‘I’m a Trans Man Worried My Friends See Me as a Butch Lesbian’

Q:

starting off with that, i really dont want to offend anyone with my question or come across as disrespectful because I am just genuinely !!! VERY confused !!
i have been trying to research and reinform myself about the terms butch lesbian and transgender men for the past while. i have seen many people identifying themselves as transmasc or a tboy (which im aware can lean more into the nonbinary or androgynous identity) who also identify as a butch lesbian– that part i can understand, but the part that i am unsure about is how trans man can identify as butch lesbian?

ive been socially transitioned as a transgender man for ages, and after finally starting my medical transition I wanted to find comfort in queer groups. I found myself surrounded by a group of enby lesbians and studs and one bisexual, who had, in short, “adopted me” as their “transmasc twink” who would “playfully” be bullied by “mean lesbians” (again i swear I am not trying to rude or anything, these were terms or things that my then-friends referred to themselves as or directly said/joked about). oftentimes though it felt more demeaning (being called like “come here, boy!” which was validating my gender identify but still felt oddly infantilizing but isnt thr point. or like i was being treated like a dog.) .

but anyways, we would have conversations about queerness and gender identity when we met up as queer spaces, which was all mostly fine, i tried to stay quiet because most of things discussed would be centered around on woman attraction or femininity (i as a labelled gay man do not experience attraction to woman, but now im not sure because attraction to women is “masc” and “everyone likes women a little bit” but again, im trying to not take the words i was told at face value).

but something that got mentioned was that a butch lesbian can be a trans man because “its basically the same.” this had left me confused, incredibly dysphoric and just. grasping at straws, because I dont understand how non-man loving non-man (even if one/both of them have a closeness or connection to masculinity like as a transmasc or butch) is a label that can also encapsulate someone who identifies as a man.

to me, it almost feels invalidating in of itself– is it implying that a trans man isnt actually a man then, because they can be in a non-man relationship?? ive held off on talking to my old friends since because now I am truly very unsure on if they have even seen me as a man this entire time, or if they’ve just nodded along and said yes while viewing me as a butch lesbian, or someone who is not a man.

i know labels aren’t cut and dry and that queerness is an expansive identity and I do NOT want to be transphobic or disinclusionary to anyone because I rlly do believe everyone should be able to explore their identity, but.
genuinely because of this ive been questioning if lesbians in the queer community even see transmen as men (which is a horrible thing to generalise, I know, but I am just genuinely unsure and just so so lost and confused 😭), or what I MYSELF am now (it isnt even mentioning the one person in the group who would say that “everyone is bisexual” when i thought i was very certain in being exclusively attracted to men, but now im not sure because ive basically been told im not “allowed to be”).

i want to be confident that this isnt representive of all queer communities and im sure its not, but im just worried and confused and I feel invalidated (but I dont even know if I CAN feel invalidated without it being labeled as transphobic), i just ask for someone to explain how a trans man can be a lesbian without it being something that says “if you dont listen to my identity then fuck off” because that is all the responses I have received even while trying to be respectful (which i can understand, with how alot of butch transmascs or butch lesbians often under fire on social media for trying to exist but i dont try to be rude i am a poor lost boy. again i am so so sorry if any language or anything ive said here is transphobic or rude because i just want to share my experience and find something that makes sense of it all…. thank u so much…

A:

Hey man. There are no worries here about offending me, because you’ve posed some very understandable questions. There’s also the matter of a pretty discourteous friend group you found yourself in, but I’ll speak to that later down.

Labelling, trans-masculinity, and butchness

Your question about whether trans men can be butch is at the heart of identity diversity. The borders between people’s self-identities are seldom clear-cut. Over the course of our lives, most of us will adjust our self-identification somewhere along the way. Those changes could then rub up against an adjacent, but perhaps contradictory identity and create friction.

I once responded to a previous letter writer who wanted this question answered for themselves. I recommend looking into that response, since I also go into (some of) the history of butchness and its relation to historical queerness. My conclusion to the submitter was that gender identity is primarily something a person feels inside themselves. And it’s up to individual people to find a group of labels that gives them internal consistency.

There will always be disagreement over how we define and label identities. At a glance, some dictionary definitions of butch don’t mention lesbianism but characterize butchness as a form of performed masculinity. As in, anybody who wants to present in a noticeably masculine way might call themselves butch by these definitions. I realize that dictionary definitions are not without issues, but I’m using the examples to point out that butchness has accepted meanings even when lesbianism is absent.

When lesbianism is present — such as when you ask whether trans men can identify as butch lesbians — butchness takes a meaning with roots in lesbian and queer subcultures. In these cases, the labelling is really up to the individual. Although I’m trans and strive to be ‘conventionally’ feminine, many trans people do not experience their gender in absolutes. Transgender identity spans people who do not medically or socially transition, bi- and multi-gender people who feel differently at various times, and non-binary identities of all kinds. Aggressive categorization and labelling of such diverse identities is bound to disappoint a lot of people — I think it’s futile to hone in on labels when we could ask how people feel about their labels and whether they’re a good fit.

There are trans-mascs who still feel enough kinship to femininity that they consider themselves lesbian. Often, this is because the term ‘lesbian’ has more meaning to them than a label of sexuality. ‘Lesbian’ may instead describe an approach to loving women that is not heteronormative — one that is distinctly queer and sapphic, even though the lover is masculine. For that same trans-masc, identifying themselves as ‘heterosexual’ or ‘straight’ won’t fit because it signals a heteronormative approach to love that doesn’t fit their interests or dating goals.

I think this is well-exhibited on communities like Reddit’s /r/StraightTransGirls. This subreddit is aimed at trans women who consider themselves ‘straight’ or ‘heterosexual’. Browsing through their postings, I see that most of them have a vision for dating and life that aligns with heteronormativity. That’s not a bad thing on its own because it’s every trans person’s right to pursue a life that aligns with their vision of gender. But I do find it interesting that they feel strongly about their identity to form a supportive community and insist upon it.

Lastly, I also want to touch on the context and labels of convenience. Gender and sexuality are fluid, wibbly-wobbly concepts when examined closely. I’m fond of the idea that the tighter you try to grip onto labels, the more they’ll slip through your fingers. People label and re-label themselves for lots of reasons, and it’s not always to assert with concrete certainty that this is me. If you subscribe to the idea that gender and sexuality are fluid at all, then you’ll know that a given label is only valid to someone until they feel differently.

People use different labels depending on their social connections to others. People lie to those they think are unsafe. People may revert to a more widely-known label like ‘trans’ or ‘queer’ if they suspect the other person won’t understand the more specific ‘fluid demi-boy’. People get boxed into categories they don’t like if that’s the only available option in the paperwork. The label used on a dating profile could be a signalling tool — like the above example of calling yourself ‘lesbian’ or ‘sapphic’ to signal that you like women but in a gay way. Sure, ‘heterosexual’ might be a better dictionary fit for a trans-masc person primarily attracted to women, but people live much closer to vibes than to the dictionary.

Self-identity and label overlap also happens a lot. People sometimes opt for a take-all-comers approach to labels and dip into everything that applies. I consider myself bisexual, lesbian, and sapphic. One can wonder if I should just pick one between ‘lesbian’ and ‘bisexual’, but how else should I explain my lived reality, which is [deep breath]:

I’m very attracted to women and exclusively form relationships with women, but I also develop attractions toward men. However, my attraction to men varies in intensity and often fizzles in reality, but I do want to like them more. I could never see myself in love with a man, but I’ve had sex with them and enjoyed it. I’m also actively trying to explore more of my interest in men. I just love women in a really special and profound way that nobody has matched. I can’t tell if my interest in men is dampened by past negative experiences or if it’s innate. The whole thing changes from year-to-year and I don’t know what the future holds.

Yeah, put a label on that mess.

I think you need better friends.

What’s also important is that you found yourself in a friend group where you wanted to explore queer socialization but the present company decided to belittle you. Whether or not you proverbially stamped your feet and asserted a boundary, it’s still crude to subject someone to ‘polite’ bullying as a form of group socialization. The ‘come here, boy!’ remark is a pretty straightforward case of gender ewphoria, in which your gender identity is validated in a gross way. Good friends shouldn’t be subjecting each other to that kind of behavior.

I also think your friend group got it wrong when they claim that trans men can identify as butch lesbians because they’re ‘basically the same’. That’s condensing complex identities and personal histories into something that loses most of its context. And as you experienced this, it also misgenders trans men and characterizes them as a different kind of woman. And while some trans men feel that way, that’s certainly not a safe assumption to make in general. This kind of condensing labels down to the point where they lose their context and turn hostile to some of the labelled people is the exact opposite of what the points I tried to make here. Namely that labels are incredibly flexible and often can’t encompass a person’s experience on their own. And it’s best to let people decide for themselves, rather than have labels imposed on them.

I don’t know what your current relationship with this group is, but I just want you to hear that a queer social group shouldn’t make you feel belittled, misgendered, or disrespected.

I hope I came across sensibly, especially since you posed reasonable and sensitive questions. Identity and labelling are an eternal part of being queer. And although labels have generally accepted meanings and understandings, they also have a tendency to break down on contact with lived experiences. I believe that one of the strengths of queerness is a willingness to adopt new identities as valid when they don’t cause serious harm to others. It’s how people developed and then lived out concepts like demi-genders and alt-sexualities in pursuit of a more self-assured life. Conversely, I don’t think queer groups benefit from vicious identity gatekeeping or worse, unfair discrimination amongst ourselves.

There’s a laundry list of queer concepts that I don’t fully comprehend and I’m not practiced in: neo-pronouns, xenogenders, and nounself identities. I nonetheless try to not act with hostility toward people who do identify under those banners and I always assume they’re acting in good faith when they request a particular mode of reference. In part because that’s how I want to be treated, and in part because I assume that they know more about their internal world than I do.