A discourse with negative and positive points.
In recent days, the butchfemme community on the neighboring platform (Twitter) has been addressing the topic that many posts about femmes, especially Black and fat femmes, do not receive as much relevance, likes, and appreciation as posts involving butches, and although this may seem like a "non-issue," we can delve deeply into this matter. It is also being said by some femmes that butches do not reciprocate in our community, that they only love butches, protecting them and bringing positivity, and that butches are not bringing reciprocity.
To begin with, yes, these are very valid criticisms and we, as butches, just like femmes, must understand, visualize, and denounce negative points in our spaces, especially regarding masculinity and femininity. In this topic, it is addressed how femmes are not gaining much visibility, how many of them are simply pushed to the margins, not desired - in a non-sexualized way - by other people. What was supposed to be just about something on the internet ends up showing us a reality that is often unnoticed, silenced, and this should not happen, nor should it be cultivated in our subcultures. The fact that femmes suffer from invisibility is real, and this is due to the fact that we live in a patriarchal society, where femininity is not seen as something worthy, and this worsens when we talk about femme lesbians, especially our Black femme lesbians who have to fight against misogyny (noire), lesbophobia, and femmephobia. Having mentioned the patriarchy, we must indeed denounce how some butches and other queer masculinities can take advantage of their partners and dynamics, even if marginalized, because this, whether we like it or not, supports the masculinism of the cisheterosexist patriarchy. We need to talk about how butches and studs can indeed cultivate toxic masculinity in our spaces. However, it is also pleasant, as well as necessary, to talk about how butches are treated in a patriarchal society, how we are constantly attacked, harassed, and systematically killed. We must give voice to butches and studes so they can speak out, as well as denounce and give voice to femmes; masculinities can have their negative side, which should not remain in our ideals. And we must not forget, femininity and masculinity ARE oppressive, they hurt us and have problems.
In this second part, I wanted to talk about "butches are not reciprocal" and the like. I think it's a fair point to make, especially in contemporary times where the butch-femme dynamic of the 1950s-1960s is no longer a "trend" within the lesbian community. In past decades, we had gender issues in our spaces, of course, we always have. But saying that butches don't love femmes as much as they love us, when focused solely on us as individuals, is to throw away the entire butchfem culture, it's also a kind fo butchphobia, and this "adoration" can often be the sexualization of our bodies. I agree that, as already mentioned, because we live in a patriarchy, butches can end up corroborating toxic masculinity, preferring to have only their equals around with the intention of promoting themselves. However, this is not something rooted in our homes as butches. Decades ago, butches were butches because of their femmes, and vise versa. There would be no butch without the femmes, and there would be no femme without the butches, although, of course, nowadays, butches are not necessarily butches because they are attracted to femmes, and femmes are not femmes because they are necessarily attracted to butches - our realities have taken different paths, although there are still some more traditional people in this regard, like me, who try to maintain what was once very common in our dyke community. The butchfemme alliance-dynamic has always been about protection, defending and bringing positivity about our equals and our counterparts, spreading our way of life and culture around the world. Again, I think it's fair to mention that there are ill-intentioned butches, just as there are ill-intentioned femmes, in our community - and this type of person should be given attention so we can discuss our problems as a dichotomous and minority group. Butches have their issues and prejudices that need to be addressed (and I can make another post specifically about that), just as femmes have their issues and prejudices that need to be addressed. We need to strengthen the positive points and we should talk about negative issues, but not lightly, as it ends up just turning into stigmatization/hate against femmes and butches (see "butchphobia" and "femmephobia").
theartofmadeline
gracieabrams
vaporwave
2087
romaincrisis
