With Gratitude and Struggle: Loving Butch/Femme as a Trans Woman
“Butch/Femme is important to me because butches and femmes writing and discussing what it meant to be who we are shaped my understanding of myself and how I can show up in the world.”
“Butch/Femme is important to me because butches and femmes writing and discussing what it meant to be who we are shaped my understanding of myself and how I can show up in the world.”
“Dating broken white women became a way to reprise a powerlessness that years of sexual abuse and generations of blackphobia had tricked me into believing in. I drowned this feeling of powerlessness in weed and seeking out relationships in which I could engage in yet remain completely hidden from view.”
“Form-fitting feels different than tailored and my form is something I’m super protective of — so why the fuck did I decide to wear leggings today?”
Is there a space within sex positivity for those of us who feel uncomfortable doing what sex positivism seems to ask of us?
Why is it that time and time again, people act like they can’t make me uncomfortable? That as a butch — as well as a queer person, a top, someone who likes to flirt and be sexual just like most human beings — it’s impossible to sexually harass me?
She looked me up and down, shook her head like she was clearing her ears, and then turned to check the sign on the door. Ah, I thought.
“It’s easy for us to say that we don’t participate in the patriarchy because we are women, or because we have been women, that we have known what it’s like to be objectified, oppressed, fetishized. The thing is that we queers can perpetuate rape culture just as much as the next frat boy…”
I want to talk about shape-shifting, and clothing, and being a butch who wears things, because so much of butchness is tied up in the things we put on our body.
It’s that tie-straightening and sunglass removal feeling.
“I’ve seen some queer people who insist on holding doors, and other queers who use their stilettos to step on the feet of the men who do the same. I love them both, but I’m not sure if I can call sides in a concept of gentlemanly behavior that’s much older than any of us.”
“I just don’t see why a woman would want to aspire to masculinity when she doesn’t like men.”
“That’s what you wish you could tell her when you’re staring at your shoes or finishing that drink or pretending there’s nothing else to say.”
“I get angry at myself for having feelings this big to begin with, and then I wrestle for a few hours with the unique mixture of self-loathing, rage, and sobbing.”
“If I wear my heart on my sleeve – and I do these days, much to the shock and dismay of a butch gone prematurely tender – then the sleeve itself is my masculinity.”
“I’m all about Lisa Frank right now because of what she means to my understanding of gender, sexuality, and the fluid nature of both.”