‘Cause you ain’t got to tell me
It’s just in my nature
So take it like a taker
‘Cause, baby I’m a giver

Earlier this year, lesbian singer-songwriter Chappell Roan had the internet swooning over her splash into country music with the song “The Giver”. Quick to become a sensation among queer women and fans of Roan, this song, often interpreted to be about a ‘service top’, resonated one message at its centre: She gets the job done!

The fun, cheeky, sexual country song explores the joy of giving. There is definitely something fun about a camp queer woman singing country, a genre whose queer artists have been known to play with subversions.

While the beat is catchy and Roan is sensational, it is the lyrics that captured my attention. The song freely takes digs at the trope of heterosexual cis men not being able to please women: And other boys may need a map/ But I can close my eyes/And have you wrapped around my fingers like that.

It sparks a conversation on Giving and Receiving pleasure. Some people are puzzled by the idea of a person solely giving or solely receiving during a sexual encounter, but these dynamics are abundant, complex, and rich in the queer community. This complexity is found reflected in the experiences of stone butch lesbians, who are often met with curiosity, puzzlement or unwarranted questions about how they practise intimacy and why.

When I went looking, I found that most existing literature on stone butch experiences came from American voices and platforms. There is a pressing need to explore this identity within an Indian context and to branch beyond Western notions of stone butch and masc lesbian identities.

In an attempt to fill in some of these representational gaps and explore what it means to embody a masculinity that is both tender and giving within lesbian identity, I spoke with two lesbian-identifying individuals in India about their personal experiences and identities: Pallavi, a 24-year-old butch lesbian from Mumbai, and Ree, a 44-year-old lesbian from Kolkata.

“I did not want to be touched and I didn’t know why.”

“When I started reading about stone butch and pillow princess dynamics, a lot of posts started popping up on my algorithm,” says Pallavi, whose name has been changed. “There would often be mean comments under them. Pillow princesses don’t give head, fuck them! or accusatory comments like I gave head for so long and she wasn’t even touching me.”

Stone refers to “not wanting to receive any sexual touch and/or only desiring sexual touch in specific ways with specific partners; getting sexual and/or mental gratification from sexually pleasing a partner.” The stone butch refers to a butch woman who does not allow herself to be touched during lovemaking and whose pleasure is connected to the act of giving.

When Pallavi came across these negative comments, it took her by surprise. To her, the idea that giving and receiving must be a 50-50 split between two people felt anomalous. She did not buy into the notion that one partner’s sexual practices in bed must mirror the other’s.

When Pallavi had sex for the first time, she wasn’t aware that she was a ‘giver’ or that she would not want to be ‘touched’ during sex. “I did not want to be touched and I didn’t know why,” she says. Chalking it up to the nervousness of the first time, she tried ‘receiving’, “thinking to myself maybe once she starts touching me it will feel just as natural as giving.” She tried it for a bit and soon realized it was not for her. She recalls the feeling it gave her: “I’m not enjoying this, and I’m too eager to continue giving”.

A journey of sexual discovery began for her. While it was clear to her that she did not want to be on the receiving end of touch, what stood out most was her desire to center her sexual partner’s pleasure. “The arousal was physical, emotional, and visual, but the pleasure, I’d say, was cerebral.”

 “Like a mother to us.”

On a pleasant winter day in December, Porshi is gearing up for an evening of pop-up stalls, music and performances. Porshi, Bangla for ‘neighbour’, is a community space for queer people located in Jodhpur Park, Kolkata. It is run by Sappho for Equality, a registered non-profit working in Eastern India for the rights of LBT individuals.

In the hustle and bustle of the evening emerges 44-year old Ree, who manages the cafe at Porshi. In her warm and comforting demeanour, she greets me and offers me coffee before we settle into the gallery for our conversation.

During her early days of queer activism and community work, Ree had joined Manas Bangla, a state level network of sexual minorities operating in West Bengal. She started engaging with the network and worked with communities of queer men on HIV prevention.

During her field work days, Ree became friends with Aparna, whom she lovingly calls Apu. Aparna was keen to introduce Ree to another queer educator, and in her tender regard for Ree, she describes Ree to  the educator by saying “Ree is like a mother to us, it is Ree who keeps us.”

At the Chandannagar railway station during the festival Jagadhatri Puja, the educator met Ree for the very first time and was astounded. Laughing, Ree enacts his bewilderment for me: “Are you Ree? Are you sure that you are Ree!” They were expecting someone who would be adorned in a saree, have long hair, and wear a braid, traditional hallmarks of femininity. The image of a masculine person as maternal was difficult for him to comprehend. This shock is something masculine women and butches are all too familiar with.

While we are speaking, a soft euphoric feeling settles into me: the knowledge that this is the very first time in my life that I’m speaking to a lesbian in her 40s. It is tough to escape Ree’s easy, soothing presence, the comfort of a community elder.

“Butch is the secret of my energy!”

“If I need a breast examination for medical reasons, I verbally explain it to the doctor,” Ree shares. “I won’t be able to undress and show it to them.” Even with her most intimate friends and the people she has known forever, Ree does not feel comfortable undressing. These dysphoric feelings are not left behind in the bedroom. “You might say that in front of an erotic relation, I must be able to overcome [body dysphoria], but for sexual acts, how it is performed differs from person to person,” she explains.

“I am not a receiver,” Ree adds. During penetration, she assumes the role of the giver and does not see herself being on the receiving end of it. However, equally important are other mediums of expression during sex, whether that is oral sex or foreplay. In these other acts, she ends up finding herself on both ends of giving and receiving. “When someone kisses me, won’t that delight me?”

Ultimately, she feels that whatever two people do in a bedroom is something they negotiate for themselves. Sexual practices vary from person to person. “Whether I take the t-shirt off or keep it on,” she stresses that how one conducts themselves sexually can shift with different partners and under different circumstances.

Not one to succumb to easy labelling, she insists gender and sexuality are fluid. Whenever asked about her gender identity, she only laughs and says: “Butch is the secret of my energy!”

“Butch feels like home.”

After having had long hair throughout school and college life, in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pallavi convinced her mother to give her a haircut at home. She did so on the pretext that nobody was stepping out to go anywhere anyway, making it a good time to experiment. As her reluctant mother kept cutting off her long black hair, Pallavi started experiencing a sudden surge of euphoria. “Looking back, it was choppy and probably not such a great haircut,” she laughs, “but I felt like a different person.”

In India, long hair exemplifies an epitome of feminine natural beauty, a message which is incessantly reinforced through films, advertisements, and one’s own family members. Deepa Mehta’s critically acclaimed film Water depicts how only a few decades ago, Hindu women were subject to a ritualistic shaving of their heads upon being widowed. The rite serves to mark her new identity, to make her unappealing to men. It left little room for protest or agency. It is tough to rid hair of its implications. Short hair on women is rarely depicted, usually only deployed in media or films to portray “the feminist type” or “the intellectual kind”.

Short hair like Pallavi’s is often referred to as a ‘boy’s cut’. For her, the simple act of cutting her hair short demanded immense negotiation (with her mother) and ultimately became a pathway to thwart gender and reclaim how she presents to the world.

Pallavi grew up idealizing what she calls the “soft boys of Bollywood.” From Imran Khan in Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na, to Shahid Kapoor in Jab We Met, to Saathiya’s Vivek Oberoi, she “loved their casual, serene aura.” Finding herself thrown off by the more macho, aggressively masculine heroes typical of Bollywood films, she found her respite and her inspiration in these softer portrayals.

Her giving nature is not restricted to sexual practices or romantic relationships only. It extends to her deeply cherished friendships too. “A lot of my happiness is tied to my partner’s or friends’ joy,” she explains. “I like to see them thrive.” To Pallavi, the joy she derives from others is deeply linked to her masculinity.

In the average Indian household, the man is the provider. Despite changing social attitudes, the measure of masculinity still lies in a stoic ability to provide materially, practise emotional restraint and control rather than care, be vulnerable or present in domestic life. Conversely, femininity is idealized in self sacrifice: The woman is expected to bend over backwards, be the devoted daughter and wife. The norms for man and woman, masculinity and femininity, are rigidly prescribed.

Ree and Pallavi not only defy expectations of gender in their embrace of an unapologetically masculine expression — they subvert it. They reject the limiting mould of masculinity itself to reshape it.

For Ree, her understanding of care came from her observing her mother. Explaining the matriarchal nature of her childhood home, she says, “It was my mother who had the last word.” It was in the same mother that she witnessed how “how the self is stretched and extended” in service of others. Today, Ree lives as part of a queer kinship with her friend Aparna, who is a trans woman, other queer friends, and Aparna’s adopted child. Her masculine and maternal selves exist together. It requires no explanation.

“Butch feels like home,” Pallavi says.

We step out of the gallery back into the evening unfolding at Porshi. There are chairs pushed around the perimeter of the tiny hall. Someone is dancing in high heels to Asha Tai’s beautifully rendered Ekta Deshlai Kathi Jalao/Tatey Aagun Paabe. 

“Strike a match. It will light a fire in you,” the lyrics declare.

Like “The Giver,” it signals a declaration of taking agency in one’s pleasure. Both Pallavi and Ree — who are two decades apart in age and from the opposite ends of the country — challenge conventional ideas of masculinity, tenderness and care. They make one reckon with just how expansive the art of giving can be.

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