Rory

Butch and femme are political identities. I see a lot of posts that celebrate femmes who don't present the way society wants them to or says they should because of the label they use. I love the femmes who don't adhere to the made up rules that society has created.

But I also love the butches who do the same.

Butches, your butchness is not defined by how masculine you are. If you wear a dress, then you are simply a butch in a dress. If you like to wear high heels, then you are one tall fucking butch in those heels. Your identity is not defined by how masculinely you present at every given moment. I am just as butch when my femme is baby talking me or when I'm whiny because I have a cold. I am butch in every moment of my life, no matter what, because that is my gender and my identity.

You do not lose your butchness in the moments where you do not feel masculine. If anything, you are even more butch because you are rejecting the status quo of gender. Butch and femme are gender identities in which the dykes who identify with them do not express gender "properly." The way gender is dictated is not something these identities follow.

Butches have historically been ostracized for their masculinity, and that destroys me because it feels as if so many of us are now afraid to rejoice in anything deemed remotely ‘feminine’.

For so long I was fearful of what being ‘non-masculine’ would mean in regards to my gender. But guess what? It means nothing. It means I am butch and I enjoy the colour pink sometimes, and that I love littlest pet shop.

Your femininity does not make you less butch, and your masculinity does not make you more butch.