to jail. When I think about it now, it’s ridiculous and funny but back then, I felt terrible.

I managed to say “My therapist thinks I would be happier as a man” during sobs... and my mother just said “Oh, then you should do that. Do you want us to call you Oliver, like on your book?”. At first, I thought that she was thinking I was just kidding and that’s why she reacted so calm. I explained that I am serious and told them about the conversations I had with my therapist. They stayed calm. My brother said he already had guessed that I am trans based on the way I dress and the fact that I published my book under a male name, so it wasn’t shocking news to him and my mom agreed. She had a couple questions (mostly if I would date men or women now, I told her it’s still both) - and that was it.

It went way better than I expected. Yet, if I could turn back time, I would change something: I would explain more. I feel like I should’ve given a little “trans 101″ speech, especially explaining why the new name and pronouns matter. She still mostly calls me by my birthname and uses she/her. It’s not that she refuses to call me Oliver - if I correct her, she will change it. I feel like she simply believes I don’t care about it that much. Maybe she doesn’t really see a difference between butch lesbians and trans men, too. I feel like I could’ve done a better job explaining it to avoid those misunderstandings.

My fear that they would instantly ask me about surgery plans did not come true. I wasted quite some time worrying about that and preparing what to say in case they ask - they just didn’t ask about that at all.

I do not regret that I kind of rushed into it. To be honest, I don’t even know if I did. There were only a few months between calling myself trans the very first time in my therapist’s office and coming-out - but it’s not like I never thought about it before. I feel like I struggled with my gender identity since puberty but I didn’t have the words or didn’t allow myself to connect the dots. To me, it doesn’t feel rushed.

I came out to more people since then. But this letter is getting too long, so I will end this with a final thought: My coming--out, both to myself and the world, felt a bit messy and I can name things I would do better if I could start over again - but maybe I would just do it exactly the same way. I’m incredibly happy I came out. It didn’t make all my problems go away but I do feel better emotionally, more confident. I like myself more now. For me, it was definitely the right decision.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

#lgbt #lgbt+

337 notes · View notes

voxofthevoid · 4 years

Text

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.

#fandom #top bottom discourse #wow that's a tag #here it is the rant i promised #because i don't quite trust tumblr i feel compelled to add that this is ofc not some kind of attack on actual people who switch either #you do you man #live your best life #vox has opinions

275 notes · View notes

sapphic-sex-ed · 3 years

Note

I’ve really been struggling with my sexuality lately. I know that labels aren’t actually that important, feelings are, but I still feel upset about not knowing what I am.

For most of my life I’ve identified as a lesbian. However, I’m currently in a relationship with someone who is genderfluid. Upon realizing I had feelings for this person for years and recently entering a relationship with them, I sort of put my lesbian label to the side, not really knowing if it fit me anymore.

I am definitely attracted to women. I know for a fact that whatever I am includes women. I just find that I’m attracted to my partner as a person, not really thinking about their gender. I don’t think I’d date anyone else who identified as partly a man or a man. But, I know for a fact that I love this person no matter what they are.

I still feel very connected to the lesbian label and the history, but I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing for me to feel now. I’ve considered labeling myself as bi, but I don’t know if that would fit me do to my nonexistent attraction to anyone else but my partner that identifies with being a man.

I guess I’m sending this because I feel like I need to share my feelings with somebody who has an outside perspective. I’m not sure if you can help much, but I still thank anyone who reads this, for well, reading this

While labels aren’t inherently important, they can hold importance to you, and that’s valid. It’s through labeling (or the rejection of labels!) that we build ourselves, regardless of those labels are about your internal experiences (I am an artist) or your relationships to others (I am a good friend).

Your reflections about your identity labels are valid and common. Many identity labels as they exist today were conceived in a time when non-binary genders were not commonly known or understood, and thus the rigid definitions of words like “homosexual” as “only attracted to people of the same gender” can seem to exclude them but labels like “bisexual” may seem to broad and not fully representing the way we experience our attractions.

For your situation, lesbian has historically held the same meaning as the word “sapphic” does today. That is, any woman who is attracted to other women (well, historically the earliest usage of the word lesbian that I know of meant a butch woman who dated women — her femme gf would just be called “the lesbian’s girlfriend”) and today we’ve expanded the “woman” term to include non binary people who align with womanhood in any way.

So historically, the term lesbian hasn’t excluded women who date and love men as well as women (until the proto-terf movement lesbian separatism/feminism in the 70’s witch was a radical feminist movement that aimed to exclude all those they considered men from women’s spaces, including trans women and bi women who didn’t disavow their attraction to men — even many straight women joined in hence becoming “political” lesbians).

The term bi lesbian has been a hot topic, but really it refers not to one specific identity, but the combination of two: a bisexual woman who also identifies with the term lesbian. That’s in accordance with the usage of lesbian from 40’s-70’s and imo a valid take. As a lesbian solely attracted to women (and aligned) I tend to favor the “lesbian as any woman attracted to women regardless of possible attraction to other genders” because my own sexuality isn’t hinged on my lack of attraction to men, but by my attraction to women.

And speaking of “genders aligned to womanhood”. It’s important to make clear that not all non binary people, and not all non binary sapphics specifically, like the “aligned to” language. We tend to use that here on SSE as it’s the most efficient language we’ve got at the moment. What we generally mean by the aligned language is that their gender somehow in some way has ties to femininity or womaness in a way. This includes demi girls, bigender/trigender people who have girl or demi girl as one of their experienced genders, genderfluid people, or otherwise feel some connection with the gender woman.

So, you say your partner is genderfluid. If one of their genders is aligned with being a woman, they’d be covered by the lesbian label alone. If you don’t feel it’s fitting, you can use sapphic or wlw. Even just using queer can be nice.

This is getting long, but this is complex subject that requires nuance. I’ve only just scratched the surface here, but the tl;dr is that lesbian is ok to use even if you can be attracted to other genders than binary woman, and if you don’t feel comfortable with that there are terms like sapphic and wlw which focuses on the woman/woman attraction even if there’s other attraction there, and then there’s queer that covers any non allocishet experiences.

-mod liz

#anonymous #mod liz #labels #gender #non binary #sapphic #lesbian #wlw #queer

11 notes · View notes

justbutch · 4 years

Note

How & why do you keep going? i'm butch and plain exhausted. Lifelong intolerance and bullying of my being, then my only butch friends all transitioned then this mess in lgbTQ everything, now i get constantly theythem'ed, and dating is shittier to top it off. COVID doesn't help but i just think about offing myself because i dont see a point at all in existing. To me butch lesbianism is a futile deluded joke at this point. We're nothing. Nothing meant to be sustainable. We're a mistake. Nonsense.

Hi there, I’m really sorry that you are feeling so low. Things can be really though sometimes, and like you say, the pandemic sure isn’t helping :/

I know what you mean; it is hard to keep going when it feels like your way of existing seems fundamentally incompatible with people’s worldview. Of course, butch lesbians have never been particularly well accepted in society, but the additional homophobia and marginalization of butch women within “queer” spaces is particularly depressing. And even in somewhat accepting spaces, it can get just plain lonely. It’s not easy to feel so left behind.

As for why & how I keep going, there are actually quite a few reasons:

The main one is: there is more to life than gender. Don’t get me wrong, both my sexuality and the shit I experienced due to being female matter to me, and not being able to talk about this completely openly with people and therefore never being really understood even by people who matter to me is actually quite painful. However, that doesn’t erase the good things in my life. I get to pet cats and float in rivers. I get to spend time with people I like (less so now of course, but this is not forever). I keep my plants alive (or at least I try to). I try to be kind and to make the world a slightly better place. Sometimes, when I feel a bit better, I make art. Sometimes I walk around in the woods until I can’t see any other people anymore. No gender there, just trees and birds and the smell of moss. This is probably something where I have a bit of an advantage from being somewhat older, but I also have some straight normie friends whose opinions on queer stuff tend to range from “of course trans people are valid, but saying that gender identity changes your sex is kinda dumb” over “I just don’t understand any of this weird stuff” to “if she talks about her girldick one more time I’m gonna scream”. They do not relate to my constant ruminations on gender identity or my frustration with queer homophobia, but we can hang out and make pizza, play board games and complain about the general state of the world…and I can even talk about being female without being accused of causing people’s suicide. That helps.

I think there is worth in the butch identity. I know that it’s not the cool thing at the moment, especially of you add “woman” to butch. It’s old-fashioned and not in line with many branches of gender ideology and maybe people do think I’m a joke, but that’s on them. I am female and I am like this and that is okay; I do not need to change anything about myself just to be. I do not need to perform nor curate how other people perceive me. While womanhood exists, it will have to make space to include me. There is both revolution and a certain peace in that thought.

Things will not stay like this forever, so much is certain. Having followed the discourse at least peripherally for quite a while now, things have already changed a lot, rather rapidly, over the last few years and seeing the multiple contradictions in opinions even within queer spaces it’s highly unlikely that we have somehow now reached a stable equilibrium. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that things will change for the better (just look at the last few years), but it’s also not a given that it won’t. Maybe we can contribute to that, but I’m definitely sticking around to see what happens.

As lonely as it can feel sometimes, especially with a lot of my former role models recently coming out as not-really-a-women-and-definitely-not-an-icky-terfy-homo-lesbian, we are not, in fact, the last two butch women around. There might not be many of us, but butch lesbians are still a thing, both younger (often desisted or detransitioned) ones and older ones. There are lesbians not just surviving, but thriving away from mainstream queer spaces. There are people talking about the dysfunctional dynamics. There are people who are trying to rebuild community. There are people who understand, although it can take a lot of effort to find them.

I know how important it is for me to see other butches just…exist, so I want to be this person for other people. If I can show even one baby butch that it is possible and totally okay to be like this, that would be worth it.

None of this is really new. Homophobia has been around for a long time, and so has been the hatred of butches (or masculine female people in general), often even within lesbian spaces (radical feminism e.g. has some fairly nasty history there)…and butch lesbians still existed, whatever they may have called themselves at that time. Yes, the homophobia in the queer community is a particular betrayal and I don’t think I will ever get completely over that particular disappointment, but if hundreds of years of persecution didn’t stop people from being gay, neither will queer theory.

In many ways, it’s not like all the former butch women are truly gone. This doesn’t mean that there is no real loss there, there definitely is: of community, shared language and even shared experiences, because living your life as a trans man or nonbinary person is different from existing as a butch woman. But people don’t just stop being female/afab and homosexual when their identity changes and there is still a lot of overlap in experiences, especially when it comes to transmasc butches, FTM/butch cuspers and many nonbinary/agender lesbians. And while there are currently many people who really hate acknowledging that, there are also people who don’t (especially in private). It sucks that talking about this can be such a minefield and navigating the ever-changing rules regarding approved terminology and ideology can definitely be really stressful, but I still think that it is worth trying to build these bridges. Although I also think it’s also totally okay to draw back when needed for self-protection (I can’t be around surgery talk and every time I hear an enby say something along the lines of “I’m not a woman, I’m a human being” I want to scream).

When nothing else helps, there is always spite & anger. I am not going to let this homophobic bullshit be the end of me. That at least keeps me to going long enough to go back to the forest and smell some trees and stuff.

Hang in there! I really hope things will get easier again soon. But even while things are hard, I think it’s still worth it.

#tw: suicide mention #my post #butch identity #gender stuff #queer homophobia

14 notes · View notes

dykespreads · 4 years

Note

think imma butch bi dyke. if ur fine with sharing, what were your experiences with dykehood as a bi woman? i honestly feel really nervous but contented w dyke as a whole, i dont wanna be considered lesphobic or whatever :(

well im going to be 100% transparent with you that regardless of your intentions you will be called a lesbophobe by some people, the nature of tumblr is to paint whoever you disagree with as your oppressor and a monster and you just have to deal with that. in irl spaces it matters significantly less and nobody (at least in my experience) will question your choices. it helped me a lot because i have a lot of irl friends that are bi or lesbian or trans so everyone is pretty understanding and not quite so “if you say something i disagree with you are cancelled forever and i will make sure i convince everyone that you’re a terf” which has happened to me over dyke discourse with online tumblr “friends” despite me obviously not being a terf, given that im trans and my gf is a trans woman. but on to the point, i have reblogged a ton of cited essays and resources on bi women’s history in lesbian spaces, our impact on those spaces, our historical right on butch/femme/dyke and our current right and usage of butch/femme/dyke so if that kind of proof reassures you i definitely recommend looking through my blog. tumblr search feature is super awful so i’m sorry it’s not more accessible but you should be able to search for key terms and find it. my personal experience with dykehood comes largely from comphet, living in racist christian south, and some homophobic experiences with past girlfriends. ive always known i’ve liked girls and ive spent a long LONG time flip flopping between lesbian and bi, and lo and behold my lived reality and the way people treat me when im with a girl literally does not change at all. that leaves me to believe that it doesn’t matter. whether i personally ID as bi or lesbian does not matter because my experiences won’t change. im still in a loving committed relationship with a girl and am visibly gay. ergo im a dyke. i won’t be ashamed about it. *and yes i am aware the dictionary definition of dyke as written by cishets says that it means lesbian. but gay marriage was also banned in the united states. does that mean that two bi women, who aren’t techincally gay men or lesbians, could marry? no stop being fucking stupid anti-wlw language has always revolved around lesbians that doesn’t mean bi women were just unfortunately caught in the cross fire. the sacred lesbian only experience doesn’t exist, unless its specifically “i identify as a lesbian”. all wlw are subject to comphet, corrective r*pe (though i may agree that it has different connotations among lesbians, i can personally say lesbians are not the only ones targeted for being “cured” of their attraction to women, and r*pe CERTAINLY does not feel better just because you hypothetically could like a man lmao get your fucking heads out of your asses), prejudice, feeling predatory, loving women, being gnc, having an estranged parent relationship, not feeling really like a true woman, confliction with gender roles, not loving men or wanting to be with men, having trauma, facing misogyny and homophobia, etc etc. literally name something and i will make a counter argument for it, because me or a bi woman i know has lived it. wlw have been going through this shit together since the dawn of time. and radical feminism and political lesbianism warped us. a lot of these arguments about bi women being available to men are misogynistic and extremely biphobic and literally ACTUAL terf rhetoric. terfs, especially terfs that are wlw, have something to gain from painting lesbians as this group that is being set in on all sides by men (and trans women), and that bi women are using their privilege by being close to men to push lesbians down, and are class traitors. tldr; people will hate you no matter what you do. bi women helped build the lesbian community before radical feminism, terfs, and political lesbianism drove bi women out of the lesbian community. we have much of a right to our terms as any other wlw and its ahistorical to say we don’t. also life is short if calling yourself a dyke connects you to your love of women nobody can tell you otherwise.

#rape #biphobia #homophobia #misogyny #i kinda went off lol #im just gonna copy paste this next time someone wants to say anything to me on this site

22 notes · View notes

gettin-bi-bi-bi · 4 years

Note

1. A lot of times on lgbtq media, I’ll see things that include all wlw but will be labeled as for lesbians. Like “lesbian term”, “this song for lesbians”, or they’ll be posts or media talking about “lesbian only” experiences that could apply to all wlw. What bugs me is that bc lesbian has a very strict definition, I really don’t feel included in these. Whereas “gay” is an umbrella term and I often feel like I wouldn’t have these problems as a bi man cause I feel like gay covers me.

2. Lesbians of course have their own things, but I’m only talking about stuff that def includes all wlw but is called “lesbian”. Like “lesbian” couples that may have a bi women in them. I feel like there’s this split between communities bc any time I see a bi girl use the term lesbian(not as a label; for anything else) there gets so much crap thrown. While I know bi men prob feel that same sometimes, gay is such a universal term that I don’t see it as much. Idk if that’s invasive of me to feel

disclaimer: I was typing and typing and.... this kinds turned into a rant so. Take it or leave it, I don’t know how much sense I’m making. You know, up until ~50-60 years ago the word “lesbian” just meant every woman who had sex with women. That 100% included women who also had sex with men. (Note that at the time those labels were about sex acts and not about an identity based on attraction.) So many lesbians back then were what we would now call bisexual or pansexual.

However, lesbian separatists and “political lesbians” (basically the OG radfems) decided that a true lesbian should not have anything to do with men. And thus they started to exclude bisexuals from lesbian spaces and terminology and we were forced to make our own community. Which we did.

Now in the last couple years, especially on tumblr, there’s been this attempt to “reunite” lesbians and bisexual women into a shared community called “wlw” or “sapphic”. Unfortunately there’s still lesbian separatists. And that’s how you get entire campaigns on tungle dot hell where people recycle radfem rhetoric to tell bi women we aren’t “allowed to use butch/femme because those are just for lesbians” and other historic revisionism like that.

Most of the time I see people use “wlw” or “sapphic” it's bi/pan women who make that effort. And I notice a development in which the same thing happens to wlw/sapphic as it did to “lesbian” back in ye olden days: bisexuals are being told to keep their mouths shut about their male partners because “this is wlw safe space and this shouldn’t be about Straight Things” and as a result many think that “sapphic” is just a synonym for “lesbian”.

And note that this is all something that happens in relatively niche online communities like tumblr. When we’re looking at mainstream media then it’s a whole other piece of cake because mainstream media, especially when created by and for cisgender heterosexuals, just doesn’t fucking care about these distinctions. Sometimes it’s “just” ignorance and not even malicous - they just really don’t know the difference. Sometimes (often times!) it’s textbook bisexual erasure.

Personally, I totally get how you feel. I don’t feel connected to the “lesbian community” at all. I have a couple of lesbian friends but I don’t engage in any lesbian community events (even though Berlin has plenty to offer). I don’t feel like I have anything to add there and frankly, I don’t feel like I can openly talk about the fact I am bisexual and dating a man.

Even terms like “wlw” and “sapphic” - even though I do use and appreciate the sentiment behind them - don’t really give me a sense of community or belonging. Maybe that’s also a generational thing. I also don’t feel like I have one type of attraction that’s sapphic and then another type of attraction that’s [insert adjective] for men (and another again for enbys?) - all of my attractions are bisexual so I don’t feel comfortable describing my attraction to women as “sapphic” bc it implies that it’s something different than my attraction to other genders. But again, that’s just my personal feelings. I don’t mind those terms and I don’t mind if someone would use those as umbrella terms for me or as identity labels for themselves - go for it. I just don’t feel any significant connection to them personally.

I’m also a petty asshole though so if some event or media or whatever is advertised as “lesbian* .... party / movie night / pride / book club” then I’m just like, well, I’m not a lesbian so that’s not for me, guess they’ll be missing out on getting to know me. And I get even more pissy when they add in small print “*also welcome to bisexuals” because if you wanna make an event for lesbians and bi women then why not advertise it as that? Putting us in parantheses or small-print is at best tone-deaf and at worst an expression of how little they value us.

Many lesbians aren’t actively biphobic and would never want to exclude us and would actually genuinely welcome us. So, don’t take this as me slagging off all lesbians. However... many, especially the younger ones, are still incredibly oblivious to the history of their own label (because radfems work very hard at erasung that history so it doesn’t include bi and trans women) as well as ignorant about the struggles that bisexual women have to face in particular both in mainstream society as well as within the LGBTQIA+ community. They often don’t realise how alienating it is for us to always only being an after-thought at best. Which is kinda hilarious given that they often (rightfully!) voice the same criticism when everything is made about cis gay men and lesbians are just the after-thought.

So long story short: I get it. It sucks. That being said, bisexual men also face a lot of issues and biphobia affects them in some specific gendered ways that are also pretty shitty. They really don’t have it better or easier then other bisexuals when it comes down to biphobia.

Now, you can either say “fuck it, lesbian stuff is for me, too” and ignore all the separatism and basically reclaim your rightful place in this community. Or you can stick to the bi community and seek out media/events that are explicitly for all the queers.

Maddie

#I may have said this before but I'll put it here again:#I feel a stronger connection and can relate better to gay men than to lesbians #*shrug emoji*#Anonymous

10 notes · View notes

friend-o-dorothy · 4 years

Note

Full disclosure, I support trans and non binary people. But I don’t really understand the “terf” standing? I would really appreciate it if you explained the argument that if they pass a law stating that identifying as a woman is all u need to do to enter women’s spaces - it will result in men pretending to be trans and entering women’s spaces? Has that happened before and is it likely? Even if u have a link to smth that explains it, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank u!

Hey! I’m honestly not one to keep receipts around and it’s pretty late, so I’ll put this out there and hope followers reblog with links. If they do I’ll reblog it here.

There are cases of men posing as women to get into women’s spaces to harm women. Bathrooms are sensitive and vulnerable spaces for women. Trans women have the same rates of violence as their cis male peers. Imagine being 11, starting your period, wanting to talk about that with your friends in the bathroom, and sharing that space with a male bodied person. Do little girls not deserve privacy? It’s also important to know the history of the bathroom debate. There used to only be male bathrooms in many public spaces because women didn’t enter those spaces. Women fought long and hard to be able to have bathrooms because it was unsafe for them to use public restrooms with men. Here we are having the same debate.

I think the obvious solution is to have more unisex single stall restrooms. I empathize with trans women in the sense that men are violent towards transwomen usually due to homophobia. Single stall restrooms (most places already have them anyway), are safe for anyone who may prefer more privacy. But I have to wonder if it’s really about safety. Because if it was about safety, the movement would be pushing for single stall, especially since they talk about how TERFs are violent. If we’re so violent and you’re vulnerable then why would you want to be in a space with us that makes you vulnerable? It’s not about safety, it’s about validation. And I don’t believe that the safety of females should be sacrificed for the validation of males.

I think the broader issue here, beyond immediate safety is the argument of what makes a woman a woman. Does femininity make a woman a woman? If so, are masculine women, butches, tomboys, athletes, those that like short hair, those that don’t wear make up or shave—are they not women? If femininity and gender roles do not define womanhood, then what DOES? Our biology. And the basis of our oppression has always been our biology. I won’t pretend that trans women don’t experience violence at the hands of men, but it is not because they are women, it is because they are men who dare to be feminine. Our experiences are not the same.

As someone who has been to female only festivals and TIM inclusive festivals, I can say there is a difference. When we celebrate our biology with pussy hats, with art about the vulva, with the vagina monologues—when we celebrate the bodies we have been socialized to HATE, we are told we are transmisogynistic and exclusionary. When we talk about our real challenges with menstruation, we’re either faced with an onslaught of misogynistic insults in which we’re referred to as “bleeders” or are expected to grin and bear it while a TIM tells us about phantom cramps while we suffer real ones from conditions like PCOS and Endometriosis, both conditions of the female body with next to no research on how to treat or correct them.

We need female-only space. We still have work to do in terms of female-specific oppression. And when we allow our oppressors to enter our spaces, our goals, our liberation, our work is put on the back burner while the relentless task of validating the identities of trans women who think they’ve identified into an oppressed class come to the forefront. I would never presume to enter the spaces of trans women or black men, or Spanish-speakers. Because their experience is unique and I would not come unless invited. The experience of being female, of being raised female, of the pain that comes with the oppression of the female sex, is unique to us. We deserve to find spaces of common experience where we aren’t silenced because our stories may make someone feel invalid.

#asks #anon #terfs please interact #terfs do interact #bathroom discourse #radfem safe #radfems please interact

25 notes · View notes

star-anise · 5 years

Note

do you have any sources on the claims you made? im always willing to change my stance if you have legitimate backing for it haha

So first, I’m sorry for blowing up at you the way that I did. I’m not proud that I reacted in such a kneejerk, aggressive fashion. Thank you for being open to hearing what I have to say. I’m sorry for mistaking you for a TERF, and I’m sorry my response has caused other people to direct their own hostility towards you.

So, here’s the thing. “You can’t call bi women femmes” is pretty intrinsically a radfem thing to say, and I am deeply opposed to letting radfems tell me what to do. I’m trying to write this during a weekend packed with childcare and work. I’ll try to hit all the high notes.

The one thing I am having trouble finding is the longass post I talked about in my reply, that was a history of butch/femme relationships in lesbian bars, which had frequent biphobic asides and talked about “the lesbophobic myth of the bi-rejecting lesbian”; the friend who reblogged it without reading it thoroughly has deleted it, and I can’t find it on any of the tags she remembers looking at around that time. If anyone can find it, I’ll put up a link.

As far as possible, I’m linking to really widely accessible sources, because you shouldn’t intrinsically trust a random post on Tumblr as secret privileged knowledge. People have talked about this at length in reputable publications that your local library either has, or can get through interlibrary loan; you can look up any of the people here, read their work, and decide for yourself. This is a narrative of perspectives, and while I obviously have a perspective, many people disagree with me. At the end of the day, the only reason I need for calling bi women femmes is that You Are Not The Boss Of Me. There is no centralized authority on LGBT+ word usage, nor do I think there should be. Hopefully this post will give you a better sense of what the arguments are, and how to evaluate peoples’ claims in the future.

I looked up “butch” and “femme” with my library’s subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary because that’s where you find the most evidence of etymology and early use, and found:

“Femme” is the French word for “woman”. It’s been a loanword in English for about 200 years, and in the late 19th century in America it was just a slangy word for “women”, as in, “There were lots of femmes there for the boys to dance with”

“Butch” has been used in American English to mean a tough, masculine man since the late 19th century; in the 1930s and 1940s it came to apply to a short masculine haircut, and shortly thereafter, a woman who wore such a haircut. It’s still used as a nickname for masculine cis guys–my godfather’s name is Martin, but his family calls him Butch. By the 1960s in Britain, “butch” was slang for the penetrating partner of a pair of gay men.

Butch/femme as a dichotomy for women arose specifically in the American lesbian bar scene around, enh, about the 1940s, to enh, about the 1960s. Closet-keys has a pretty extensive butch/femme history reader. This scene was predominantly working-class women, and many spaces in it were predominantly for women of colour. This was a time when “lesbian” literally meant anyone who identified as a woman, and who was sexually or romantically interested in other women. A lot of the women in these spaces were closeted in the rest of their lives, and outside of their safe spaces, they had to dress normatively, were financially dependent on husbands, etc. Both modern lesbians, and modern bisexual women, can see themselves represented in this historical period.

These spaces cross-pollinated heavily with ball culture and drag culture, and were largely about working-class POC creating spaces where they could explore different gender expressions, gender as a construct and a performance, and engage in a variety of relationships. Butch/femme was a binary, but it worked as well as most binaries to do with sex and gender do, which is to say, it broke down a lot, despite the best efforts of people to enforce it. It became used by people of many different genders and orientations whose common denominator was the need for safety and discretion. “Butch” and “femme” were words with meanings, not owners.

Lesbianism as distinct from bisexuality comes from the second wave of feminism, which began in, enh, the 1960s, until about, enh, maybe the 1980s, maybe never by the way Tumblr is going. “Radical” feminism means not just that this is a new and more exciting form of feminism compared to the early 20th century suffrage movement; as one self-identified radfem professor of mine liked to tell us every single lecture, it shares an etymology with the word “root”, meaning that sex discrimination is at the root of all oppression.

Radical feminism blossomed among college-educated women, which also meant, predominantly white, middle- or upper-class women whose first sexual encounters with women happened at elite all-girls schools or universities. Most of these women broke open the field of “women’s studies” and the leading lights of radical feminism often achieved careers as prominent scholars and tenured professors.

Radical feminism established itself as counter to “The Patriarchy”, and one of the things many early radfems believed was, all men were the enemy. All men perpetuated patriarchy and were damaging to women. So the logical decision was for women to withdraw from men in all manner and circumstances–financially, legally, politically, socially, and sexually. “Political lesbianism” wasn’t united by its sexual desire for women; many of its members were asexual, or heterosexual women who decided to live celibate lives. This was because associating with men in any form was essentially aiding and abetting the enemy.

Look, I’ll just literally quote Wikipedia quoting an influential early lesbian separatist/radical feminist commune: “The Furies recommended that Lesbian Separatists relate “only (with) women who cut their ties to male privilege” and suggest that “as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits”“

This cross-pollinated with the average experience of WLW undergraduates, who were attending school at a time when women weren’t expected to have academic careers; college for women was primarily seen as a place to meet eligible men to eventually marry. So there were definitely women who had relationships with other women, but then, partly due to the pressure of economic reality and heteronormativity, married men. This led to the phrase LUG, or “lesbian until graduation”, which is the kind of thing that still got flung at me in the 00s as an openly bisexual undergrad. Calling someone a LUG was basically an invitation to fight.

The assumption was that women who marry men when they’re 22, or women who don’t stay in the feminist academic sphere, end up betraying their ideals and failing to have solidarity with their sisters. Which seriously erases the many contributions of bi, het, and ace women to feminism and queer liberation. For one, I want to point to Brenda Howard, the bisexual woman who worked to turn Pride from the spontaneous riots in 1969 to the nationwide organized protests and parades that began in 1970 and continue to this day. She spent the majority of her life to a male partner, but that didn’t diminish her contribution to the LGBT+ community.

Lesbian separatists, and radical feminists, hated Butch/Femme terminology. They felt it was a replication of unnecessarily heteronormative ideals. Butch/femme existed in an LGBT+ context, where gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people understood themselves to have more in common with each other than with, say, cis feminists who just hated men more than they loved women.

The other main stream of feminist thought at the time was Liberal Feminism, which was like, “What if we can change society without totally rejecting men?” and had prominent figures like Gloria Steinem, who ran Ms magazine. Even today, you’ll hear radfems railing against “libfems” and I’m like, my good women, liberal feminism got replaced thirty years ago. Please update your internal schema of “the enemy”

Lesbian separatism was… plagued by infighting. To maintain a “woman-only” space, they had to kick out trans women (thus, TERFs), women who slept with men (thus, biphobia), women who enjoyed kinky sex or pornography or engaged in sex work (thus, SWERFS) and they really struggled to raise their male children in a way that was… um… anti-oppressive. (I’m biased; I know people who were raised in lesbian separatist communes and did not have great childhoods.) At the same time, they had other members they very much wanted to keep, even though their behaviour deviated from the expected program, so you ended up with spectacles like Andrea Dworkin self-identifying as a lesbian despite being deeply in love with and married to a self-identified gay man for twenty years, despite beng famous for the theory that no woman could ever have consensual sex with a man, because all she could ever do was acquiesce to her own rape.

There’s a reason radical feminism stopped being a major part of the public discourse, and also a reason why it survives today: While its proponents became increasingly obsolete, they were respected scholars and tenured university professors. This meant people like Camille Paglia and Mary Daly, despite their transphobia and racism, were considered important people to read and guaranteed jobs educating young people who had probably just moved into a space where they could meet other LGBT people for the very first time. So a lot of modern LGBT people (including me) were educated by radical feminist professors or assigned radical feminist books to read in class.

The person I want to point to as a great exemplar is Alison Bechdel, a white woman who discovered she was a lesbian in college, was educated in the second-wave feminist tradition, but also identified as a butch and made art about the butch/femme dichotomy’s persistence and fluidity. You can see part of that tension in her comic; she knows the official lesbian establishment frowns on butch/femme divisions, but it’s relevant to her lived experience.

What actually replaced radical feminism was not liberal feminism, but intersectional feminism and the “Third Wave”. Black radical feminists, like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, pointed out that many white radical feminists were ignoring race as a possible cause of oppression, and failing to notice how their experiences differed from Black womens’. Which led to a proliferation of feminists talking about other oppressions they faced: Disabled feminists, Latina feminists, queer feminists, working-class feminists. It became clear that even if you eliminated the gender binary from society, there was still a lot of bad shit that you had to unlearn–and also, a lot of oppression that still happened in lesbian separatist spaces.

I’ve talked before about how working in women-only second-wave spaces really destroyed my faith in them and reinforced my belief in intersectional feminism

Meanwhile, back in the broader queer community, “queer” stuck as a label because how people identified was really fluid. Part of it is that you learn by experience, and sometimes the only way to know if something works for you is to try it out, and part of it is that, as society changed, a lot more people became able to take on new identities without as much fear. So for example, you have people like Pat Califia, who identified as a lesbian in the 70s and 80s, found far more in common with gay leather daddies than sex-negative lesbians, and these days identifies as a bisexual trans man.

Another reason radical feminists hate the word “queer”, by the way, is queer theory, which wants to go beyond the concept of men oppressing women, or straights oppressing gays, but to question this entire system we’ve built, of sex, and gender, and orientation. It talks about “queering” things to mean “to deviate from heteronormativity” more than “to be homosexual”. A man who is married to a woman, who stays at home and raises their children while she works, is viewed as “queer” inasmuch as he deviates from heteronormativity, and is discriminated against for it.

So, I love queer theory, but I will agree that it can be infuriating to hear somebody say that as a single (cis het) man he is “queer” in the same way being a trans lesbian of colour is “queer”, and get very upset and precious about being told they’re not actually the same thing. I think that actually, “queer as a slur” originated as the kind of thing you want to scream when listening to too much academic bloviating, like, “This is a slur! Don’t reclaim it if it didn’t originally apply to you! It’s like poor white people trying to call themselves the n-word!” so you should make sure you are speaking about a group actually discriminated against before calling them “queer”. On the other hand, queer theory is where the theory of “toxic masculinity” came from and we realized that we don’t have to eliminate all men from the universe to reduce gender violence; if we actually pay attention to the pressures that make men so shitty, we can reduce or reverse-engineer them and encourage them to be better, less sexist, men.

But since radfems and queer theorists are basically mortal enemies in academia, radical feminists quite welcomed the “queer as a slur” phenomenon as a way to silence and exclude people they wanted silenced and excluded, because frankly until that came along they’ve been losing the culture wars.

This is kind of bad news for lesbians who just want to float off to a happy land of only loving women and not getting sexually harrassed by men. As it turns out, you can’t just turn on your lesbianism and opt out of living in society. Society will follow you wherever you go. If you want to end men saying gross things to lesbians, you can’t just defend lesbianism as meaning “don’t hit on me”; you have to end men saying gross things to all women, including bi and other queer women. And if you do want a lesbian-only space, you either have to accept that you will have to exclude and discriminate against some people, including members of your community whose identities or partners change in the future, or accept that the cost of not being a TERF and a biphobe is putting up with people in your space whose desires don’t always resemble yours.

Good god, this got extensive and I’ve been writing for two hours.

So here’s the other thing.

My girlfriend is a femme bi woman. She’s married to a man.

She’s also married to two women.

And dating a man.

And dating me (a woman).

When you throw monogamy out the window, it becomes EVEN MORE obvious that “being married to a man” does not exclude a woman from participation in the queer community as a queer woman, a woman whose presentation is relevant in WLW contexts. Like, this woman is in more relationships with women at the moment than some lesbians on this site have been in for their entire lives.

You can start out with really clear-cut ideas about “THIS is what my life is gonna be like” but then your best friend’s sexual orientation changes, or your lover starts to transition, and things in real life are so much messier than they look when you’re planning your future. It’s easy to be cruel, exclusionary, or dismissive to people you don’t know; it’s a lot harder when it’s people you have real relationships with.

And my married-to-a-man girlfriend? Uses “butch” and “femme” for reasons very relevant to her queerness and often fairly unique to femme bi women, like, “I was out with my husband and looking pretty femme, so I guess they didn’t clock me as a queer” or “I was the least butch person there, so they didn’t expect me to be the only one who uses power tools.” Being a femme bi woman is a lot about invisibility, which is worth talking about as a queer experience instead of being assumed to exclude us from the queer community.

#cherryhearrts #staranise original #answered asks #ranting in bisexual #lgbt discourse #terf shit #exclusionist shit #radfem shit #apologies to my girlfriend for not including carole queen in this post #she just didn't fit baby

1K notes · View notes

a-lion-in-summer · 4 years

Text

A Herstory of Transmasculine Identities is a book I find I’ve really been wanting now that I see it. It’s a mixture of editorial essays and personal accounts by trans men and non-binary transmasculine people who spent years or decades of their lives being active in the feminist and/or lesbian communities talking about those experiences, how those histories affect who they are today compared to if they’d been born as cis men, the (usually negative) reactions they experienced coming out as trans, and their experiences in the transgender community.

It isn’t, and makes very clear it isn’t, a universal experience of trans-ness, but there are a lot of experiences in there I’ve very much wanted to hear. We say “there’s not just one way to be trans” or “you can still be trans and not follow this particular mainstream, normative narrative”, but some views are definitely more popular. Historically and today, “I always felt I was a man and did not want to call myself a lesbian even though I dated women and I want to date straight-identifying women and not lesbian-identifying women” has always been a gold star for a trans man trying to emphasize his Real Man status, even if you hear different rhetoric around it.

“Trans men who date women are straight” is a good one-liner and certainly needs to be emphasized over and over again for awareness in mainstream society to combat purposeful misgendering. But… it’s a deep over-simplification of many trans people’s actual, messy lives. Some trans men identify with this sentiment very strongly, others have much more mixed feelings. Some trans men have long histories in the lesbian community and date only queer women, not straight women who don’t share their culture. Some trans men call their sexual orientation queer rather than straight because of their histories in the queer or lesbian communities and the rejection they receive from cis straight people inherent in their trans status. Then there’s a broad range of identities people place under terms like butch, transmasculine, or trans men but still “lesbian”, rather than easy, neat boundaries. (Likewise the community of trans women who want to date straight men and assert their identity as straight women is different from trans women who were active in the gay men’s community and are partnered with gay men, and trans women who are proud lesbians who want to be part of the lesbian community and upset about transphobia against them from other lesbians from trans women coming from “straight men who crossdress” communities with straight-identified partners and often very negative views of lesbians or being seen as lesbians.)

I’m not a huge fan of the popular sentiment in the trans community: “I am A and not B. I was always A all my life. I was not affected in any way by the fact I and those around me believed I was B for many years of my life, because I have now realized I am actually A and always was A.” I get why it’s become so popular--anything to emphasize you are A and deserve to be treated as A and validated as A. Some people feel it perfectly describes their experiences, I suppose. I like this anthology for voicing reservations I too have to it, though. Whether or not I was “really” a boy all along, the fact that I was raised as a girl and treated as a girl for decades has profoundly affected who I am today, very differently from an alternate reality where I was magically a cis boy from birth. And then things get further complicated if we acknowledge non-binary people, for whom “I am A” might not be consistent with their experiences or something they want to say, but who feel “I am not B”, either partially or entirely.

This was especially emphasized by older trans men. “I transitioned at fifty, not fifteen,” to paraphrase, “but I’m just supposed to pretend I did and not talk about all those decades of discrimination I personally received or activist causes I personally fought for?” I was in my mid-twenties when I started to transition, and I still find it inauthentic to deny all those years I spent trying to fit in with “girl” and the expectations around it and the broader social consciousness of feminist realization that “I am being treated this way because I am a girl and that’s different from how it is for boys.”

This anthology also mentioned reservations some people had about the contingent of the trans men’s community that gets super into this sentiment--it’s often tied with rejecting of all things female/feminine in favor of sexism and toxic masculinity in order to emphasize the speaker’s Real Man status or to help them overcome their difficulties or insecurities about passing. As a feminist, yeah, I’ve seen that too from some trans men and grates against me how easily “being a woman is not for me personally” becomes standard misogynist rhetoric about why women/femininity are bad or inferior. Obviously this doesn’t sit well with trans men who have been active in the feminist community for years and who still feel strongly about feminist ideals and equality, no matter how many of their former friends have rejected them as traitors to daring to transition.

And of course the push-back from the other side that any ambiguity will lead to invalidation of their own identities or that these other people are being trans wrong or aren’t trans enough. As if if we only present a united front around a single, minimal-complexity narrative then, then cis people will accept us!

#transgender #ftm

14 notes · View notes

transastronautistic · 5 years

Text

queer history: a chat with Anne Lister and Leslie Feinberg

you know what i’d love to witness? a conversation between Anne Lister and Leslie Feinberg. can you even imagine it??

Lister wrote, “I am made unlike anyone I have ever met. I dare to say I am like no one in the whole world.” but i think she’d quickly realize that Feinberg is “made like” her -- that Feinberg has a very similar sexuality and gender expression to her own, and truly gets what it’s like to be persecuted for those things. Lister’d be so thrilled and relieved to find she’s not alone!

and Feinberg? when ze was younger, ze was desperate to find hirself in history -- just like Lister, ze was convinced that “No one like me seemed to have ever existed” (Transgender Warriors, p. 11). Feinberg would absolutely recognize Lister as a part of the big beautiful queer history that ze eventually discovered.

there are many parts of Feinberg’s story that come to mind as i watch Gentleman Jack -- such as when Lister is talking to the little boy Henry, who asks if she’s a man, and she replies:

“Well, that's a question. And you are not the first person to ask it. I was in Paris once, dressed extremely well, I thought, in silk and ribbons, ringlets in my hair. Very gay, very ladylike. And even then, someone mistook me for a...Mm. So, no, I am not a man. I'm a lady. A woman. I'm a lady woman. I'm a woman.”

when i watched that scene, i immediately thought of this passage from Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors:

“...I was considered far too masculine a woman to get a job in a store, or a restaurant, or an office. I couldn’t survive without working. So one day I put on a femme friend’s wig and earrings and tried to apply for a job as a salesperson at a downtown retail store. On the bus ride to the interview, people stood rather than sit next to me. They whispered and pointed and stared. ‘Is that a man?’ one woman asked her friend, loud enough for us all to hear. The experience taught me an important lesson. The more I tried to wear clothing or styles considered appropriate for women, the more people believed I was a man trying to pass as a woman. I began to understand that I couldn’t conceal my gender expression” (p. 12).

over a century separated these two, but people who could or would not conform to their assigned gender suffered in both eras. both of these people longed for a connection to a wider community of people like them, longed to know why people like them were persecuted and hated and told that God reviled them. but while Lister did manage to cultivate a tiny haven for herself of loved ones who accepted her, she never found the wider community that Feinberg found -- the world of “drag queens, butches, and femmes,” a world in which “I fit; I was no longer alone” -- a world that extended beyond gay bars, deep into past millennia as well as across the entire globe!

Feinberg worked hard to dig up the answers to all hir questions of why -- “Why was I subject to legal harassment and arrest at all? Why was I being punished for the way I walked or dressed, or who I loved? Who wrote the laws used to harass us, and why? Who gave the green light to the cops to enforce them? Who decided what was normal in the first place?” (p. 8). what ze concluded was that the rise of class so many ages ago is what sowed the seeds of transphobia.

in Transgender Warriors, Feinberg argues that in ancient societies that followed a matrilineal system and shared all resources communally, whenever agriculture enabled some men to begin accumulating and hoarding resources, an intolerance for gender diversity would also arise (see pp. 42-44, 50-52). once these men had capital, they had power. the Few could use their capital to bribe, to threaten, and to control the Many. eventually these men would twist their communities into a patriarchy in order to ensure that they could keep the power in their own hands. for patriarchs rely upon a rigid gender binary to keep their power, wherein those assigned male are placed above everyone else. after all, if men behave "like women," how can we place them above women? if women behave "like men," will they try to force their way into the dominant group? if some people are too ambiguous to be categorized into either group, what does that say about our argument that this binary is the natural way of doing things or divinely ordained?

i think that there are some aspects of this history that Lister would be excited to learn. she’d recognize herself as one of those women trying to force their way into the dominant group, and agree that the patriarchs of her day were not happy about it. she’d appreciate Feinberg’s scholarship around those religious texts that she as a Christian and Feinberg as a Jewish person shared, how Feinberg shows that it was not God but men who decided that the gender binary must be enforced. Lister would heartily agree that her nature is God-given, not God-hated.

but the conversation between Lister and Feinberg would very quickly break down, for the same reason that transphobia sprung up: because of class.

not long into their discussion, Feinberg would be like “and that’s why Capitalism is the root of all evil and people like us will thrive only once we’ve overthrown the landed gentry and disseminated all the wealth” and Lister would be like. “excuse me. i am the Landed Gentry. the lower classes will get their callused hands on my wealth over my dead body"

and the relationship would promptly dissolve from there -- and i’d take Feinberg’s side 1000% and hope ze could knock some humility into Lister’s classist ass!

but anyway to me the similarities between these two historical figures combined with the stark differences in their worldviews only goes to show what an enormous factor class is! Feinberg notes this fact, that “trans expression” has existed among all classes -- and that social privilege makes a big difference in a trans or gnc person’s life:

“For the ruling elite, transgender expression could still be out in the open with far less threat of punishment than a peasant could expect. For example, when Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated in 1654, she donned men’s clothes and renamed herself ‘Count Dohna.’ Henry III of France was reported to have dressed as an Amazon and encouraged his courtiers to do likewise” (80).

(to be fair to Henry III, his gender non-conforming ways were used against him to justify his overthrow. but for a time, he had the means to express himself and to gather others who were like him into his court.)

if Feinberg had been born in the uppermost class of hir society, would that have protected hir from much of the cruelty and violence they experienced? after all, ze would never have had to scramble for a job, to try desperately to conform to gender expectations just to survive. Lister was able to spend much of her life refusing to listen to the hateful words circulating behind her back because to her face people tended to be much more polite. would Feinberg have had that experience too, had ze not been of the lower working class? would ze have never gone through the pain and struggle that caused hir to dig so ferociously into the history of transphobia and queerphobia?

it’s much less likely for someone at the top of the food chain to question the food chain -- even if they notice how the Way Things Are does work against them in some ways. Lister was unlikely to notice how a social hierarchy that pits the wealthy above the poor is intrinsically linked to the structures that pit men over women and confine each person into a rigid binary box -- because to notice that truth would have been to her own detriment. she may not have wanted to keep the cissexism, but she did want to keep her wealth.

As Feinberg puts it in Transgender Warriors when discussing afab people who fought for the Confederacy in the US Civil War, “just being [trans] doesn’t automatically make each person progressive.”

Lister was not prepared to fight a battle against her own privileges, even if it would also have been a battle against her own oppression. that doesn’t mean that those of us looking back at her story today can’t treasure what we have in common with her! we can. after all, in Transgender Warriors, Feinberg recounts the stories of the more “problematic,” complicated figures in queer history right alongside the ones that better fit hir own views. ze finds value in their stories despite the flaws, and we can too.

but at the same time, we have to acknowledge where Lister fell short, and do the hard work of examining our own privileges and considering how we can be better than Lister. we can instead be like Feinberg, whose marginalization -- as a butch lesbian, as a Jewish person, as a transgender person, and as a lower class person -- inspired hir not to cling to the privileges ze did have as hir only foothold in the power structure, but rather to be the best ally ze could be to people of color, to trans women, and others:

“We as trans people can’t liberate ourselves alone. No oppressed peoples can. So how and why will others come to our defense? And whom shall we, as trans people, fight to defend? A few years before he died [Frederick] Douglass told the International Council of Women, ‘When I ran away from slavery, it was for myself; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood up for the rights of women, self was out of the question, and I found a little nobility in the act.’ I believe this is the only nobility to which we should aspire -- that is, to be the best fighters against each other’s oppression, and in doing so, to build links of solidarity and trust that will forge an invincible movement against all forms of injustice and inequality” (p. 92).

so, yeah. i’d love to hear these two people chat. i relate deeply to both of their experiences and think they’d find a lot of commonalities between themselves. ...and then with Feinberg i’d love to give Lister a piece of my mind when it comes to her classism.

#trans history #sapphic history #leslie feinberg #< my icon and my hero #anne lister #< a garbage gay who's a genius about so many things yet falls for the classist bullshit of the very people who made her life difficult #averygaypost #uhhhh....anyone have any Thoughts?

20 notes · View notes

skamofcolor · 5 years

Note

why are you one of the Eve haters? Is it just because she's not a POC?

Lol, so the short answer is yes.

But if you feel like reading me rant, here’s my longer response. This is just gonna be about the casting and styling because I think that’s the part that most important in terms of this blog. I do have my own thoughts on characterization, but let me not get into that here, lol.

When the casting call went out, the show said it could be for a queer woman of any ethnicity. So maybe this was on me, but that alone sparked a hope that they would be casting a Woman of Color, particularly someone who was a Black stud/butch/tomboi/masc/etc. lesbian in that role. When I found out that they cast a skinty feminine white woman instead, it was extremely disheartening. There was literally no reason why they had to cast her as white. Even if she is Grace’s cousin that A) is a choice made by the showrunners and B) doesn’t rely on whiteness to be true. Multiracial families exist.

My issue is that someone’s ethnoracial identity absolutely cannot be thought of as a separate entity from their gender/sexuality.

Okay, so let me explain.

Every version of Eskild is not only vital to their Noora’s storyline, but to their Isak’s. And for me, that’s why Eve’s casting made no sense to me the most. Now, to be fair: we had a submission earlier that said it wasn’t right that no Eskild was getting the same scrutiny as Eve, and I think that’s a fair assessment (and the submission is worth reading). No other Eskild has gotten this kind of criticism for being a white cis guy.

But for me personally, when it came to the other remakes, my annoyance was always at the lack of diversity in the Isaks first and foremost. This is because it stood to reason that whomever was cast as Eskild would have to match up. I think at a certain point I was resigned to the idea that each remake would have cis white gay Eskilds for cis white gay Isaks. Would it have been really nice to have more gender/racial diversity? Yes, of course. To me though, it didn’t feel as pertinent for those remakes to cast diverse Eskilds. Both because of my resignation and also because… tbh this kind of matching made sense to me in terms of an intersectional lens - meaning the types of discrimination that Isak faced should match up with Eskild, in order to really make the Pride lecture make sense. Right or not, it’s how I felt. Obviously other folks, especially lgbtq+ MoC who don’t have any rep in the Skams, can and might feel differently.

Now, when I’m saying intersectional lens, I want to be clear. When Kimberlé Crenshaw first coined intersectionality (though ofc her focus was on Black women specifically, not all PoC) she wasn’t really talking about identity at all, she was talking about discrimination. it means that the oppression people with multiple marginalized identities face has to do with overlapping forms of discrimination.

Isak only has one marginalized identity. On the discrimination he faces from that alone, Eskild can wholeheartedly relate. That’s what make that mentorship/friendship so important and more equitable.

Shay on the other hand has multiple marginalized identities: woman, Black, lesbian. The discrimination she faces isn’t just because she’s Black, or just because she’s a woman, or just because she’s a lesbian. They all intersect, and the sexism, antiblack racism, and homophobia she will face are inextricably intertwined. There is no and never will be a white lgbtq+ person can ever, nor will ever, understand what it means to navigate the world as an lgbtq+ Person of Color.This is the heart of my disappointed with Eve’s casting.

Again - as a Black lesbian, Shay will have to deal with sexism/antiblackness/homophobia. All as one, all informing each other, and inseparable. This is something a white woman, even if she experiences sexism/homophobia, will never, ever be able to grasp. Even if Eve were butch, she wouldn’t ever be able to understand this experience. White women do not experience sexism the way a Black woman or an other WoC does. White lgbtq+ people do not experience homophobia or transphobia the way a Black person or an other PoC does. There is no possible way for them to know what we go through.

And so. The idea of having a white woman lecture Shay on Pride? On the discrimination she’s going to face? On the history of lgbtq+ liberation in the U.S? Specifically when it was started by trans women of color? It’s ugly to me.

It’s true we don’t know what they will do in Shay’s season. But I can’t stop thinking about this. I’m not speaking for all lgbtq+ PoC, just from my experience. I honestly do know that there are lgbtq+ PoC who are really freaking excited about Eve. And that’s great for them, honestly. If other folks can still see themselves in Eve and feel represented, that’s a good thing.

But for many of us, we didn’t/don’t have any lgbtq+ characters of color to look up to. The majority of lgbtq+ characters in the U.S. media have been white. Even in 2018, 58% of lbpq+ characters in the media were white. And even when we do get lgbpq+ characters of color, most of them weren’t stud/butch/tomboi/masc/etc. or gender non-conforming. Rarely are they trans or nonbinary. They didn’t and don’t reflect a lot of the realities that we live in. This lack of visibility means something. When every lgbtq+ person you see on TV is white, it’s alienating. (See this Autostraddle survey for more on this data.)

But I can’t feel that way. Because I was a Shay, and in my experience, being lectured to by white people only served to push me deeper into the closet. It only made me think that being gay was for white people. Because their whiteness protected them and they got to be out in a way I thought I would never be. That is, until I met older lgbtq+ PoC. Who looked like me and shared my cultures and got it. And yes, she’s a TV character. But I’m devastated that from what we’ve seen, Shay won’t get this.

Fine, though, they cast who they cast. My biggest issue is in terms of presentation and style. First, it literally makes no sense to me why Eve isn’t a butch lesbian. Second, I HATE the way they styled her in hipster faux-poverty aesthetics.

We look at the role of Eskild and his characterization, his femininity is a huge part of who he is. It’s a massive part of the Pride lecture he gives Isak, especially because a large part of Isak’s internalized homophobia comes from just wanting to be “normal.” Eskild is not ashamed of being flamboyant/feminine because it’s who he is, and he said a big fuck you to gender roles and expectations. This is the same with the other Esikld remakes that we’ve seen. They show that being who you are is never a stereotype.

Binaries are fake and socially constructed, yes. BUT with Eskild’s femininity in mind, it would only make sense to make Eve butch. There is a massive stigma against GNC lesbians/queer women not only in general society but in lgbtq+ spaces. This is not to bash or police feminine/femme lgbtq+ women (I’m one of them!) but it’s also to acknowledge that the ways in which butch/stud/tomboi/masc/etc. women express themselves makes them extremely visible, and that’s not a privilege. Butch women face high rates of sexual violence and assault based on their appearance in the same way that feminine gay men do.

And even with the increase in lgbtq+ women in media (again see the Autostraddle survey) the majority of portrayals are NOT of butch/stud women. Which fucking sucks because that’s erasing a huge population within lgbtq+ communities. It’s not that having a butch white woman lecture Shay really makes it any better for me personally, but it would’ve made so much more sense to have Eve be butch. Because that’s the direct correlation to Eskild’s femininity.

Finally, once you cast someone you can style their character anyway you want. Just because Eve’s actress dresses/looks as she does doesn’t mean Eve has to. So why did the showrunners chose to style Eve the way they did? Rather than do something actual subversive, they styled her like every other 20-something middle class white hipster who relies on an aesthetic of poverty. (I know one of her defining character traits now is that she never has any money, but… something about that framing feels like it’s supposed to be kitschy and not because she’s literally impoverished. Could be wrong, but look at Grace in comparison.).

Personally, this stylization is especially hard to witness because of how many white lgbtq+ people I know who dress and act exactly like Eve. It’s not something that’s specific to white people - I’ve seen plenty of middle to upper class PoC aestheticize poverty too - but this kind of thing is often rooted in the junctions of class and whiteness. For more on this, I would really suggest reading this article. It really gets into this like… fetish that middle/upper class lgbtq+ people have for “looking” poor.

Anyway this is really long so let me wrap up. My issue here is mainly what my issues has consistently been with some of these shows. The showrunners want to include “diverse” issues and (for the most part) a “diverse” cast but it seems like they don’t have a crew that have strong race/gender/class analyses. Eve could’ve really been something but from casting and styling alone, her character already falls flatly for me.

So, yes. At the base of it is because she’s not a Black stud, but it goes deeper than that, too.

- mod Jennifer

#answered ask #long post

33 notes · View notes

ardentfemme · 6 years

Text

Beauty is Pain: A Fierce Fem’s Guide to Overcoming Misphoria

“The body has been made so problematic for women that it has often seemed easier to shrug it off and travel as a disembodied spirit.”

- Adrienne Rich, “Of Woman Born”

When I was four, I shimmied into my mom’s fuchsia pencil skirt, hitching it up around my tiny body like a strapless dress. I flounced around the house in it like a tube-topped mermaid caught in a net. Next came the heels. I teetered in them and crashed into walls with no concern for scuffs, skids, or scratches. To complete the look, I smeared my mother’s Mary Kay Midnight Primrose all over my face, indulging in a little taste or two.

I was invincible.

When I was ten, I got my period. Evolution, God, or the Devil himself had catalyzed some alchemical reaction in a body that, for the first time, seemed outside the realm of my control. Womanhood was not all fun and games, my mother explained to me. Womanhood meant buying pads with my babysitting money and crumpling up with embarrassment when the only cashiers to be seen were men. Womanhood was double-wrapping your pads before you threw them in the trash in case your father or uncle or second-removed-visiting-from-out-of-town cousin stumbled upon them and recoiled at the evidence of Eve’s grave sin.

Ten was also the year a man groped me on public transportation for the first time. That same day, I threw away my skirts and pretend makeup. To exist in my body seemed an unbearable task. To bear the weight of my mosquito-bite tits, my ever-growing thighs, my increasingly curvaceous behind, seemed impossible.

I began to realize that my body didn’t belong to me. It belonged to the old men on the street who whistled at me, to the pizza-faced teens on buses who poked and prodded me, to my young male peers who snapped my training bra at recess. My body belonged to my future husband - Oh, when you get married one day, you’ll understand. My body belonged to the children I would raise with my future husband - Oh, when you have kids one day, you’ll understand. And, I learned, men would readily access what they knew their socially-sanctioned right would afford them - my hair was for Uncle Dan to swat, my breasts were for Mr. Crawford to cup, my behind was for Principal Ulricht to pat.

Because my body belonged to men, who dictated what was and what was not attractive in women, I was taught to groom it in accordance with their needs and wants. I was taught to distance myself from my body, to alienate myself from any pleasure it might bring me. “Beauty is pain,” my mother always told me as she plucked wayward hairs from my Brooke Shields brows.

If beauty was pain, then I decided to be ugly.

At twelve, I cut off all my hair and refused to experiment with makeup and clothes like the other girls my age. Teachers commended me for taking my school work seriously and not concerning myself with all the trivialities that come with pre-teen girlhood. My parents started to express concern that I wasn’t “like the other girls.” In a sense, they were right. I was deeply connected to the little girl who played dress up in her mother’s heels and lipstick years earlier, but I felt so alienated from my own body that that complex lexicon of feminine symbology had lost its meaning for me. I had no vocabulary with which to express my own experience with gender, misogyny, and my burgeoning sexuality.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I petitioned the school board to turn the all-boys basketball team co-ed because a certain crush of mine wanted to play. When she asked, “You’re gonna be on my team, right?” I faced a conundrum. Surely, I had realized by then that I was batting for her team in a sense, but I certainly didn’t want to play sports.

By then, I was starting to reclaim the parts of me that had been stolen when I was younger. I wore frilly dresses, unabashedly experimented with makeup (and made some egregious mistakes involving neon eyeshadows), and amassed a sizeable collection of junk jewelry that I paired impeccably with exotic thrift store finds.

But when I got to college, I got sucked into the radical feminist ideology that had swept campus. By reclaiming my femininity, I was making myself complicit in my own oppression under patriarchy by appealing to the male gaze. Just as I did almost a decade before, I threw out the dresses, makeup, and even quite a few of my bras. (In retrospect, the whole bra-burning thing was pretty liberating.) I was claiming my body as mine, I thought. My body was not an object for male sexual gratification. My body was not to be commodified and repackaged to sell products. My body was not an incubator for babies to be churned out in some state-sanctioned transfer of property. My body was mine and mine alone. If it took abjuring makeup and dresses to communicate this, then I would do so.

That same year, when I was twenty, I met my first butch. She was everything I never knew I wanted - curse-slinging, beer-guzzling, knife-brandishing. Loud and seemingly unafraid of anything whenever we were in a big group. Soft and fumbling when she was alone with me. We fell into a dance that felt new and exciting, and, at the same time, ancient and sacred. It almost seems a disservice to retroactively label this dance love. It was a coming home to myself.

In her own way, she reminded me of what I discovered when I was four years old, playing in my mother’s closet: I am a powerful creative force and any way I choose to shape and mold my image is reflective of that. She instilled in me what my radfem circle had alluded to - My body belonged to me. Sharing a cigarette outside a club, her hand dipping below my skirt, she asked me, “Is this okay?” In that moment, I realized I had the ability to dictate what I would and would not allow to happen to my body. I had a voice, I discovered. And I used that voice to chant yes yes YES in that abandoned back alley. A mantra, a summoning, an outpouring of gratitude.

All those years, I had been led to believe that my body was intended for the Mr. Crawfords and Principal Ulrichts of this world. In that moment, I would gladly have relinquished ownership to her instead. She had returned my body to me after decades of struggling.

In a sense, you could say the rest is history. Except that I still have difficulty existing in this body. If I’m being honest, I still feel alienated from my physicality often. Even when I’m intimate with someone, I see myself through the male gaze, silently counting my numerous flaws - stretch marks, moles, and shouldn’t I be doing more squats? My ass is getting flabby. I should cut back on the carbs, too. Although the people I love don’t expect me to be a hairless, poreless statue of a woman, I have been policed long enough by the panopticon of patriarchy to police myself.

I still get groped on public transit. I still get eviscerated by fellow feminists for being complicit in my own oppression and by fellow lesbians alike for not being “lesbian” enough. I get called out for mimicking heteropatriarchal gender roles and for not “queering” my gender enough.

Ultimately, to be a woman is to be under constant scrutiny - whether the scrutiny comes from one’s in-group or out-group, we are positioned to be judged - and often found lacking.

After spitballing with a friend, I arrived at the word “misphoria” - a combination of “misogyny” and “dysphoria” to help explain this bodily alienation many women, specifically fem/femme lesbians, feel as a result of constantly being dissociated from our physical selves. I wanted to avoid lifting the term “dysphoria” from its original context as it relates largely to trans experiences with gender. I hoped misphoria as a concept could broaden the conversation without appropriating terminology.

Due to what I’m referring to as “misphoria,” my relationship with my body has been fraught throughout my entire life. I was conditioned to believe that I had little to no agency over my body, my desire, or my goals. My first butch used her own body to guide me into an understanding that every inch is mine.

Similarly, my relationship to womanhood and to my feminine presentation is my own. If I wear lipstick, it is an homage to my mother, who taught me that being a woman means strength. If I make the conscious decision to put on a skirt it is to honor that young girl who didn’t feel safe from the prying hands of men on city buses. And if I wear lace and frilly undergarments, it is for you, all the butches who have taught and re-taught me that my body is mine alone.

In a sense, this is a love letter. This is a love letter to the butch who valiantly carried my makeup bag up 1,400 ft on a camping trip because I wanted to look cute in the photos. To the butch who just laughed when I said I hadn’t like, you know, shaved down there today. To every butch who has ever opened the door for me or carried a package for me, knowing full well I was just as capable. Each act has helped ameliorate my misphoria by making me feel safe and welcome in my body and in my gender.

As we work toward reclaiming our space, our bodies, and our minds, I am honored to stand beside you.

#butchxfem #femme tag #fem tag #femme identity #misphoria #writing

581 notes · View notes

gayasinstupidpodcast · 6 years

Photo

Gay As In Stupid’s second episode is out! (pun intended)

Hey y’all! It’s Isaac and Aaron and we’re back with another episode of our Fantastically gay podcast, Gay As In Stupid! This month’s episode is about gay trans experiences, where me and Isaac share some of our experiences as gay trans men, talk about the history of societal and medical prejudice, and share an interview with a spectacular trans lesbian on her point of view!

You can find us on the Itunes Podcast App/Webpage at Gay As In Stupid Podcast! You can also find our episodes uploaded to Youtube and Soundcloud! Sorry for any audio goofs this episode! Recoding in my college dorm has proven to be a thotty whom we will have to get used to working with.

Ordinarily, me and Isaac would put our main sources under Further Reading at the top, but I (Aaron) found the main sources I had to go through for this month’s topic to contain disgusting levels of transphobia that I would feel irresponsible telling our listeners to read. If you want to know what I looked through and used, however, feel free to DM me @albert-dj-cashier

Aaron’s 2018 September Recs!

What The Trans?! (podcast)

A roughly hour-per-ep podcast by Michelle and Ashleigh, two trans women living in the U.K! The hosts are witty, informative, and compelling, and they talk about topics like the current events in UK trans politics, representation in media, institutionalized prejudice, and personal experiences! Their episodes are really fun as well as interesting, and they have a great dynamic!

Big Eden

This is an absolutely Classic gay feel-good film, and one of me & my friend Lauren’s personal favorites! It centers around a gay New York artist who returns to his childhood home in Montana to care for his grandfather, and finds himself having to deal with the loose threads he left behind (and Also finds an unexpected love interest). It’s cute, romantic, super funny, and doesn’t leave you with long spans of meaninglessly meaningful shots and call it Film.

Isaac’s 2018 September Recs!

Yank! A WWII Love Story: A New Musical

Follows Stu, a young man who gets drafted into World War II where he ends up becoming a photographer for ‘Yank Magazine, a journal for and by the servicemen’. In present day, Stu’s old journal is discovered, and his story of the war, and his romance with Mitch; a handsome Private he met during training. It’s fun, colorful and absolutely heartbreaking. The songs are memorable, and so are the characters. If you like heart-string pulling gay romances and strong lesbians, this production will make you horny!

MIKA

If you aren’t already listening to MIKA, then I don’t think you’ve been living yet. His songs are sweet and fun to dance to, and truly never get old. He’s gay and a talented singer-songwriter. The music he makes can be best described as Pop/Glam Rock (also GAY!!!) Love yourself and go give “Talk About You” and “Grace Kelly” a listen.

MARCY’S FULL AND WONDERFUL INTERVIEW UNDER THE READ MORE

Q: How do you identify? A: I am a trans woman and a lesbian.

Q: How do you feel trans straight people react to your identity? A: honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t personally know any straight trans people. I’d imagine that we have common grounds on dysphoria and trying to understand gender, but with regards to sexuality, I’m sure it’s kinda up in the air. I doubt there’d be like, hostility regarding my identity. Probably just general acceptance, maybe some minor prodding.

Side note: not to generalize, but from what I understand, straight trans women tend to have different experiences with self-discovery than bi or lesbian trans women. The former tend to figure things out earlier, are sometimes seen as more traditionally feminine, etc. Some of this is from rather TERFy science, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Q: How do you feel your identity is perceived in the LGBT Community? A: from an intracommunity standpoint, I think that trans WLW in general are steadily becoming more accepted as we speak up about or lives and experiences. Many cis WLW, whether actively or passively, exhibit an alarming amount of transphobic beliefs, but I like to think they’re in the minority.

Q: How do you present your gender and what do it mean to you? A: I’m butch, so my experience with womanhood and femininity is… interesting, to say the least. I certainly don’t take a traditional approach to femininity, and I find that very empowering, especially as a trans woman. I don’t wanna force myself into a role that I’m not comfortable filling, just to appeal to what society expects of me. I wear suits and vests and I keep my hair short and I’ve honestly never even touched makeup, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Q: What role do you feel like the intersection of your gender and your sexualilty play in your life? A: my gender and my sexuality are both very important to me, the intersection thereof even moreso. Understanding that intersection has helped me piece together a lot of the questions I had growing up. To put it simply, figuring out that I’m not just trans, but also a lesbian, has helped me figure out like, the past eight-to-ten years’ worth of failed romantic endeavors. The way I experience relationships, the way I interact with people, the way I love are all impacted by both my gender and my sexuality; neither’s importance can be understated.

Q: Do you feel like your gender presentation makes people more prone to invalidate your identity? A: pardon my language but, of fucking course. Like, cis people and transphobes alike will find any reason they can to invalidate a trans person. But the second they find a trans woman who’s a lesbian, who isn’t presenting like a perfectly feminine stereotype, all bets are off my dude. Until I have like, B-cup tits and a soft face, I’m essentially a straight guy in most people’s faces. Which, eh, who cares at this point? Straight people have never understood butch womanhood. I don’t expect them to recognize a trans butch when they see one.

Q: Do you feel like your identity as a gay trans person makes it harder for you to receive proper medical care (hormones, sexual health, etc)? A: quite honestly, I don’t know yet. I’m still pre-HRT; I have yet to jump through the hoops and red tape necessary to get hormones and whatnot. I imagine it’ll be tough, though.

Q: How has your coming out process been different than if you were just trans or gay? A: the biggest difference, for me at least, is that it’s been a multi-step process. For a while I thought I was a bi cis man, then pansexual and agender, then a bi trans woman, and it wasn’t until ~June 2017 that I figured out I was a trans lesbian. Coming out to friends has always been easy; they pick up on new identities and pronouns fairly easy. Honestly, I don’t think my parents quite understand what being trans is right now, but we’re working on it.

Q: Have you ever found yourself feeling guilty over your attraction to women because of your gender identity? A: honestly? At least once a week, I have that dysphoric voice in my head telling me I’m just some creepy straight guy preying on lesbians. I know it isn’t true, it’s just self-doubt and internalized transphobia and TERF rhetoric echoing, but it’s hard to not think that, frankly. Especially when it’s repeated so often.

Q: Do you feel like your voice is heard/your identity is seen between media and the community? A: in media? Outside of a few niche places (and surprisingly, IDW’s Transformers comics), trans lesbians are largely pretty nonexistent. Of course, in the actual community we’re much more populous, but frankly we’re a little bit insular as we tend to mostly befriend and date one another. All in all, don’t think we’re entirely invisible, but I do think we could do with some more fictional representation, and to get more involved with the larger LGBT community.

Q: Is there anything else about your experience as a gay trans person you would like to add? A: admittedly, it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve felt truly comfortable around cis lesbians. Most of my relationships in the past few years have been with other trans girls. There’s a variety of reasons for this, and every woman’s experiences are her own, but for a long time I was afraid that cis lesbians just wouldn’t recognize me as a woman. Q: Would you like your instagram/tumblr to be linked in the episode description? A: sure! I’m @opossumghoul on tumblr and @opossumbutch on other social media

#gay as in stupid podcast #Gay Podcast #lgbt podcast #LGBT Creators #lgbt #gay trans

40 notes · View notes