essie

ID: a reply by @essiebitssie to this post (link) which reads:

Ever since I read this post, I keep thinking about this. I guess, when ai first learned about butchfemme community, the elders (typically white butches) keep talking about how as femme I should be more protective of butches because historically they're a vulnerable member of our community. And.. before this, I was already disillusioned, and already start pushing back on the "centering butches" in my femme identity. Now I just 🧍🏽‍♀️

end ID

what a fucked up, misogynoir, ahistorical, damaging thing for them to tell you, i'm so sorry you (& so many other folks) experienced that. sure, white butches have always been targeted for police violence, but that's in comparison to the white supremacist expectation that the police are "on our side"; Black people experience the same & worse violence no matter how gender conforming they try to be (of course, only white people can be read as "truly" gender conforming by a white supremacist society).

these types of invocations also erase that even white fems were never unharassed — in addition to the historical association between fems & sex work, fem gender nonconformity (link 1) [this source also discusses the misogynoir assumption that Black women aren't fems] (link 2) was met with harassment & negative attention on the street (link 1) (link 2) and in places of business (in S/HE, Minnie Bruce Pratt discusses a gas station employee "jokingly" asking whether it's her 18-wheeler outside).

i personally believe the strength in butch/femme is found when we collaborate, co-conspire, & protect each other — including & especially Black femmes & femmes of color. it shouldn't only work one way, & we especially shouldn't be demanding the first + most labor from our most targeted & vulnerabilized members.

in fact, in my other excerpts of kennedy & davis's work on systemic butch privilege / fem victimization in predominantly white bar culture of the 60's, they argue that historical abuse of fems was precisely enabled by a culture that "placed the butch in the vulnerable and stressful position of defender of the community and promoted the fem as the highly desired, but unreliable, refuge or source of security" (link 1) (link 2).

the way to address historic (white) butch vulnerability isn't to further retrench into stereotypical analysis of vulnerabilized hypervisibilized white butch vs safe invisibilized white fem — sure, these are some people's experiences, but this was never the full or only story. this is ofc just one slice of history but according to kennedy & davis's work, the role of Black fems was not to "protect studs," & certainly not to "protect white butches" — i can't recall that ever being mentioned. instead, Black narrators discuss Black fems' labor to create community spaces through hosting house parties, including cooking food, diffusing police attention, & collecting cover fees for rent or community causes (link).

& ofc all of that is just from one corner of usamerican butchfem history — that doesn't encompass the intersectional experiences & nuances of an international community of butch/fem(me)-identified folks.

There cannot be any true address of violence, hatred, bigotry, racism or other forms of oppression done to members of our own if we cannot at the very LEAST recognize the privilege that is embedded into whiteness and therefore into the white butchfemme community.

In reference to the post linked above, the reason that this horrific violence was permissible in butchfemme spaces of the mid 1900s was specifically bc these spaces operated in conjunction with white supremacy. It is apparent in every aspect of 1950s butchfemme when you read the history of our community. Unfortunately (and this is due to my own blindness towards these issues bc of my whiteness) i did not truly grasp the weight of what white butchfemmes (butches specifically in regards to this situation but white queer as a whole) need to do in order for us to achieve true solidarity with our siblings of color until i read about the way butches would physically assault and abuse their femmes. The history of white butchfemme is at its core an appropriation of BIPOC queer culture, of ballroom. Butch and Femme originated in ballroom, as did dyke. Dyke was then used as a slur against black queers, before being whitewashed into the label we have today. The ridged walls around the butchfemme of old, the way that butch4butches, femme4femme and anything resembling futch was ostracized and abandoned, all of this is rooted in white supremacy, and unless white butchfemmes can look on our history recognize the real harm that our community of past caused, and then rectify and atone for those harms in our current identities and spaces we will never be free.

(1) spread the word of ongoing current issue in Nepal (recap) and

(2) document the happenings and store evidence in the event that the internet will truly be shut down in Nepal or if the government attempts to purge the evidences

Evidence one - readying bullets to fire on protestors

Evidence two - claim of police force firing at civil hospital of nepal directly from the medical staff

Evidence three - finding of metal bullet covers, contradicting their rubber bullets statement

Evidence four - attack at hospital

Evidence five - physical abuse of Nepalese Police force PT. 2 and many more!

ENTRIES

[September - 8] : (1) (2) (3) (4)

[ September - 9] : (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14!!!) (15!) (16)

[ September - 10]: (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25)

[ September - 11]: (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31)

[September - 12]: (32) (33!!)

from Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold (1994) by Madeline D. Davis & Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy

excerpt 1:

All narrators, butch and fem alike, remember and talk about the violence in relationships of the tough crowd in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was a public part of community life. This does not mean that all butches of this crowd and period hit their fems. In fact, we know some who did not. But the possibility of using violence was integrated into the culture.

Butches not only talk about others’ violence, but openly acknowledge their own, although they have neither the words nor the stomach to discuss it fully. “And there was also violence. There was a lot of violence… What will I talk about? Do you want to sit around and talk about, you know, the girl that you punched in the face because she did something wrong, you don’t want to say all that. But it was very violent” (Vic).

Violence in relationships is not only taken for granted as part of the fabric of late-1950s social life, but also is dramatically marked in people’s memories. Little Gerry, hearing a draft of our work, urges us not to cover up the violence, and immediately shares a vivid and unpleasant memory of “a butch taking her fem by the hair and bashing her head down on the bar. It was not nice.”

excerpt 2:

Vic remembers learning to hit her fem as part of the cultural package of becoming butch, like how to dress.

gonna be honest, this isn’t nice to read as a butch, as a butch whose butch identity is very important to them, but this needs to be spoken on, brought to light and thoroughly investigated, examined, and addressed by the butch community, myself included. This violence that is spoken about in these excerpts is historical and was a well established part of the butch identity. Therefore every butch (white especially) has a moral and ethical responsibility to deconstruct the way we think about our fem/femme/fish counterparts, how we interact with them in community spaces how we speak about them, how we move throughout shared culture with them.

As a bisexual butch, who has always been excluded from larger butch culture and social spaces, i see this historical form of violence replicated in the modern day over and over, in the way that butch4butches talk about femmes, in the way that femme contribution is flatted into a one dimensional feminine cut out of butch protection as if a femme only exists for us to take out anger at the world on and then use to shield us from the oppression we do face, in the way that trans butches, bi butches, genderdiverse and man aligned sapphics are horrifically erased from history. This is a problem that is as deeply ingrained in butch culture as white supremacy is specifically because this DOES come from white supremacy.

Masculinity that does not firmly and repeatedly distance itself from white supremacy, from the centering of whiteness is doomed to replicate the violence and horror that upholds the patriarchy and white supremacy as a pillar of society. Butches, i urge you with all of the care in my heart for us and our people to really REALLY sit with this excerpt, examine how you treat fems/femmes, how you treat those different then you, how you police your spaces. None of us are free until all of us are free. It is our duty as butches to never use any other member of our communities as a punching bag, as a receptacle of our anger and frustration, as a way to bond with other butches.

from Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold (1994) by Madeline D. Davis & Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy

excerpt 1:

All narrators, butch and fem alike, remember and talk about the violence in relationships of the tough crowd in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was a public part of community life. This does not mean that all butches of this crowd and period hit their fems. In fact, we know some who did not. But the possibility of using violence was integrated into the culture.

Butches not only talk about others’ violence, but openly acknowledge their own, although they have neither the words nor the stomach to discuss it fully. “And there was also violence. There was a lot of violence… What will I talk about? Do you want to sit around and talk about, you know, the girl that you punched in the face because she did something wrong, you don’t want to say all that. But it was very violent” (Vic).

Violence in relationships is not only taken for granted as part of the fabric of late-1950s social life, but also is dramatically marked in people’s memories. Little Gerry, hearing a draft of our work, urges us not to cover up the violence, and immediately shares a vivid and unpleasant memory of “a butch taking her fem by the hair and bashing her head down on the bar. It was not nice.”

excerpt 2:

Vic remembers learning to hit her fem as part of the cultural package of becoming butch, like how to dress.

"Oh I don't normally use AI, I just wanted it to plan my trip"

You lived on this planet for decades, you know what you like, there are hundreds of websites where you can type into any search engine " things to do in [area]" and have at least a hundred different options.

"Oh I only use it so I can figure out what to make during the week with what I have"

The most popular website as you type in "recipes" into google have sections where you click dinner- quick and easy and those usually rely on staples + 1 or 2 items. I found 30 recipes on chicken alone.

"I had a writing idea, so I typed a few sentences into Chat GPT and I was able to write 20 pages with it."