i really appreciated how vulnerable this was, especially as a fellow butch. i don’t know if this can help you see a new perspective when it comes to butch identity, but we are born out of the interactions of our bodies, what we do, who we hold close, how we think of ourselves. like you said, most of what makes a butch is owning the word, and how we act in this world is a way of telling people “this is who i am”, not “this is what i look like”. our identity is intensified by the habits we take up as butches, historically up to now. the manifestation of our butchness is just as fluid as anything else, and long hair, your body, how you repay your ancestors and your elders all take part in that.
you are butch because of what you make out of the word, the bravest thing we can do is be gentle with ourselves.
this comment touched me so deeply. i keep rereading it and tearing up a little haha. thank you for taking the time to write it. thank you for seeing me. lately i keep learning and forgetting and relearning again that everything is change, everything is possible, every feeling that needs to have its moment will have its moment. as you said, what matters is what we do and see and make of all that possibility. i suppose there's been a block between this knowledge and how i think of my butchness. so yes, these words really do help me, and i appreciate it so much.
i almost didn't post this because i felt it revealed too much insecurity, but i don't want to be ashamed of insecurity, which is also part of me, which also has its places and its moments. i'm so happy now that i did; i'm so grateful that you and other butches have interacted with it so sincerely. thank you again <3
I loved reading this and it resonated with me a lot, at least at different times in my life. First off— I have never seen you as anything but butch, no matter what you’re wearing or how long your hair is. For what it’s worth that’s just my subjective perspective!
Secondly, in regards to my own butchness and fashion and hair length: before I identified as butch fashion was a huge part of my life and I was really into making my own clothes and accessories. I was deep into the goth and raving scene so even when I dressed “feminine” it was a subversion of extremes and never gender comforming/pretty in a way that was supposed to be attractive to men or the mainstream. It was a lot of work though and when I started coming home to butchness I realized how much I used fashion as a mask and it felt really good to strip that back and down— like I’d been carrying chain mail armor and a sword and shield for so long and I finally got to take it off and just exist.
Shortly after that I definately (semi shamefully) embraced the western/white man look. I dressed (and still dress, often) like a skater or tattoo bro. Lately I’ve tried t to incorporate more signifiers of Latino masculinity to this (tall cholo socks, lots of gold Jewelry with Los Santos) but that also feels weird because I have been distinctly traumatized by Latino masculinity and always fear turning into my dad or tios. I don’t want to channel them, I want to channel the fierce protectiveness and strength of my female ancestors. But I’ll never wear a mumu like my abuela. So idk it’s been this challenge of honoring my heritage not through dress but in behavior and spirit.
The final piece has been living somewhere with no gay community so I’m basically just existing without being perceived by peers. It’s allowed me to really stop giving a shit and really stop relying on being seen as something in order to be that something. My neighbors recognize me as gay but they have never heard the word butch GNC straight women are common here in the mountains. I don’t know how they see me but I don’t care. I’m butch because I’m butch and because it’s the most fitting moniker. Feeling freed if the expectation of upholding it as a title to other queer people has allowed me to take off another suit of armor I didn’t even realize I was wearing, this time.
If I move again I’m sure things will change. I grew my hair into a mullet for about a year and it was so cute but so much work and I don’t know if I’ll ever have that patience again. I wear vans and basketball shorts and band shirts and a SnapBack every day because it’s comfortable and practical
For my lifestyle and white men dress like that but so do studs and so does my male cousin whose also a Latino tattoo artist. It doesn’t make me a white man and it certainly doesn’t feel like worshiping at the alter of white masculinity. A big part of being butch for me is truth to myself and existing as I am
Without shame, and I realized that obsessing about how I was perceived felt antithetical to my butchness so I slowly shed it as a behavior. I don’t know how helpful this is but it’s my experience! I love you.
yayy thank you for reading and for sharing your experience, this comment is so lovely and thoughtful, it means a lot to me. first of all i love you and thank you, i know youve seen me at my Girly Girliest on instagram HAHHAA so thank you for seeing the butch in my heart regardless.
on your last point LOL yes honestly this was a vent piece and after i finished writing it i was like Wow. Thinking about it all so hard is sooo unbutch of me. but im a butch who thinks too hard & i really had to write all this out to escape it.... most of all i think i just kept thinking about all the butches that impacted my life and my friends' lives, what they look like vs. what i look like and i get so wistful...there's something that moves me so much about a very gnc lesbian. but there's something that ive seen fellow illustrators say, that the art you love looking at most isn't always the art you're best at making, and maybe in some ways it's like that.
also white western clothes have become a part of the masc aesthetic in pretty much every culture by now & there's absolutely no shame in it!!! i just wonder if there's a different way to explore masculine fashion as someone who is also obviously a woman. feels like it's harder to break out of that mold when you're so soft and sexy and your tits are so huge ......
"So idk it’s been this challenge of honoring my heritage not through dress but in behavior and spirit." - yesss. & actually i think my inheritance from my father of loving and caring and feeding people around me is where most of my feelings of being butch come from. so these things are completely intertwined to me. i know our experiences w/ masculinity here is different here but it's a good reminder. and it's really interesting to hear how you manage that balance
i love you too so much! i'm so happy you read this, it was a little embarrassing to post honestly because like you said "obsessing about how I was perceived felt antithetical to my butchness" - and i definitely felt that- but it was so nice and freeing to get this out & to hear from you. i wish i had more lesbian friends (or even just any close friends!!!) to hang out with in my real life because i think that would help my spiraling immensely🥹 i always care the least about what i look like when i'm surrounded by the people i love, who know me and who love me. i miss you so much!
Regardless of how linear your essay was I really think it got at the heart of what gender is... And I think having the question open of how genders can progress is really important actually. It's the question a lot of people don't want to ask I think because it contrasts queerness with the individualism of liberal progressivism. And in a way that's extremely important right now. "How do we change?" is on everyone's mind politically (even if their answer is jester-fascism).
yes i think what's been on my mind is community, the collective; we want to say, it's your choice, but is it??? we can't all be making choices independent of each other- not only because we're in this together, but because it's impossible.
It's old and scholarly af, but the book "Female Masculinity" echoes a lot of your sentiment as Jack (the butch writer) pieces together perspectives of masculinity outside the presence of cis men, which kinda ruins it for everyone.
Thanks for getting it all down and sharing! Butch long hair should NOT be limited to the mullet. Keep making your own way, you're bending rules and that's so needed.
Just finished reading this and this resonates a lot with me. After coming out as a non binary woman, realizing I was a lesbian rather than bi, and started to use they/them pronouns I finally allowed myself to explore masculinity and butchness. At times it’s freeing, and I’m so grateful to it and my butch elders and community. I spent so much of my life deeply concerned and trying very hard to perform high femininity perfectly that when I realized it wasn’t a requirement the relief was palpable. But now a few years in I worry sometimes about not being butch enough. I still like to wear makeup, my hair is a lil mullet thing but it curls delicately when I leave it be and I LIKE fashion—I like silhouette and texture and color and interest. And exactly like you said it sometimes feels like the more interesting the outfit the less butch it is. Which don’t get me wrong—some days wearing white tank top and a boxer briefs with no makeup makes me feel like the most realized version of myself. But some days I want to look at the glittering collection of earrings I have wasting away on my dresser and wear them without worrying that I’m being too femme. It’s a funny little tension to navigate, both so unserious and also vitally important.
this piece really found me at the right place and the right time, but i wouldn’t say that sentiment stands true for the timing of my own exploration into “masculine” representation. i bookend masculine with quotation marks as, well, my best friend puts it, my gender performance is “as masculine as you can get before twitter gets scared”.
they’re not wrong. before a few months ago, i was too afraid of appearing masculine in a hat to wear one. a hat! it was silly, especially considering how these days i struggle to unglue a hat from my head nearly every day, but i couldn’t bring myself to confront my learned lack of comfort with appearing masculine then; now wearing a hat and letting my newly clipped locks swoop and curl all around the brim brings me unparalleled euphoric satisfaction.
but it’s still a small step and lately, in the wake of yet another tyrannical presidency in my country where gender, and consequently gender expression, have become even more contentious topics of discussion, i found myself floundering for the bravery required to continue my self-discovery.
that’s what butchness has always meant to me: bravery. not in the bullshit, you’re so brave for being the abject woman, for not presenting for men, type of way. it’s true, there is bravery in this form of expression, but that narrative has always felt too overly victimizing to me. butches are brave to me the way a knight is brave. it’s no coincidence that the commonly shared adjective to describe a knight is chivalrous; the (in my opinion) most accurate descriptor for butches as well.
i’m unsure where my gender expression journey is going to lead me as of right now. i’ve cut my hair as short as i’m currently comfortable with (which is just slightly above my shoulders thanks to the tight lift of my curls;shout out my puerto rican ancestors for that textured blessing), i wear hats and hoodies which nearly disguise any existence of hair on my head in this dead of winter, if i’m feeling extra confident occasionally i’ll let my calvin klein briefs peek through over my dickies. more than anything, i hope this confidence persists. to be butch is to be confident, to be chivalrous, to be brave, but mostly it’s whatever it means to you.
fellow butch here who has gone through so many hair phases -- GOD DO I UNDERSTAND!! it is so rough. i have decided within the past like two years i wanna grow my hair out (have a little mullet moment, but have it be genuinely long), and it's been a struggle to try and gauge how i'm perceived as a transmasc butch. loved this piece very much <3
this is SO RELATABLE even though i don't identify as butch.
i realized i was genderqueer + trans + lesbian at 15, and at first i presented more masc in order to circumvent people thinking i was a cis woman. this did not work because i'm a black person with curves.
in recent years, i decided to grow my hair out and get locs. locs, up until recently, have been more popular among men and black lesbians than with cishet black women, so i didn't feel too much of a way about that. BUT! recently!! i have become more open to the idea of wearing skirts and dresses after 10 years of avoiding them. a lot of the questioning that you're doing in this piece has been coming up for me - even though being genderqueer is different than being butch.
i think there's a certain type of look ascribed to genderqueer/non-binary people, especially those born with uteruses. i realized that i was genderqueer thru tumblr in the 2010s and a lot of the images i was confronted with of a non-binary person were skinny, masc-leaning white folks. as i've contemplating stepping away from that sort of look, i've found myself worried about how i will be perceived as others, and whether i have a right to label myself a certain way if i start wearing dresses again.
as i navigate all this, i'm going to try to remind myself of this great line you wrote: "ultimately, i don’t care how strangers perceive my sexuality or gender. i think it’s impossible to be misunderstood by someone who doesn’t even know you."
sorry if none of this annoyingly long comment is helpful to you! but all of it id to say that i see you!!
Thanks for sharing your current ruminations on this matter. I say current, because it sounds like this is something dynamic—the definition of butch keeps getting redefined not just by society but, more importantly, by you! You get to define it, according to how you apply it to yourself, whether that’s an aesthetic (masc-leaning fashion) or a character trait (protector & other traits you defined it to be).
Aesthetically, most people probably view me as “soft” butch with my faded cut (I get it done in a salon, shoutout to Rudy’s Barbershop 💈) & I can’t remember the last time I wore a dress. When my hair grows out, I probably look like someone’s elder millenial auntie 🤣 My aesthetic presentation is masc-leaning. Character trait wise, I embody those qualities that you recognized as butch (caretaker, protector, etc.), including undeniable confidence.
However, when I’m around studs & other butches, their masculine energy is very ramped up, compared to mine. I also grew up with very very butch aunts (with their respective more feminine partners)—-& there is no question in my mind they are butches. When I wonder if I’m butch, I think about them and that confirms for me that I’m just not at their level of butch. & that is OK! 👍🏽 I really feel more like androgynous—masc-leaning (aesthetically) but very much androgynous. So, these days, I identify as gender-expansive!
All’s that to say that, just be what you feel like. You make the rules of your own life—feel free to experiment & define & redefine & evolve! 🧬 Also, to me, being butch is really not just about the outside—-it’s an energy that starts from within. You either identify with it or parts of it or not—-and that is totally ok how ever way you put it out to the universe. 🌌 💕✊🏽
thank you for writing this. as an indian gnc butch, i also have conflicting thoughts about the western aesthetics of butchness — some part of me admires and wants to embody and be SEEN as this classic butch so badly, and some part of me worries about how that would coexist with the rest of me. as another commenter said, i think it’s the behaviors and feelings of butchness that we should focus on embodying;
the aesthetic is secondary. at the same time, i feel your deep frustration with not being perceived as butch when brown and with even slightly longish hair — i want that perception but i want my curly hair too 😭
yes, exactly! it's not really a black/white situation to me, just kind of something to feel grey and conflicted about.. thank you for taking the time to comment and connect, i appreciate it so much.
I read this this morning, and have been thinking it about it (instead of writing) most of the day. To me, it sounds like you ARE a butch, no matter what your hair style (though, by all means, style your hair as you feel comfortable with) and no matter if the external world recognizes you as such of not. How the external world sees us often has nothing to do with us, but with the person from the external world themselves.
I've never really tried to identify myself with labels. Even here, for the longest time, I allowed other people to say I was a lesbian without saying it myself. So I don't know if I can answer your call for POC butch friends - but I am a person of color, and I'm not very feminine. I've been called a gentleman and a boy (boi?) by other lesbians, I have a boyish haircut, people think I'm assertive, and I tend to take care of people - so I don't know if I fit, but I'm here?
thank you for reading and thinking on it and sharing your input, i really appreciate it :') i still have complicated feelings about being visibly / recognizably butch vs, say, lesbian because it seems to me like a relational gender role and because it's relational it feels like external perception can't have NOTHING to do with it... i do still ID as butch, i do also recognize that my presentation is very fluid and other people may not always see me as such. i'm still a little unsure of the idea that being butch or femme is something that can be completely decided by an individual based on their own internal feeling, but after writing and sharing this i'm surer that the people in my life who matter like my wife + my butchfemme and other lesbian friends do see me fulfilling this role if not always through dress then at least through action. which has been freeing. it's always just about the people who actually know you, in the end!!
whether you're butch or not (it sounds like you would fit this label if you wanted to, but it's also up to you if you want to!) i really love your work and reading your thoughts and engaging with you, so i do hope we can be friends and talk more :') you are such a thorough reader, writer, and researcher, and i've seen the care you take with everything you interact with, but also you just seem like an interesting person and i would always be grateful for more lesbian and south asian friends
I think that's part it: a lot of heteronormative people only see the exterior/clothes, they don't know that butch is a mindset (or they think butch = acts like a dude, when it's not that).
I think of myself as androgynous...which I like, it feels very freeing. Though I guess some people see me as more butch. Like you were saying about t-shirts and jeans...I usually wear nicer pants and button downs or sweaters, so like a little more of a dressed up version.
I'd love to engage more! Can't ever have enough lesbian/south asian friends (well, like the more interesting south asian friends).
I loved this entire piece, it was beautifully written and very relatable through a different lens even as a femme lesbian.
I only came out as a lesbian in 2022 and since then have been reckoning with a lot of conflicting uncomfortable feelings with how I present to people. I'm more aware of what people might think of me because of what I'm wearing which isn't something that I ever really experienced before now. I think I probably need to do some more thinking about what this means to me
thank you so much for reading and for commenting, and for your kind words! i would love to hear more about your experience with these same feelings as a femme. i will keep an eye out for if you post about it on your own stack :) also a lot of butches wrote comments on this post that have eased my pain about this tremendously. the most important thing is being around people who have the capacity to see you (—i find that many non-lesbians don't even have that capacity!)
If you’re butch you’re butch. Like you stated before it’s a role, and while traditional butchness is based heavily in 1940s working class lesbian, we are moving forward. Masculine fashion changes over time so why can’t butch fashion? Buy a kilt <3
i want to start off with your question: “have you ever felt constrained by the limits of lesbian fashion?” because my answer is yes, a thousand times yes. sometimes i want to wear a skirt but when i do i take it off in fear of what others will think because 99% of the time i wear shirts and jeans and vests.
this piece really really resonated with me. the year i decided to start using butch as a label i did a deep dive into butchxfemme history, spending most of my reading year in 2022-2023 reading the classics, learning the history, and reading lesbian literature. i think part of me also wanted to see myself in those books. stone butch blues was probably the closest i’ve gotten.
being butch has helped me in a lot of ways, like accepting my sexuality and flaunting it in safe and dangerous spaces. its made me feel comfortable in my skin. but the self doubt hasn’t ever left. because your right, is feeling butch really enough?
i look like a split image of my father so i look very, very masculine in the face. i’ve been called sir even with my high pitched voice. but i still feel like a fraud wearing the label. and maybe it’s because i don’t know anyone else as a butch in my real life. i only know of masc’s but “masc” doesn’t feel right to me. no other identity feels right to me. butch is it’s own gender and if i don’t think too much about it i feel at peace with it.
i have so much to say about butchness myself but i find it so hard to articulate my feelings so i’m happy someone was able to. i do believe the lack of butch lesbians contributes to our doubts because i’d die to sit down with an older butch and have a conversation with them. ask them what butchness means to them. and feel comforted by their wise words. idk thank you for this piece! <3
thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment and interacting with this so meaningfully!!!! the more i think about it, the more i'm like, if we connect so much w/ other butches through history and in the present day, maybe that's all we really need. and like i was telling my friend, the more i'm with people who see my (very butch!) soul, the less i feel like i need to look a certain way. i hope you're able to find butch elders and peers to connect with. i hope i am too. "if i don’t think too much about it i feel at peace with it." - i feel like that says so much!
this!!! stone butch blues, and consecutively, hijab butch blues made me feel seen in ways i didn’t know were possible. that, combined with embodying our ideas of butchness in our actions and our interactions with others, i think is enough.
one thing that might help butch women find their identities among rigid gender norms (IRONY) is to look at butch analogs in other countries around the world. China, Japan and Thailand all have similar but different butch-like lesbian genders.
i got a certain feeling from all the butch lesbians i met growing up. the only way i can describe it is "motherly, but a little girl inside". so i've always taken "butch" as a heart, as something you do, something working class, competent, caregiving.
idk if that sounds totally crazy to you lol but if you wanna talk about it more that would be lovely!
alsooo never thought of it as a mother/girl dichotomy specifically (my role as a butch is very impacted by my caregiving father) but u know me i will always add a new vehicle of mother-daughter relationship into my lesbian belief system
thank you for readinggg :') no i completely agree with you, which is why i've never been able to let go of the butch label even dressing at my most femme. i feel encouraged that other lesbians (the ones who are commenting on this at least) seem to have the same perspective on butchness. i would love if you could provide resources on butch analogs in other cultures, as always u can message me whenever hehehe
i really appreciated how vulnerable this was, especially as a fellow butch. i don’t know if this can help you see a new perspective when it comes to butch identity, but we are born out of the interactions of our bodies, what we do, who we hold close, how we think of ourselves. like you said, most of what makes a butch is owning the word, and how we act in this world is a way of telling people “this is who i am”, not “this is what i look like”. our identity is intensified by the habits we take up as butches, historically up to now. the manifestation of our butchness is just as fluid as anything else, and long hair, your body, how you repay your ancestors and your elders all take part in that.
you are butch because of what you make out of the word, the bravest thing we can do is be gentle with ourselves.
this comment touched me so deeply. i keep rereading it and tearing up a little haha. thank you for taking the time to write it. thank you for seeing me. lately i keep learning and forgetting and relearning again that everything is change, everything is possible, every feeling that needs to have its moment will have its moment. as you said, what matters is what we do and see and make of all that possibility. i suppose there's been a block between this knowledge and how i think of my butchness. so yes, these words really do help me, and i appreciate it so much.
i almost didn't post this because i felt it revealed too much insecurity, but i don't want to be ashamed of insecurity, which is also part of me, which also has its places and its moments. i'm so happy now that i did; i'm so grateful that you and other butches have interacted with it so sincerely. thank you again <3
“you are butch because of what you make out of the word” so beautifully said, from one butch to another 🩷
I loved reading this and it resonated with me a lot, at least at different times in my life. First off— I have never seen you as anything but butch, no matter what you’re wearing or how long your hair is. For what it’s worth that’s just my subjective perspective!
Secondly, in regards to my own butchness and fashion and hair length: before I identified as butch fashion was a huge part of my life and I was really into making my own clothes and accessories. I was deep into the goth and raving scene so even when I dressed “feminine” it was a subversion of extremes and never gender comforming/pretty in a way that was supposed to be attractive to men or the mainstream. It was a lot of work though and when I started coming home to butchness I realized how much I used fashion as a mask and it felt really good to strip that back and down— like I’d been carrying chain mail armor and a sword and shield for so long and I finally got to take it off and just exist.
Shortly after that I definately (semi shamefully) embraced the western/white man look. I dressed (and still dress, often) like a skater or tattoo bro. Lately I’ve tried t to incorporate more signifiers of Latino masculinity to this (tall cholo socks, lots of gold Jewelry with Los Santos) but that also feels weird because I have been distinctly traumatized by Latino masculinity and always fear turning into my dad or tios. I don’t want to channel them, I want to channel the fierce protectiveness and strength of my female ancestors. But I’ll never wear a mumu like my abuela. So idk it’s been this challenge of honoring my heritage not through dress but in behavior and spirit.
The final piece has been living somewhere with no gay community so I’m basically just existing without being perceived by peers. It’s allowed me to really stop giving a shit and really stop relying on being seen as something in order to be that something. My neighbors recognize me as gay but they have never heard the word butch GNC straight women are common here in the mountains. I don’t know how they see me but I don’t care. I’m butch because I’m butch and because it’s the most fitting moniker. Feeling freed if the expectation of upholding it as a title to other queer people has allowed me to take off another suit of armor I didn’t even realize I was wearing, this time.
If I move again I’m sure things will change. I grew my hair into a mullet for about a year and it was so cute but so much work and I don’t know if I’ll ever have that patience again. I wear vans and basketball shorts and band shirts and a SnapBack every day because it’s comfortable and practical
For my lifestyle and white men dress like that but so do studs and so does my male cousin whose also a Latino tattoo artist. It doesn’t make me a white man and it certainly doesn’t feel like worshiping at the alter of white masculinity. A big part of being butch for me is truth to myself and existing as I am
Without shame, and I realized that obsessing about how I was perceived felt antithetical to my butchness so I slowly shed it as a behavior. I don’t know how helpful this is but it’s my experience! I love you.
yayy thank you for reading and for sharing your experience, this comment is so lovely and thoughtful, it means a lot to me. first of all i love you and thank you, i know youve seen me at my Girly Girliest on instagram HAHHAA so thank you for seeing the butch in my heart regardless.
on your last point LOL yes honestly this was a vent piece and after i finished writing it i was like Wow. Thinking about it all so hard is sooo unbutch of me. but im a butch who thinks too hard & i really had to write all this out to escape it.... most of all i think i just kept thinking about all the butches that impacted my life and my friends' lives, what they look like vs. what i look like and i get so wistful...there's something that moves me so much about a very gnc lesbian. but there's something that ive seen fellow illustrators say, that the art you love looking at most isn't always the art you're best at making, and maybe in some ways it's like that.
also white western clothes have become a part of the masc aesthetic in pretty much every culture by now & there's absolutely no shame in it!!! i just wonder if there's a different way to explore masculine fashion as someone who is also obviously a woman. feels like it's harder to break out of that mold when you're so soft and sexy and your tits are so huge ......
"So idk it’s been this challenge of honoring my heritage not through dress but in behavior and spirit." - yesss. & actually i think my inheritance from my father of loving and caring and feeding people around me is where most of my feelings of being butch come from. so these things are completely intertwined to me. i know our experiences w/ masculinity here is different here but it's a good reminder. and it's really interesting to hear how you manage that balance
i love you too so much! i'm so happy you read this, it was a little embarrassing to post honestly because like you said "obsessing about how I was perceived felt antithetical to my butchness" - and i definitely felt that- but it was so nice and freeing to get this out & to hear from you. i wish i had more lesbian friends (or even just any close friends!!!) to hang out with in my real life because i think that would help my spiraling immensely🥹 i always care the least about what i look like when i'm surrounded by the people i love, who know me and who love me. i miss you so much!
Regardless of how linear your essay was I really think it got at the heart of what gender is... And I think having the question open of how genders can progress is really important actually. It's the question a lot of people don't want to ask I think because it contrasts queerness with the individualism of liberal progressivism. And in a way that's extremely important right now. "How do we change?" is on everyone's mind politically (even if their answer is jester-fascism).
yes i think what's been on my mind is community, the collective; we want to say, it's your choice, but is it??? we can't all be making choices independent of each other- not only because we're in this together, but because it's impossible.
It's old and scholarly af, but the book "Female Masculinity" echoes a lot of your sentiment as Jack (the butch writer) pieces together perspectives of masculinity outside the presence of cis men, which kinda ruins it for everyone.
ohh thank you for reading & thanks so much for the rec!!! its on the list for next month!
Thanks for getting it all down and sharing! Butch long hair should NOT be limited to the mullet. Keep making your own way, you're bending rules and that's so needed.
thank youu i so appreciate it 🥹🙏 and ur right i LOVE a mullet but i cant do it forever😩😭😭😭
Just finished reading this and this resonates a lot with me. After coming out as a non binary woman, realizing I was a lesbian rather than bi, and started to use they/them pronouns I finally allowed myself to explore masculinity and butchness. At times it’s freeing, and I’m so grateful to it and my butch elders and community. I spent so much of my life deeply concerned and trying very hard to perform high femininity perfectly that when I realized it wasn’t a requirement the relief was palpable. But now a few years in I worry sometimes about not being butch enough. I still like to wear makeup, my hair is a lil mullet thing but it curls delicately when I leave it be and I LIKE fashion—I like silhouette and texture and color and interest. And exactly like you said it sometimes feels like the more interesting the outfit the less butch it is. Which don’t get me wrong—some days wearing white tank top and a boxer briefs with no makeup makes me feel like the most realized version of myself. But some days I want to look at the glittering collection of earrings I have wasting away on my dresser and wear them without worrying that I’m being too femme. It’s a funny little tension to navigate, both so unserious and also vitally important.
this piece really found me at the right place and the right time, but i wouldn’t say that sentiment stands true for the timing of my own exploration into “masculine” representation. i bookend masculine with quotation marks as, well, my best friend puts it, my gender performance is “as masculine as you can get before twitter gets scared”.
they’re not wrong. before a few months ago, i was too afraid of appearing masculine in a hat to wear one. a hat! it was silly, especially considering how these days i struggle to unglue a hat from my head nearly every day, but i couldn’t bring myself to confront my learned lack of comfort with appearing masculine then; now wearing a hat and letting my newly clipped locks swoop and curl all around the brim brings me unparalleled euphoric satisfaction.
but it’s still a small step and lately, in the wake of yet another tyrannical presidency in my country where gender, and consequently gender expression, have become even more contentious topics of discussion, i found myself floundering for the bravery required to continue my self-discovery.
that’s what butchness has always meant to me: bravery. not in the bullshit, you’re so brave for being the abject woman, for not presenting for men, type of way. it’s true, there is bravery in this form of expression, but that narrative has always felt too overly victimizing to me. butches are brave to me the way a knight is brave. it’s no coincidence that the commonly shared adjective to describe a knight is chivalrous; the (in my opinion) most accurate descriptor for butches as well.
i’m unsure where my gender expression journey is going to lead me as of right now. i’ve cut my hair as short as i’m currently comfortable with (which is just slightly above my shoulders thanks to the tight lift of my curls;shout out my puerto rican ancestors for that textured blessing), i wear hats and hoodies which nearly disguise any existence of hair on my head in this dead of winter, if i’m feeling extra confident occasionally i’ll let my calvin klein briefs peek through over my dickies. more than anything, i hope this confidence persists. to be butch is to be confident, to be chivalrous, to be brave, but mostly it’s whatever it means to you.
fellow butch here who has gone through so many hair phases -- GOD DO I UNDERSTAND!! it is so rough. i have decided within the past like two years i wanna grow my hair out (have a little mullet moment, but have it be genuinely long), and it's been a struggle to try and gauge how i'm perceived as a transmasc butch. loved this piece very much <3
this is SO RELATABLE even though i don't identify as butch.
i realized i was genderqueer + trans + lesbian at 15, and at first i presented more masc in order to circumvent people thinking i was a cis woman. this did not work because i'm a black person with curves.
in recent years, i decided to grow my hair out and get locs. locs, up until recently, have been more popular among men and black lesbians than with cishet black women, so i didn't feel too much of a way about that. BUT! recently!! i have become more open to the idea of wearing skirts and dresses after 10 years of avoiding them. a lot of the questioning that you're doing in this piece has been coming up for me - even though being genderqueer is different than being butch.
i think there's a certain type of look ascribed to genderqueer/non-binary people, especially those born with uteruses. i realized that i was genderqueer thru tumblr in the 2010s and a lot of the images i was confronted with of a non-binary person were skinny, masc-leaning white folks. as i've contemplating stepping away from that sort of look, i've found myself worried about how i will be perceived as others, and whether i have a right to label myself a certain way if i start wearing dresses again.
as i navigate all this, i'm going to try to remind myself of this great line you wrote: "ultimately, i don’t care how strangers perceive my sexuality or gender. i think it’s impossible to be misunderstood by someone who doesn’t even know you."
sorry if none of this annoyingly long comment is helpful to you! but all of it id to say that i see you!!
Thanks for sharing your current ruminations on this matter. I say current, because it sounds like this is something dynamic—the definition of butch keeps getting redefined not just by society but, more importantly, by you! You get to define it, according to how you apply it to yourself, whether that’s an aesthetic (masc-leaning fashion) or a character trait (protector & other traits you defined it to be).
Aesthetically, most people probably view me as “soft” butch with my faded cut (I get it done in a salon, shoutout to Rudy’s Barbershop 💈) & I can’t remember the last time I wore a dress. When my hair grows out, I probably look like someone’s elder millenial auntie 🤣 My aesthetic presentation is masc-leaning. Character trait wise, I embody those qualities that you recognized as butch (caretaker, protector, etc.), including undeniable confidence.
However, when I’m around studs & other butches, their masculine energy is very ramped up, compared to mine. I also grew up with very very butch aunts (with their respective more feminine partners)—-& there is no question in my mind they are butches. When I wonder if I’m butch, I think about them and that confirms for me that I’m just not at their level of butch. & that is OK! 👍🏽 I really feel more like androgynous—masc-leaning (aesthetically) but very much androgynous. So, these days, I identify as gender-expansive!
All’s that to say that, just be what you feel like. You make the rules of your own life—feel free to experiment & define & redefine & evolve! 🧬 Also, to me, being butch is really not just about the outside—-it’s an energy that starts from within. You either identify with it or parts of it or not—-and that is totally ok how ever way you put it out to the universe. 🌌 💕✊🏽
Have you heard of this butches bar? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHd6NRoMXId/?igsh=MTZnMzNsbXo2cmg3OA==
Felt. Especially as a butch who is Black and often struggled to keep my hair long, out of beauty standards and care. Thank you.
thank you for reading and taking the time to comment 🩷
thank you for writing this. as an indian gnc butch, i also have conflicting thoughts about the western aesthetics of butchness — some part of me admires and wants to embody and be SEEN as this classic butch so badly, and some part of me worries about how that would coexist with the rest of me. as another commenter said, i think it’s the behaviors and feelings of butchness that we should focus on embodying;
the aesthetic is secondary. at the same time, i feel your deep frustration with not being perceived as butch when brown and with even slightly longish hair — i want that perception but i want my curly hair too 😭
yes, exactly! it's not really a black/white situation to me, just kind of something to feel grey and conflicted about.. thank you for taking the time to comment and connect, i appreciate it so much.
yeahhhhh, definitely a grey area, and one that is easier to sideline when in active community with others who see us!! thank you for writing <3
I read this this morning, and have been thinking it about it (instead of writing) most of the day. To me, it sounds like you ARE a butch, no matter what your hair style (though, by all means, style your hair as you feel comfortable with) and no matter if the external world recognizes you as such of not. How the external world sees us often has nothing to do with us, but with the person from the external world themselves.
I've never really tried to identify myself with labels. Even here, for the longest time, I allowed other people to say I was a lesbian without saying it myself. So I don't know if I can answer your call for POC butch friends - but I am a person of color, and I'm not very feminine. I've been called a gentleman and a boy (boi?) by other lesbians, I have a boyish haircut, people think I'm assertive, and I tend to take care of people - so I don't know if I fit, but I'm here?
thank you for reading and thinking on it and sharing your input, i really appreciate it :') i still have complicated feelings about being visibly / recognizably butch vs, say, lesbian because it seems to me like a relational gender role and because it's relational it feels like external perception can't have NOTHING to do with it... i do still ID as butch, i do also recognize that my presentation is very fluid and other people may not always see me as such. i'm still a little unsure of the idea that being butch or femme is something that can be completely decided by an individual based on their own internal feeling, but after writing and sharing this i'm surer that the people in my life who matter like my wife + my butchfemme and other lesbian friends do see me fulfilling this role if not always through dress then at least through action. which has been freeing. it's always just about the people who actually know you, in the end!!
whether you're butch or not (it sounds like you would fit this label if you wanted to, but it's also up to you if you want to!) i really love your work and reading your thoughts and engaging with you, so i do hope we can be friends and talk more :') you are such a thorough reader, writer, and researcher, and i've seen the care you take with everything you interact with, but also you just seem like an interesting person and i would always be grateful for more lesbian and south asian friends
I think that's part it: a lot of heteronormative people only see the exterior/clothes, they don't know that butch is a mindset (or they think butch = acts like a dude, when it's not that).
I think of myself as androgynous...which I like, it feels very freeing. Though I guess some people see me as more butch. Like you were saying about t-shirts and jeans...I usually wear nicer pants and button downs or sweaters, so like a little more of a dressed up version.
I'd love to engage more! Can't ever have enough lesbian/south asian friends (well, like the more interesting south asian friends).
I loved this entire piece, it was beautifully written and very relatable through a different lens even as a femme lesbian.
I only came out as a lesbian in 2022 and since then have been reckoning with a lot of conflicting uncomfortable feelings with how I present to people. I'm more aware of what people might think of me because of what I'm wearing which isn't something that I ever really experienced before now. I think I probably need to do some more thinking about what this means to me
thank you so much for reading and for commenting, and for your kind words! i would love to hear more about your experience with these same feelings as a femme. i will keep an eye out for if you post about it on your own stack :) also a lot of butches wrote comments on this post that have eased my pain about this tremendously. the most important thing is being around people who have the capacity to see you (—i find that many non-lesbians don't even have that capacity!)
If you’re butch you’re butch. Like you stated before it’s a role, and while traditional butchness is based heavily in 1940s working class lesbian, we are moving forward. Masculine fashion changes over time so why can’t butch fashion? Buy a kilt <3
i want to start off with your question: “have you ever felt constrained by the limits of lesbian fashion?” because my answer is yes, a thousand times yes. sometimes i want to wear a skirt but when i do i take it off in fear of what others will think because 99% of the time i wear shirts and jeans and vests.
this piece really really resonated with me. the year i decided to start using butch as a label i did a deep dive into butchxfemme history, spending most of my reading year in 2022-2023 reading the classics, learning the history, and reading lesbian literature. i think part of me also wanted to see myself in those books. stone butch blues was probably the closest i’ve gotten.
being butch has helped me in a lot of ways, like accepting my sexuality and flaunting it in safe and dangerous spaces. its made me feel comfortable in my skin. but the self doubt hasn’t ever left. because your right, is feeling butch really enough?
i look like a split image of my father so i look very, very masculine in the face. i’ve been called sir even with my high pitched voice. but i still feel like a fraud wearing the label. and maybe it’s because i don’t know anyone else as a butch in my real life. i only know of masc’s but “masc” doesn’t feel right to me. no other identity feels right to me. butch is it’s own gender and if i don’t think too much about it i feel at peace with it.
i have so much to say about butchness myself but i find it so hard to articulate my feelings so i’m happy someone was able to. i do believe the lack of butch lesbians contributes to our doubts because i’d die to sit down with an older butch and have a conversation with them. ask them what butchness means to them. and feel comforted by their wise words. idk thank you for this piece! <3
thank you so much for such a thoughtful comment and interacting with this so meaningfully!!!! the more i think about it, the more i'm like, if we connect so much w/ other butches through history and in the present day, maybe that's all we really need. and like i was telling my friend, the more i'm with people who see my (very butch!) soul, the less i feel like i need to look a certain way. i hope you're able to find butch elders and peers to connect with. i hope i am too. "if i don’t think too much about it i feel at peace with it." - i feel like that says so much!
this!!! stone butch blues, and consecutively, hijab butch blues made me feel seen in ways i didn’t know were possible. that, combined with embodying our ideas of butchness in our actions and our interactions with others, i think is enough.
this is a wonderful article!
one thing that might help butch women find their identities among rigid gender norms (IRONY) is to look at butch analogs in other countries around the world. China, Japan and Thailand all have similar but different butch-like lesbian genders.
i got a certain feeling from all the butch lesbians i met growing up. the only way i can describe it is "motherly, but a little girl inside". so i've always taken "butch" as a heart, as something you do, something working class, competent, caregiving.
idk if that sounds totally crazy to you lol but if you wanna talk about it more that would be lovely!
alsooo never thought of it as a mother/girl dichotomy specifically (my role as a butch is very impacted by my caregiving father) but u know me i will always add a new vehicle of mother-daughter relationship into my lesbian belief system
REAL
mother/daughter is a very good analog for how i feel in lesbian relationships!!
thank you for readinggg :') no i completely agree with you, which is why i've never been able to let go of the butch label even dressing at my most femme. i feel encouraged that other lesbians (the ones who are commenting on this at least) seem to have the same perspective on butchness. i would love if you could provide resources on butch analogs in other cultures, as always u can message me whenever hehehe