i think this is as close to a sexual identity marker (bisexual butch) that explains me as any sexual identity marker could ever get.
and yet, i’m confused. i don’t know what butch is, really. i grew up thinking that butch was “women who were comfortable shoes” (as Robin Williams has joked). women who specifically rejected the standards of “femininity” which required you to care about clothes. a friend called women like that softball dykes–and i knew that she was describing me. low key, uninterested in spending hours and hours in front of the mirror (not that there’s anything wrong with that, as i’ve told many of my dearest twitterputas, i wish i could sit on the bed and watch them get dressed!), wouldn’t go near hair gel if paid to, and considers straightening eyebrows to be “grooming” etc.
but then i see sites specifically for butches–and all i see are women who clearly are spending hours and hours and tons of money getting dressed up–with plucked eyebrows even! –and i wonder, what makes those women any different than femme girls? aren’t they ‘performing’ the exact same gender roles that they are supposedly rejecting by claiming “butch?”
i mean, i’m not saying you can only be butch if you dress like a slob. I guess i am wondering when being butch became so glossy and, well, pretty. And does it (or doesn’t it) make it a whole lot easier to be butch when you’re glossy and pretty rather than a ‘woman in comfortable shoes?’
i don’t know. i really don’t. as i’ve said to several friends who i’ve discussed this with, it’s only been for the last three or four years that i’ve had a queer community to hang with–and even then, it’s not like it’s a huge thriving community–most of us still are dealing with “coming out” because it’s not safe to be a queer woman of color in Latino/Arab/Asian/Native/immigrant/etc communities.
so we make do best we can and guess what words like “femme” and “butch” and “queer” and “non-gender conforming” all mean and if we feel comfortable enough claiming words that have been defined by people who are not us.
what is butch? I don’t know. and I hope that’s not the point. 
- Share
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:31 am #
I have nothing useful to say, but as a woman who really dislikes beauty rituals, I am androgynous, neither butch nor femme.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:31 am #
But in gay history class, I hear that among certain groups of gay women a long time ago, not being butch or femme was a big deal in a negative manner.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:42 am #
The butches I know and love are pretty. They dress carefully — not all the time — but their closet reflects years of trial and error. Butches have to walk the streets with their butch bodies and that is a source of pain and joy. Butches want to get with other butches and/or with femmes and they use all the elements at their disposal. Butches and femmes have always been around in working-class, third world, people of color communities. What they/we wear has as much to do with the labor we’ve done as anything else. So what I’m saying is that butchness is a dialogue among the spirit, the mind, the libido, bodily comportment, gesture, clothing, shoes, scent, pomade.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:58 am #
I think the problem is in trying to define a set expectation of what “butch” & “femme” mean, and that they cannot stray outside that definition. Like you, BFP, the explanation of butch on the site you linked pretty much describes me. But I can certainly be femme at times too. And I think that butch sometimes is just as femme as, well, femme. Butch isn’t necessarily about the clothes, shoes, hair and make-up – though it CAN BE. More, butch is about the attitude, the way we see ourselves and the way we relate to others. Shit, I just wish I could find those “comfortable shoes” that are supposed to define me…
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:01 am #
Disclaimer: I’m a straight woman who identified as “tom-boy geek/androgynous” until very recently. Now I identify as “fashion-conscious but lazy”.
There’s something performative about being “butch”, just as there’s something performative about being “femme” or even just being “a normal woman”. It seems to me like society/straight men like Robin Williams look at a woman who’s butch and don’t find her attractive, so they assume she’s not putting any effort into her appearance. Nearly everyone wears clothes as a sort of disguise and a sort of armor – for 4 years in middle/high school I wore the same red plaid hunting jacket to school every day, not because I didn’t care about how I presented myself, but because I wanted to present the image of not caring.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 am #
I wanted to say really quickly too, when I say “women in comfortable shoes” i’m not meaning “not putting any effort into her appearance”–i’m meaning like–rosie odonnell and melissa ethridge and ellen D. all pre-”fixing up”–rosie has certianly gone back to what she feels comfortable in, now that she’s not a huge public figure any more (and the hair thing, I think was her first FU, I’m a butch shut up and deal with it move), but like ethridge and ellen and queen latifah have all done a “glossy pretty” image change over–where they’re wearing a lot of pant suits and that sort of thing. Which, again, is not to say, ew, u can’t be butch any more!” or anything like that at ALL, but just to say, I identify with the jeans, long hair, tennis shoes, etc of pre-glossy days. And I wonder if the “post glossy” makes them more palatable to mainstream audiences.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am #
so, this conversation is much more complicated and layered than this, but at the very least, i wanna say –
uh, the way that linked post frames butch as top and “bottom” as not-butch is just one of several ways i find it stuck in a simplistic, binary paradigm that is not so helpful.
i mean, i was kind of excited by the title of the linked post, which seemed like it might be pointing toward possibility and complicating typical discourses — and it does do that in the sense of expanding possibilities for gender expression among female-assigned bi-identified folks, which is not insignificant. but after that? it goes downhill fast for me.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 am #
some butch chick and jess–i agree with you both–and the thing that I struggle with too–people seem to expect butch women to be mini macho men or something–there was that whole oprah thing a few weeks back *straight women leaving men for women* and all these women were going on and on about how they love macho women because they’re so assertive and hard and strong–but soft like women.
and I’m feeling like, jesus, part of me feeling most butch comes with me feeling insecure and shy and tongue tied around women! I was telling a friend the other day that my worst nightmare was when a woman I have had a crush on for years found out–I turned into this blushing tongue tied 13 year old kid that would have ejaculated just from looking down her shirt!!!! So I don’t know where people get the idea that butch women are little mini men–I kinda find that idea stifling really.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm #
As far as I can tell there are multiple definitions of butch. And performing masculinity can take as much time and effort as performing femininity.
But there is a lot of ambiguity for me too, most days I dunno which one I’m really doing, I’m just comfortable.
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:30 pm #
Some comments were made before I sat down to write and I just wanted to address them…
The butch as “mini-men” and “hard but also soft” thing comes in from the classic Stone Butch, gender role, I think. You know, from Leslie Feinberg’s book?
May 22nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm #
I think I see what your’re saying, bfp. Ellen and Portia, for example, are held up by straight people as a typical “butch and femme” relationship, but Ellen now has a deal with Covergirl.
OK, now I want to apologize for coming here and showing my straight privilege all over the place. My experience as an androgynous-dressing straight woman may seem similar but of course is really different from the experience of bisexual or lesbian women.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm #
oh no your fine, Sarah! Just needed to clarify–although I know that “women in comfortable shoes” sounds like an insult and robin williams more than likely *meant* it as an insult for me, at least, it was a signifier that I identified with, if that makes sense!
and in regards to ellen and portia, i think you are exactly right–and it makes me think of rachel maddow–how she make conform to more hetero girly standards while on the air but off the air, she always wears those huge black glasses that hide a lot of her face and her eyes–so it’s like she’s really insisting on her masculinity being up in societies face. she has that polished glossy look to, but she seems to be really aware of that fact and finds way to subvert it, twist it and resist it, you know? Like ok, i’ve got to conform in some ways in order to play your game but I’m gonna make you wish that I would take these huge glasses off every time you look at me–you know?
it’s something that I’m not seeing women like ellen and melissa ethridge do. and that I’m not seeing a lot of the sites that are designated “butch” do–
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm #
Hope you don’t mind that I linked to this.
As someone who doesn’t really feel comfortable except in pants and a turtleneck (in summer, a t-shirt), but who doesn’t identify as butch because, right, I need another stereotype to not conform to, I found your thoughts very interesting. I don’t know what’s going on, either, except the pressure to perform socially determined roles; and if I’d wanted to perform roles, I’d have gone into acting.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm #
“if I’d wanted to perform roles, I’d have gone into acting” (D. Potter)
I think this is the most insightful and relevant thing I’ve read in a long time, and really gets to the heart of the whole question.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:42 pm #
slightly tangential but you might find it interesting – speaking of Rachel Maddow, apparently when she first started doing TV she was very anti-makeup, but then realized that the reason everyone gets make-up on TV is because TV lighting makes you look like the walking dead if you don’t, so she said, okay I’ll wear make-up, but just do to my face what you would do to the men’s faces. with that she still looks pretty “feminine” but I think a lot of that is because her face is very conventionally attractive; if you compare her to other female TV news personalities where you can really see the blue eyeshadow, the pink blush, the red lipstick, the difference is, IMO, definitely noticeable. so even on air, she’s not playing in as much as some once might have wanted her to.
also, this post/conversation is very interesting to me.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:20 pm #
…off air rachael maddow? I want piiics. I think that they have made rachael maddow more ‘girly’ lately, but I might be wrong.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm #
I guess i am wondering when being butch became so glossy and, well, pretty.
For what it’s worth (‘cuz I’m a hetero woman and as such could be talking completely out of my ass), I’d say around about the time that imagery started getting co-opted by the mainstream media as a way to move product (say, the “let’s get physical” aerobics 80s that gave straight women visible muscles—now they/we needed a new image of womanhood to match) and the impossibly high standards for performative heterosexual femininity that came along with that change. ‘Nother words, a certain amount of “butchness” is being co-opted by het women (mostly unconsciously) because they can’t keep up with the ultrafeminine standards of today (not good enough to just shave pits; now waxing is the standard—that sort of thing). Heterosexuals who get used to seeing high-definition femininity on screen want that same familiarity off-screen too. Or so it seems. The standards have changed for men too, just not to the same degree.
May 22nd, 2009 at 4:58 pm #
i remember we had a conversation like this before, bfp, where i was like wtf i don’t want to get dressed up for any of these roles, lol. perhaps the emphasis on looking just right, just “authentic” enuf stems in part from consumerism. at the same time, i admit i love clothes and the way different people play around with looks. im not a fan of macho posturing and gross attitudes that some ppl accessorize with their look (or the other way around?) i dislike when ppl project hardness.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm #
Butch? I bet you get as many answers as there are butches out there.
1. hate makeup, don’t wear dresses unless compelled to (funeral or the like), wear sensible shoes, generally very utilitarian in dress, don’t think about it much.
2. elegant-butch-on-the-town – makes an effort to find exactly the right shirt, vest, tie, slacks, jacket, shoes, accessories (cufflinks or whatever).
3. preppie butch – as in #1, but with oxfordcloth shirts and tweed or twill sportcoat.
4. aggressive – men’s urbanwear casual
5. elegant-stud – as with #2, but a more urban, fashion-conscious style
6. looking good in uniform!
7. mix-it style – consciously butch clothing with femme accessory
I would like to think that people adopt more than one style, as they please.
Butch attitude? Hard to say exactly what that is, in non-sexual terms. The can-do spirit lives in butch and femme alike, as does the laid-back persona and the combative persona. Straight men seem to take any woman who doesn’t defer to them as being butch, unless said woman is high-femme, in which case she is considered a bitch.
Butch voice – alto, of course, or tenor if possible. Choral butches hate being voiced as soprano section.
The no-nonsense attitude is sine qua non butch. Indirection and subtlety are femme-leaning traits.
What am I? That’s for others to perceive. Somewhere in the middle, I suppose. Pants-wearing, sensible-shoed, straightforward, no-makeup, short hair preferred but never seem to get around to haircuts and get a curl when I do, wear men’s shirts and pants with big pockets, wear artsy costume jewelry, sing alto II or tenor, have a long and brisk stride, and am shy in real life social situations. Looking in the mirror, I see “myself” and not a role. Of course, the above description fits some straight women in academic or non-traditional employment.
May 22nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm #
Hey, everyone.
Thought I’d link to this insightful essay by Dean Spade, “Dress to Kill, Fight to Win,” from LTTR — I think it helpfully challenges the notion that there is any unmodified, non-performative way of doing gender (“there is no naturalized gendered body”), among other things …
http://www.lttr.org/journal/1/dress-to-kill-fight-to-win
Also, thinking more about that linked post, beyond reacting really badly to the retrogade suggestion that there’s no such thing as a butch bottom, I just feel bummed out that, once again, bi women are represented with that picture of Madonna and Britney Spears — and here in an argument that’s trying to say not all people who ID as bi women are feminine?
One more thing, then I’m off to dinner: I feel like an important aspect of this larger conversation is the often unstated but underlying heteronormative idea that men aren’t attracted to non-feminine women – like that’s what makes the concept of the butch bi woman so impossible for most people to fathom. And that’s just so steeped in focusing on the male gaze, a really simplistic and binary understanding of gender, homophobia (where are bi/queer men in this picture?), and etc., that … oy.
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:17 pm #
La Labu, yea, I admit that the high standards of femininity required to be ‘femme’ turn me off. I’m ‘supposed’ to wax WHERE? With what money? The idea of shaving my legs and pits every single day seems like a lot of work to me too. And that’s just hair removal…
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 pm #
Shannon – oh, Rachel Maddow off-air is adorable! With the glasses and sneakers… This is the best picture I could find. 8D
I’m bisexual and – I don’t know. I guess there are aspects of both femme and butch that appeal to me. I’m still figuring it out.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:39 am #
Thanks! and that’s a digg banner behind her! *loooove*
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:43 am #
It is an interesting post, and I identify partly with the term bisexual butch too.
But like some butch chick u know, I sometimes veer towards femme (although even more frequently occupy neither space).
Butch resonates with me sometimes, but then I’m aware that in a different mood it can feel restrictive – and I usually feel (perhaps a bit irrationally) that by using the term butch to describe myself, I’d be signing myself up to at least an expectation of my gender being something much less fluid than it actually is.
You know that book, Butch is a Noun? Well, I’m more comfortable with it as an adjective, let’s just say that.
May 23rd, 2009 at 11:23 am #
A few thoughts, from a femme-identified cis-gendered woman who has long been loving butch women…
First, this: “I turned into this blushing tongue tied 13 year old kid that would have ejaculated just from looking down her shirt!!!” is a totally acceptable butch feeling (and not-butch feeling – what I mean is, it doesn’t automatically “disqualify” you, in fact it could be quite endearing and sexy). I don’t think a butch has EVER kissed me first. They made it clear (sometimes by blushing) that they thought I was hot, but then I always had to make the move. I’m not complaining, btw.
Second, it’s VERY instructive (and nervewracking!) for me to read that people who identify as neither butch nor femme still feel free to say stuff like “if I wanted to perform roles I’d have gone into acting” (Patti Smith has you beat on this one btw, by about 30 years, with her “As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.”) Thanks to Jess for pointing out that we are all performing all the time, and to NancyP for the reminder that people are also NOT performing all the time, that we are living our lives, not “roles.” I’d also agree with NancyP on the “as many ways to be butch as there are butches” (though I might disagree about the voice, my sweetie is a straight soprano – but she might not like anyone rubbing it in). :^)
Whether or not “roles” are restrictive or oppressive has been debated within the lesbian community ad nauseum, since the beginning of time or at least since 2nd wave feminism. See “The Persistent Desire” ed. by Joan Nestle (a good if uneven collection of voices, but very butch-femme)…a search for which led me to this website http://apersistentdesire.blogspot.com/
Also, yes, some men like butch women and vice versa. Gender expression, sex and gender identity, and sexual orientation are not automatically linked, which of course a lot of people find very threatening (but can also lead to some very hott sex!)
I’m not trying to suppress any discussion about gender expression among non-butch, non-femme identified folks, I guess I just feel very defensive of the butches (and femmes) that I know. We are not majority among white middle class queers (which I also am, though my butch partner is white with a rural working class background – some of her straight sisters are butch as hell), so it might feel more threatening to identify as such in that milieu and (possibly) more threatening to *not* identify as one or the other in working class communities and communities of color; I don’t really know. I reckon you can’t get very far in a discussion of gender expression without bringing in class and race/ethnicity. And also consumer capitalism…also urban/rural (hard to be high femme when you’re poor, or working on a farm; hard to be rich when you’re very butch, or a soft butch in a hard neighborhood).
May 24th, 2009 at 1:04 am #
I’ll add ‘disability’ to that list; A lot of gender performance takes energy as well as money. It was a disability that led me to swearing to never buy shoes for their looks again (not that I was into heels or anything before); and it’s a disability now that has me not bothering with a whole lot of “beauty” crap that other people seem to be interested in, because I’m saving my spoons for other things.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:43 am #
Lauredhel,
I agree that disability is something that plays into gender expression, totally–but at the same time, I think it probably plays out in a different way–I don’t know–I always think of butch and femme as something that is done not because my feet hurt but because that’s what makes me feel the most “me”–if that makes sense. so in other words, I’[ve totally seen femme women in wheelchairs. Ms. Crip chick stacy presents to me as total femme (although she may identify as something else, I’m not sure), as does wheel chair dancer. I think that what disability does is more that it pushes gender to be expressed in different ways as opposed to not caring about it because saving spoons for other things–does that make sense? I’m not sure I’m explaining it the way I mean it because I don’t think I have the right vocabulary to go about explaining it.
So in other words “women in comfortable shoes” would be women weaering comfortable shoes because they like the asthetic, they feel most comfortable and in their skin with non-frilly shoes, they feel like they are saying something about themselves by the shoes themeselves–as in: I have specifically chosen to wear these shoes because women are expected to wear shoes that are frilly and I am not frilly and as such, I am making a statement about who I am. I mean, I think 1. it does a diservice to disabled people to assume that disabled people don’t find very specific ways to express high femme (as an example) while still being fully aware of disability. and 2. being butch does not by default mean “not caring about looks.”
I mean, for me wearing comfortable shoes, wearing t-shirts and jeans and all black most of the time–that doesn’t mean that I’m not caring about what I look like–that doesn’t mean I’m “nuetral” in what I look like–it means that I feel most comfortable, most able to be *me* when I dress that way. I feel most comfortable making jokes and flirting with people and being a pervert, etc when wearing what I wear. If I was wearing pink frilly stuff or any damn thing with a ribbon on it, I would be sulking in a corner trying my best to take the ribbon off. I would feel like a poser. Dishonest. Like when I was flirting with somebody, as an example, I was not being honest with that person. Does that make sense?
May 24th, 2009 at 10:28 am #
Nora–esp. great point about the money aspect. I was thinking when I was looking at the linked site that dang, I don’t have the freaking *money* to be butch! and then when I got my new job
, I was thinking that oooh, oooh, what new clothes could i get? with money comes the luxury of choice…I mean, it is no small coincidence that I get a job and suddenly I’m all–hm….what is a butch, really?
I like a lot of dark colors and “manish” punk looking things that pretty much are expressed when you’re poor as tshirts and and jeans or sweats, you know? haha.
So I think your point is right on about class–and in regards to race–maybe that’s the point that I’m really struggling with. I know that out in cali. there’s a strong(er) butch chicana community so they have things like butchalis that help to define and explore what “butch” and “chicana” (which implies poor or working class) can mean–but here in michigan, where the Latino community is often very conservative and transient, being “butch” can mean something as simple as wearing your hair very short (cuz there is literally no such thing as a conservative religious ‘good girl’ (aka hetero girl)that has short hair). I remember that the first time I cut my hair short, a latino man said to me, “why would you do that to your hair????”
SO I think for me, that’s what I struggle with, is the race aspect. I strongly strongly identify with Gloria Anzaldua’s style of “butch”–blue jeans, a nice shirt, short hair, etc–but she’s very tejan@, and I’m about as tejan@ as a box of rocks.
I also wonder at kimberly’s thoughts as compared to nora’s thoughts about how “sexuality” and “desire” fit into the scope of “butch”–for me, like I said, I feel most butch in context to other people and how much I appeal to those other people–but at the same time…I wonder is butch dress really something that is remotely related to how it appeals to other people?
I mean, it clearly absolutly is. that guy who was all, “how could you cut your hair” was no longer attracted to me, and I guess for me, that was the point–but even more than that being the point, was the fact that I was tired of fucking around with the mess on top of my head–it was representing “ME” to the world in a false way. It was saying something to the world about me that wasn’t true, and I only felt better about my hair, and my hair belonged to me after I cut it short, shaved the back and died it cherry red.
After that, I was like ok, it doesn’t matter how I wear my hair from this point on, this hair is my hair. But at the same time, I’ve never let my hair grow long again.
Sigh. i’m so confused. Most of my life these days is about being confused. and I’m not gonna lie, in many ways it sux royally.
May 24th, 2009 at 10:36 am #
oh, and jess-very very VERY important point about how the idea of bi butch seems “false” as there is this idea that men can’t or aren’t attracted to butch women. It made me laugh because I think my W* has dated every softball bi butch in the state of michigan. to him, it is a very appealing thing to have women hold their own with him in terms of sports. ANd i think that there’s a LOT of men who feel that way. And if you look at porn, you see really appropriated examples of the way I think men find women who are more masculine very very appealing–the cowgirl, the ranch hand, the factory girl (flash dance anybody?), the police woman, the automechanic–of course, in appropriated bullshit porn, those women are always very very femme looking underneath once the clothes come off and very male centric (looking for penis ya no???)–but I don’t think that those roles exist for no reason. I think that they are working class ways of expressing equality between men/women–working class ways that men really enjoy because it means that they can share their world with somebody they can also share their bodies with…
and getting into the whole bi men thing–i mean–that makes my head explode! I can barely wrap my mind around myself, much less the mulitple ways bi men exsist!!!!
May 24th, 2009 at 10:55 am #
One last thing: a point of clarification. To me “not caring what you look like” or being “low maintenance” or that sort of thing–to me, that doesn’t mean default butch–because to me there are very very gendered ways of being “low maintenance” or “not caring what I look like”
for example, my grandma is *extremly* low maintenance–she wear sweats and tennis shoes almost every day of her life–but she wears sweats that have pictures of huge hearts on them with ruffles sewn around the edges of the ruffles. It may take her three minutes to get dressed every morning, but nobody would doubt for a second that she is the biggest femme girl grandma in the world, right? what butch would be caught dead wearing sweats with ruffle laced hearts? (it makes me giggle just thinking about it….I would die if i wear asked to wear something like that!!!)
May 24th, 2009 at 12:23 pm #
ANd i think that there’s a LOT of men who feel that way.
I’ll second that motion. I see a WHOLE lot of that in the trades. I think you’re on to something about that expressing equality, but I think it also comes from the assumption that the “butch” woman (in quotes because I’m not really comfortable appropriating that term for hetero or primarily hetero women’s less-than-femme expression) is more likely to be sexually aggressive about her desire. The kinda…she’ll throw you down on the bed and fuck you her way and make you like it type of thing. (not that I’m confessing anything, mind you.
‘Nother words, straight people (and most especially straight men) invest a lot of energy in trying to maintain that image of straightness. Hence, the “pretty” butch image of today—sanitizing butchness for het men/women so it can still be called “straight”.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:05 pm #
and getting into the whole bi men thing–i mean–that makes my head explode! I can barely wrap my mind around myself, much less the mulitple ways bi men exsist!!!!
As a white bi cis male(gender queerish) I have to say that this post really hit home for me. I definitely would be more femme, if that’s the right term from my side of things, if it didn’t take so much damn work. I cannot stand shaving, absolutely hate it, but I definitely like being shaved. I like longish hair but it is just annoying as hell to take care of, and costs more than short hair. Because of this almost no-one identifies me as bi or even remotely interested in men.
One last thing: a point of clarification. To me “not caring what you look like” or being “low maintenance” or that sort of thing–to me, that doesn’t mean default butch–because to me there are very very gendered ways of being “low maintenance” or “not caring what I look like”
For me that isn’t really true. I work in a warehouse and have to wear things that are more butch. There is only one woman(latina) in the warehouse and if she cut her hair short she would definitely be identified as butch from the clothes she wears. Maybe this is a class element here?
I’m really glad you posted this, I’ve been thinking about my presentation a lot in the last few days.
May 24th, 2009 at 3:57 pm #
1. it does a diservice to disabled people to assume that disabled people don’t find very specific ways to express high femme (as an example) while still being fully aware of disability. and 2. being butch does not by default mean “not caring about looks.”
This makes me wonder about butches with disabilities and how they might *not* express high femme, although my het privilege is probably showing with this comment. I think you’re right that disability and gender expression, as they intersect with one’s appearance, play out in different ways, though the reasons might be weirdly criss-crossing.
I dislike using myself as an example in these sorts of things, because it sort of makes me anxious about my own privilege, but I wore “comfortable” shoes much of the time before I got fibromyalgia because comfy, non-heeled shoes felt more “me,” and heels did not. My physical issues now tend to override any appearance-based “benefit” that heels may bring (I say this as a white, het, cis female); at the same time, I still don’t think heels are “me,” nor are many conventional markers of straight cis feminine appearance (smooth legs, makeup, tight clothing, and probably some stuff that I’m forgetting), but having a disability has definitely intersected with how I think about clothing and gender presentation.
(Slightly OT: “caring about looks” is one of those things that I don’t feel like I can comment on effectively because it is so, so subjective.)
May 24th, 2009 at 4:10 pm #
Now that I read my comment again, “straight cis feminine appearance” SHOULD be “conventional feminine appearance.” I apologize for my crappy choice of words there.
May 24th, 2009 at 4:20 pm #
yeah, I agree annaham, about it being weirdly criss-crossing–in that response I made to laurldel, I was getting so confused trying to explain myself….I think that as a butch type identified person w/depression and ADD–i express “gender” in that I wear sweats and tshirts when I feel like shit, but they are dark colors, dressed down, and most *certainly* not the tighter clingier type sweats that other women wear.
I think the thing about comfortable shoes that robin williams was making has to also be put into context. it was a joke made in the 80′s when “comfortable shoes” *meant* butch women–because there were literally no other choices for women–tennis shoes were for kids, certainly not something worn as a style like they are today, you know? Women who made the choice to wear those types of shoes were making a very pointed commentary about who they were, you know?
but at the same time, as I wrote that sentence, I realized osmething–the only women who wore those types of shoes back then were butch women AND *women with disabilities* or grandma type women. there were a LOT of stigma around those types of shoes. A stigma that I don’t think exists so much today because there are so many choices available as a way to express gender while still being comfortable.
but it’s interesting to think about how butchness intersected at that point with disability and vise versa–how there was stigma attached to both and a sense of “asexualness” simply because of the assumption of lack of availability to men.
I would have to think more about this to think if that sort of connection is a strong today as it was back in the 80′s–maybe other butch women who have been out longer than I have would know?
May 25th, 2009 at 5:05 am #
“by using the term butch to describe myself, I’d be signing myself up to at least an expectation of my gender being something much less fluid than it actually is” – jess
YES!
A perfect example of the issue I have with the fluidity of my gender expression is the whole shoe thing. Before disability meant that I can’t stand to wear shoes at all and wear “comfortable” shoes only as long as necessary before kicking even them off altogether… back in the day I could wear peep-toe heels, a short skirt, a frilly top or backless bustier one day, and knee length fraying oversized chinos w/ a baggy t-shirt, flannel & boots the next. Perhaps schizophrenia is the assumption, but really it’s that
a) they are both dress up, taking on a role
b) I dressed what *I* felt like, what made me comfortable, on any given day.
I presented myself based on my own feelings/likes/wants each day, even if that meant that I looked completely different than the previous day.
As a bi/queer woman, I can also tell you that I like a variety of men and women, I am not “into” one “type”. I have always liked pretty boys, whether straight identified or not, and very femme women. But I have also always liked very macho men, and so-called butch women. Back in the day, I had two girlfriends and a boyfriend at the same time (they knew of each other). One girlfriend was super femme, the other went out in male drag. The boyfriend was straight identified but really was very assexual in appearance and mannerisms.
My own style has changed dramatically due to several factors, not all of which am I comfortable to reveal here, but one is definitely related to disability. But even in the changes, I can tell you that I still come off distinctly “butch” some days and femme on others depending on my own moods and how I’m feeling. And I just don’t think that I can be boxed into one or the other, nor do I really think, especially reading more of this discussion and other people’s thoughts on what butch is, that I need or want to be boxed in. I wear the title butch with pride when it’s given to me, but I’m not ashamed to be femme too… and I don’t mind being indefineable at all. I’m just me.
May 25th, 2009 at 5:30 am #
Sorry I didn’t get back to this thread, I’ve been trying to sort my thoughts into long-form, but have failed (it’s not a great time from a personal point of view), so I’ll have to settled for disjointed/conversational.
The ruffled laced hearts! Argh! I had to giggle, too. No matter how femme-y I was feeling, that’s never the sort of thing I would put on, because when I’m femmeing (well, when I have in the past), that’s nothing like my taste.
“I think that what disability does is more that it pushes gender to be expressed in different ways as opposed to not caring about it because saving spoons for other things–does that make sense? “
Yes. I think there’s something more going on, too, which is the difference between reading vs performance vs feeling. You’ve said “because that’s what makes me feel the most “me”” – talking about the feeling side – and then that might translate into a particular kind of performance (inflected by spoons and money and so forth), and then that might translate into different readings depending on the viewer.
I think some readers are going to see someone expressing NancyP’s “1. hate makeup, don’t wear dresses unless compelled to (funeral or the like), wear sensible shoes, generally very utilitarian in dress, don’t think about it much”, and always read butch, no matter how that person is feeling inside. I’m also smiling a little at that example, because I’m going to a funeral tomorrow and am not going to wear a dress at all… pantsuit and Doc Martens. I’m not feeling particularly butch at the moment, but I know many people would see that outfit, the very short hair (strictly to cut daily maintenance and so I can go a long time between cuts), and the no makeup and read “butch”.
This is all pretty different from my self a decade or two ago, when I would swing between the two. I was usually read as “one of the boys”, when I drank beer and played pool and competed in martial arts and squash and lifted weights and armwrestled, no ruffled hearts in sight. One acquaintance once told me he read me as “butch” because I walked with my feet in straight lines, instead of putting one foot in front of the other in a hip-swinging walk – that particular attribute had never really occurred to me as “butch” at the time. And then I would swing into femme after training or on another social occasion, with the lipstick and the cleavage and the shaved legs and the long hair and the flirting – and looking back, all of that performance, in either direction, took lots and lots and lots of energy. Or maybe they took energy because I “feel” neutral inside, and shifting my performance away from that is always going to carry inertia?
Re – femme women in wheelchairs – definitely – and I think this is also getting at the very heterogeneous nature of disability. Someone with one kind of disability might have much more energy to spare on gender performance than someone with another kind, and vice versa with heaps of combinations.
I think limping and movement speed and movement disorders might play in here, too – if your femmeness or butchness is or has been very tied up in the way you move, walk, dance, and/or flirt, then a big change in movement abilities can change that dramatically also. There are lots of axes here, and they all intersect.
OK, it ended up long-form, but still disjointed. Sorry.
May 25th, 2009 at 7:31 am #
To me, femmeness always seems to be work. Like, learning to walk in a feminine manner? I walk in straight lines, simply because I haven’t practiced hip swinging. I don’t wear makeup, simply because getting it right seems like a lot of time and effort. I don’t know what I mean, but it seems pretty overwhelming from where I stand.
May 25th, 2009 at 6:41 pm #
ooohh! Squeeeee. And LOL. I’ve just read the comments thread … You see me as femme. Delighted to be seen on the other side of the divide. (yes, I know, that’s the same reaction cripchick had). I wonder if that’s because people mostly only see w/c users as butch because of their disability prejudice?
Anyway. I just wrote this whole post on the “butch” as the way others see me — in an attempt to join the conversation.
We intersect again!
Smilingly,
WCD
May 26th, 2009 at 4:28 pm #
thankful for this post.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:41 pm #
Adding my two cents for what it’s worth.
Being formerly FTM identified… I just don’t know what to do with the whole butch/femme thing! I love dressing masculinly but I am not very masculine in thought. Eh. I thought I had more to say but maybe not online…
May 29th, 2009 at 2:35 am #
To me, butch and femme have little to do with being high maintenance or not. More that butch and femme are informed by traditional male and female appearances – and it is that men’s clothes are usually more low-key and comfy, same goes for other aspects of appearance. Women’s clothes and appearance tend to be high maintenance. I’d put a lot of this difference down to sexism. I think there are aspects of butch that are being about being the looker, and aspects of femme that are being about being looked at, but that’s not universal. And there are plenty of ways to be butch and high maintenance, and femme and low maintenance.
Speaking personally, I ID as (cis) femme most of the time, and I don’t do any high maintenance stuff. Don’t pluck, don’t shave, don’t paint, don’t buff, don’t moisturise, don’t style, don’t diet, don’t do any of that stuff (except over-the-top makeup occasionally). My shoes are my roots into the ground – sensible. I mistook all that for butch in myself for a long while, but there is something about my sexuality, my desire in self-presentation, the way I move, that made me realise that femme described me better. There is heaps about me that people might call butch, just cos I have a lot more in common with most contemporary males than females, and I lead a practical everyday life in what I wear, but nope, goddess, glamour-puss, princess, medusa, faery, witch, drag queen, amazon, all these describe my essence. For me, doing high femme once in a blue moon feels like “drag” (for want of a better word), but it sure is fun!
I think it is sexism and cis-centric to say that femme must mean the same thing as conventional femininity, or even women, and same goes for butch regarding men. I mean, there are femme trans men out there for example.
May 29th, 2009 at 9:13 am #
really interesting thread.
I wonder if butches being more glossy is because it’s easier to see each other now, with internet and digital cameras, so people want to get creative? Flaunt it a bit?
I did it the other way round with disability; got more dressy femme as my disabilities got worse. Because for me butch femme isn’t all like, who wears the pants or dresses, so much as feeling I can express all this stuff about gender, class, ‘deviant’ womanhood and desire. Like how it feels to be comfortable with all my stuff in my body and recognize it in other queers. I really value that boost more on bad days now, so I get femme when I can. Not that, that means like, high heels when I can’t walk well, cos I don’t do heels anyway.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:52 pm #
Yeah, I know maintaining my appearance is a real hassle most days, and sometimes I love to dress up when I don’t have the energy to leave the house, just wear glam stuff around the place. I feel pretty fragile on those days though so I tend to want to be a bit invisible outside, not too dressy, just in case I’m hunched or forgotten to do something basic with appearance like cleaning the sleep out of my eyes or the dirt off my glasses or stuff out of my hair (I kid you not). And non-dressy-femme stuff means it’s easier for me to carry things off my back/shoulders (which are f**ked). But I can do low-maintenance femme just as well as one can do low-maintenance butch.