The more I see lesbians who are anywhere under the trans umbrella the happier I am.

Since reading Stone Butch Blues at the start of this year,

Since following a bunch of they/them, he/him, she/they/he, nonbinary, trans, butch lesbians on here,

And watching a few interviews by Lynn Breedlove of Tribe 8,

I just feel like home, people like me exist, and people like me have existed for a while! I don't have to debate my identity with anyone, I just *am* some queer, gender-weird butch dyke 🌈

And if you don't like it: goodbye, don't bother me.

READ BUTCH IS A NOUN

free (pdf)!

If you're butch, femme, or love someone who is, read this book. SO slept on.

happy trans day of visibility!!! i am trans and visible :33

Unlearning seeing sex as binary actually does so much for my dysphoria. I definitely need to medically transition, but it's hell of a lot easier to tell the difference between my true desire and linear expectations of transition when I remember that some typically male presenting men have chests like mine, whether through fat or gynaecomastia, and some men are as short as me and have as high voices as me. Some men's bodies are shaped exactly like mine. And some of those men are trans. And some of those men are cis.

I beat myself up because I don't fit the ideal hegemonic masculine beauty standard, and I think that's because I'm trans. But there's cis guys out there feeling insecure for the exact same reasons— short, high voice, wide shoulders, small feet, small hands, small dick. We're not so different.

I think I'm exiting the place of needing to know I'm like cis guys in order to feel justified and valid. But what is still important to me is how arbitrary our sex boundaries can be sometimes. What got me started thinking about it was how not only is controlling who can go in bathrooms violently transphobic, but it always enforces a standard of women's beauty that will exclude both cis and trans women. Any cis woman with polycystic ovarian syndrome who happens to be considered too hairy to be a proper woman gets excluded. Hell, sometimes people are like me, and are trans masc and identify as both lesbian and as a man, but you know what? I don't pass as a man, I'm pre everything and I'd rather use the women's room because the men's room is guaranteed to be gross and also not safe for me. So I'm gonna use the women's bathroom, and I started having people try to chuck me out of there when I was fourteen. Back then my family had no inkling I was trans but I fully looked like a teen testosterone-puberty-expectant boy.

Sex being binary is as bullshit as gender being binary, we just have a lot less people willing to admit that, and gloss over how similar the experiences are of trans people within their preferred gender and other people who hit multiple aspects of not being a man/woman in the "right" way.

-chris

pretend this was taken on a digital camera in 2006 and it looks a lot better

Really hate that the queer community's response to the creation of a gender trinary (girl, boy, and nonbinary, which is still not all-encompassing) was to... reinvent the binary. We just started grouping all genders into "masc/male-aligned" and "fem/female-aligned" and it's so fucking stupid. Even with the occasional allowance of "neutral/unaligned" it still maintains the binary as the standard. And then they don't let you use certain labels if you don't have the "right" gender alignment. The fuck.

Diversity win!Hot girl is also a pretty boy!

i have been trying for like. months to explain how the relationship between butch lesbians and trans men is not something akin to polar opposites and this is all i got. like it's not like this:

it's a venn diagram with a massive overlap in the middle. i'm not saying EVERY butch is a trans guy and EVERY trans guy is a butch dyke , i'm just saying it looks more like this:

these are not "mutually exclusive" terms- they do not mean the same thing, but we can be the same people, an very often are. there is a long history of butches who identify as FTM, trans men, drag kings, genderqueer, genderfluid, transmasculine, male, polygender, and two-spirit lesbians, and so much more. the relationship between lesbianism and queer masculinity is inseparable and the only people telling you that butches and trans men need to violently separate from one another and be at each other's throats are terfs. even if we do not share identities, we share our struggle together as heavily misunderstood and unseen masculine queers.

we stand up for each other when our identities get confused by strangers, and we get misgendered. we stand up for each other when terfs and terfpilled people tell us that transmasculine people and men can't be lesbians, when people say "butches just want to be men", when people say "butches aren't real women", when people call each of us bull dykes and trannies, when people mock the way FTMs walk and talk and look, and when people tell trans men they're "just butch dykes in denial". we stand up for each other and understand each others struggles.

whenever a butch lesbian asserts they're a woman no matter how masc they are, whenever a trans man asserts that they are a man and not a butch, whenever a butch struggles to be seen as both a man and a lesbian, and whenever a trans man returns to the lesbian community while embracing their manhood, we are part of the same community, we share the same struggles, and we owe it to each other to stay strong.

we are not enemies. we are bedfellows, lovers, family, spouses, partners, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, siblings, friends, each others support networks, even if we don't share identities perfectly. whether you are butch and a woman, butch and a man, butch and something else entirely, a male, ftm, genderfluid, polygender, genderqueer, transmasculine, nonbinary, two-spirit or whatever else you may be lesbian, you are part of our family and your experience is worth being heard.

I'm sick and fucking tired of people not fucking remembering that one of radfems first targets were BUTCHES. It was about dykes being masculine and hating that masculinity. You can find dozens of accounts from all the way back in the 70s of radfems targeting cis and trans butches alike. They steal from butches. They stole our fucking flag. They appropriated androgyny and drove a divide between butches and lesbians that identified as androgynous for YEARS. Don't you fucking DARE conflate being butch with being a terf or a radfem. If you knew an ounce of your history you'd know that radical feminism started as a movement to remove butches from the community completely, and also that butches/transmascs/drag kings and transfems/drag queens have a long history of solidarity, love, and trust considering the fact we're INCESSANTLY demonized even within our own communities. Butch/femme include transfemmes, it always will and ALWAYS has.

Gettin my seasonally depressed ass into the sunshine

I watched a sunset for the first time in years???

Dick from a butch who says "amongst" and "thereafter"

happy lesbian week to ME !!!! ❤️🧡🤍🩷💜

"Testosterone will turn you into a violent pervert", do you fucking promise????

"Faggy butch was good. It accurately described my pink button-down shirts, my giggles, the fact that I talked with my hands. I once saw a tape of myself in which I made a gesture that looked more like it belonged in A Chorus Line than in the middle of an interview. Faggy butch was like genderqueer -- not quite this or that, a little of both, maybe. A friend once said to me, "I access my femininity through my masculinity."

I feel lucky to have grown up in a world with butch pioneers, and I feel lucky that I had an idea about what being butch might have meant. But instead of making me feel part of the community, these constructions of what butch was -- stereotypes really-- pushed me away from the word and identity. Instead I chose a newer term, genderqueer, which had yet to be defined; it was in flux, it was a new frontier. I may not have been butch "enough", but genderqueer was all mine to rewrite and redefine.

I still like the word "genderqueer," still claim it and own it and love the way it makes room for me, in all my complexities. But I'm coming back around to butch. Maybe its because the years of pink prom dresses are further and further behind me, maybe its because i'm learning from butch elders who talk in terms that make room for me, giggles and all. Maybe its because the people i know have no idea (unless I tell them) that i was never a tomboy. They only know me -- my short hair tightly bound chest, and button down shirts.

I think that every new generation feels the need to reject their elders, reject what came before them, and feel that they are knew gender rebels. We invent terms, we create new spaces, and sometimes, we come back to where our big brothers started -- home."

“PERSISTENCE: All Ways Butch and Femme, Coming Back Around to Butch” Miriam Zoila Pérez, On Butch and Femme: Compiled Readings, (edited by I.M. Epstein) (2017)