#butch experience

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Source: The Exploding Frangipani ; Lesbian Writing From Australia and New Zealand -edited by Cathie Dunsford and Susan Hawthorne

[batwings138044]

im on my period rn and feel like i should kill my uterus and eat it or something

[cowboyjen68]

Anon Ask

If I may ask, who was your “butch awakening” if there was such a person in your life? Like, a person who inspired you to embrace butchness?

Answer: I think it was probably a combination of women on TV and in the movies, like Jo (straight in real life) from The Facts of LIfe and Tatum O Neal(also straight) in The Bad News Bears, Kristy McNichol (lesbian) in Family and Jodie Foster in Freaky Friday (and just about everything else she was in--lesbian) who let me see that other tomboys existed outside my small world.

In 1995 or so I was attending a festival for the second time with my first girlfriend (a femme) and my friends. I was helping a woman who was a bit older than me and she experiencing some health issues. After carrying her things to a pile she invited me to sit under the shade with her and get a cold drink. She said (and I remember these worlds clearly) "You are just the cutest butch, thank you for helping me".

The only other person to refer to me as butch (that I knew of) was my femme girlfriend and I just assumed it was an affectionate term she was using for me to be sweet and I didn't really think I could be truly butch like the other butches I knew from the festvial and from bars and in my life.

When she said that I was amazed. A stranger clocked me as butch and said so. It was at that moment many dots were connected. Much of the butch experience for me is being recognized as a masculine women. The outside world sees me As a female who is not doing "woman" quite right according to the standards of our culture.

We can't hide our butchness so we either embrace it or fight it, the latter not ending well and often proving impossible. Being butch and seen as such is pretty effortless. We just go outside. LOL

I don't require any outside validation for my butchness because I am solid in who I am but it did take recoginizing that the people around me see me differently due to the way I move, the space I take up, my "energy" for lack of a better term. That woman so many years ago changed my life without even knowing by making me aware that I was not wrong about thinking my experiences were a bit different than woman who were more feminine than me.

It was my friends and my personal interactions with many people, those who liked me and those who didn't, that taught me my masculinity, my butchness does not make me "different from other girls" in a bad way. I get to be a woman and maculine. A butch. And with luck and my personality I am grateful to be sort of a positive ambassador of butches in my local community.

Edited to correct my mistake. It was Tatum O Neal in Bad News Bears

[dragonsspire]

As we all know, I started working for a clown establishment this summer. This establishment is a business-casual office and I thought that my wardrobe from back when I worked at the bank (evil job) would be sufficient.

Alas, no. Wearing my banking clothes in the way I wore them back then threw me into some mild dyphoria. Surprising. I am firmly of the opinion that a dress is simply a tube of fabric and is inherently gender neutral.

But I forgot about other people. The way people treat me when I wear "feminine" cloths upsets me. I don't like being treated like a girl. Primarily because I'm almost 30 so it feels infantalizing, but also because misogyny is terrible!

So I finally caved and bought some blazers (they're being shipped from the states thanks to my lovely fiancée) and I went to the clothing store my mom works at and they blessedly had a whole wack of 3XL men's dress shirts on clearance. I bought 3 so I can have 5 shirts that make me happy.

Being butch is wild. I look like a man and yet I've never felt so comfortable in my womanhood and body as I do now.

[embersgiantkillerdog]

I've been around too many couples and too much lovey shit recently, I like that stuff but I does make me sad I just remember that I feel deeply alone in my core, I feel like every sock seems to have a pair but mine and everything I feel like I've found the sock that matches it turns out they have a different trim or pattern or something and I'm just back at that yearning for the pair like my sock is whole and doesn't need fixing or anything but it would just be nice to find the other sock.

[embersgiantkillerdog]

Ugh the girl I thought was flirting with me isn't flirting with me I asked her and although I'm just glad/relived to have a definitive answer it is very minorly disappointing, I liked having someone interested in me I wasn't really as interested in her in as she seemed to be me (which is also a relief tbh) but still kinda sucks to find out she is just a flirty person in general, thought I was special for a split sec lol, I know it's just rsd and rejection that's making me disappointed but it's okay to feel that I do feel like crying but I think that's because I feel like I've been rejected a lot recently for my hackles up as my friend Kris would say

[embersgiantkillerdog]

Being a butch growing up has been weird

I'm probably not going to be able to word this well but I want to try

Since I was a kid I was raised as one of the lads I was a huge tom boy and then one day when your a teenager you not actually one of the lads anymore because your a girl and have boobs and a uterus you lose any respect or "male" privilege you had as one of the boys once you become too girl even tho you are still very tom boyish and butch it is a part of who you are not a performance or costume and you just feel so out of place because you didn't learn girl things with the other girls/friends at the right time so your just kinda stuck and so you keep being butch because it's what you know and you grow up become a young adult and everyone treats you like a knock off man (or in specific cases for me with women a throw away boy friend) in such a rough way because your not a man so they don't respect you but your not worth people being soft and gentle with you because your butch it's such a shitty thing to navigate and it's even worse to navigate when you are 5'10 and are big