On Being ‘Butch’, and the Complexities of Being Neither ‘Manly’ nor ‘Womanly’ by Charmaine Poh, August 28, 2019.
I was on a quest to seek out as many queer spaces as I could find, slowly assembling a directory of queer lives in a city known for Jay Chou, bubble tea, Hou Hsiao-Hsien films, and the most progressive LGBTQ movement in Asia. Specifically, I was looking to interview and photograph individuals who identify as “T”, the closest approximation to the Taiwanese version of “butch.”
Liting tells me that it is outward appearance which lays the foundation, her identity as a butch centred around the opting of attire that is considered to be masculine, quite often culled from the men’s section. This translated into starched, crisp shirts, clean crew cuts, and a proclivity for too many sneakers. “I’m super softie inside,” she reasons.
Within this label, I encountered sub-categories; 铁(tiě)T and 娘(niáng)T have a close English equivalent in stone butch and soft butch respectively. This was especially apparent when I met couples. When I photographed them in the intimacy of their homes, I noticed that butch behaviour was amplified in the presence of a partner, who was more often than not a feminine-presenting person. Their stone-ness or softness was considered in relation to their partner.
One of the Ts, Hai Ting, who identifies as more of a 娘(niáng)T, gave an example of how it was her girlfriend who pursued her. Another, Eddy, said that she was perhaps “a bad T” because she considered her relationship with her girlfriend to be egalitarian with a disregard for gender norms. In these two cases, the femme partners are both an embodiment of butch desire, as they are an affirmation of the desirability and celebration of butch identity. As spoken-word poet Ivan Coyote wrote, addressing femmes, “Some of them think I am queer because I am undesirable. You prove to them that being queer is your desire.”
Yet none of us are free from public reading; appearing masculine is also asserting an image that demands to be read as masculine, and with it, the associated power dynamics that exist in mainstream society, no matter the truth of the interior. Being butch inevitably includes an active decision to “do butch”, as professors Audrey Yue and Shawna Tang have written—a nod to the everyday performativity that one adopts in their attempt to construct their ideal personhood. And beyond attire, it also informs the way people stand, sit, walk, talk, and look. I began focusing on gestures as a way to signal these social codes of gender and sexuality, piecing together a puzzle that continually shifts and evolves.
At one point, she stands alone, front and centre, and addresses the audience. “What does it mean to be man enough, or too manly, especially if I’m a woman?”
Even when the answers don’t seem easy, and the lines of gender continue to blur, my hope is that these portraits say something true about what it means to carve out a space for oneself to breathe. Long or short hair, binder or not: here’s to pride, without apology.
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