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OKAY i wanna talk about lesbian attraction, in particular re: butchness and femmeness and butch/femme dynamics
caveats: i identify as a cis femme lesbian, so that's my perspective. i wanna note that a) i can obviously only speak for myself and my own experiences but b) my experiences are formed by being a part of a community. there will be no transphobic bullshit here. a dyke is a dyke.
lesbian representation often feels to me, after being out for twelve years, as much fed by the assumptions and beliefs of straight people and heteronormative culture (which is not always fed by straights, but strangles us all) rather than actual lived gay experience
this leads, i think, to these twin issues of stereotyping and fetishisation
which are not perfect words for what i'm thinking here, but they are close enough that i'm gonna use them!
so when i think about stereotyping i think of how people mentally align butches with 'men' and femmes with 'women' and the butch/femme dynamic as this,,,,weird, desperate re-enactment of heterosexuality
and that's if people - in community or out - even understand that people who id as butch or femme like, exist? the terms are often referred to, feel like they're thought of, as outdated or quaint, or like they were identities that belonged to a prior, less enlightened time
choosing to id as femme is a relatively recent choice on my part, because of a lot of this! if using the word lesbian took me years because of the associated shame and embarrassment, thinking of myself as 'femme' instead of 'a bad lesbian' has taken that much longer
if being butch is stereotyped as mimicking masculinity, then being femme is stereotyped as,,,not really being gay? like sure you'll fuck a chick, or love one, but you're still performing for men, right? isn't that what it is to be feminine? restricting yourself for the male gaze?
it's hard to articulate this so i hope that you will give me the kindness of some space to work it out, but what lesbianism and what butchness and femmeness and butch/femme dynamics feel like to me are: the complete absence of Men
caveats: i don't mean 'the absence of people who are attracted to men' and i don't mean 'the absence of people who have been identified at some point by themselves or others as men'.
i STRESS that this thread and this place and this series of thoughts is very much a place for people who are trans or non binary or gender non conforming to find themselves in - & indeed, when it comes to butch people in particular , gender is often a part of the like, question!
our language is limited and this conversation is fraught, and my perspective is also limited by being cis and femme and lesbian, but i wish for all of those identities and aspects of myself to be like, open terms, not lines in the sand to close myself off from other queers
but i do wish to be free of Men. my attraction to butchness is not some pitiful re-enactment of heterosexuality, it is a part of me divorcing myself from heterosexuality entirely
i am not a ''''woman'''' desiring a '''''man'''', i am a lesbian desiring a lesbian. my desires are not restricted to: butches, lesbians, but that is certainly an aspect of them, and that's the aspect that this thread in particular is focusing on
(i diverge briefly here to say that this is [a part of] where terfism fucks up: the idea that attraction and identity are the same, and that your attraction can define the identity of other people, and that other people's identities can impinge on your attractions.)
(terfism also fucks up in the like, denial of basic human rights)
SWAN DIVING BACK INTO MY POINT: i'm not femme because i want to perform femininity for men or Men or for the patriarchy. i'm femme because i take a particular joy in this particular language of femininity that is available to me, and Men don't actually speak that language
i am not talking to Men with my lipstick or my hair or my dresses or my heels, even though those these are tools that are: created in conversation with and connection to patriarchy, heterosexuality
(& i am still femme regardless of if i have curled my hair or put on eyeshadow or Feel Pretty. it's a gut thing, you know? there is performance involved, sure, but if you're still a dancer even though you're not on stage, you're still a femme if you're not performing femininity)
we are all created in conversation with and connection to the patriarchy because like, that's living in a society (that being said, i specify here also that i'm a white new zealander and there are absolutely further layers of this conversation that are inaccessible to me)
i think we all know as queers that we damage ourselves by trying to bend into what Societal Gender Roles expect, demand from us! but as we can and have reclaimed our slurs, i think we can and have reclaimed aspects of gender too
i spent a lot of time exploring femininity in my early twenties because it made me feel pretty and precious and lovely and those were all things that i wanted to feel, and i think this was both an expression of femmeness
and also deeply psychologically damaging when it got to the point of taking an hour of my time to get ready for work in the morning, when it impacted my sleep, when i could not leave the house unless i had foundation on
the fatter i got, the less i felt as though i had a Right to play with femininity. that it would be a joke, embarrassing, shameful for me as a fat woman to do anything more than find clothes that fit and maybe, tentatively, exist in the world (as lightly as possible)
so the process of disconnecting myself from all that time & energy spent Feminising myself was both deeply healing, as i allowed myself to exist with like, my actual face & skin and hair! even go outside! and also hurtful as i deemed myself unworthy of enjoying those same things
in both of these situations i was absolutely suffering from patriarchy and the male gaze and Men, and it's only fucking recently that i have begun to process the feeling of like, attraction and attractiveness in a fat, queer body
that there are things to love and be loved about this body, that this body is queer regardless of presentation, femme regardless of presentation, that i can wear fuckin pink eyeshadow to dnd even if it's not 100% Situation Appropriate
insisting on femininity in my presentation these days feels not like bowing to the demands of patriarchy and Men, but a fuck you. but not as its primary purpose? its primary purpose is my own enjoyment. i feel fun, i feel powerful, i feel at home
and it's because my presentation, my performance - it's not about pleasing Men or stepping on them. it's not about Men at all. and it is sort of hard to mentally explain the difference between that and like, Girl Bossing it, lol?
i don't know, i think i could still read this thread in another brain and see it as excuses for bowing to the patriarchy, and if that's how you're processing your queerness - well, we probably won't kiss, but also i'm not about to argue with that
i can only explain (and BOY have i explained) and assert my own queerness through attitude, performance, extremely long twitter threads. i feel, i am, deeply and delightedly, a dyke.
anyway that was stereotyping
