Bootlickers Do Not Interact

anyways like,,, both the recent “soft butch” label and the increasing movement to label anyone who isnt a 50′s housewife as butch is honestly harmful to the label as a whole. When so much space is made to celebrate the same “thin white/fair skinned vaguely androgynous but acceptably feminine enough” figure the bulldaggers and the manly dykes and all of the butches who fall outside any of these constraints get pushed out to the fringes of a community that, lets face it, is already kind of on the fringe of mainstream lesbian culture. The constant separation of “soft butches” from butches who supposedly never have emotions or unmasculine hobbies shows exactly how much yall dont understand the very substance of the butch label. 

here’s a starter list for those who have asked!

odd girls and twilight lovers by lillian faderman

the persistent desire: a butch femme reader by joan nestle

stone butch blues by leslie feinberg (here)

s/he by minnie bruce pratt

crybaby butch by judith frank

boots of leather, slippers of gold by elizabeth lapovsky kennedy and madeline davis

no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.

you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.

people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%. the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.

the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.

when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.

and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.

EDIT: https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_Trends_in_Appalachian_Health.pdf here, since y’all are too fucking obnoxiously incapable of taking 2.3 seconds google and instead want to claim I pulled random numbers from my asshole

people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true - half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.