(In honour of my drag spoken word event being cancelled) (please keep in mind this is meant to be more of a speech)
Before I knew what attraction was
Before I knew girls could be loved as I am, and not as I wished to be.
Men taught me masculinity was something exclusive,
Something they owned, a privilege steeped in a woman’s fear.
So, when I wore it differently,
They taught me masculinity in a woman was an open debate,
Like something to be corrected, conquered, or consumed.
A thing that shouldn’t exist,
Unless it existed for them.
Some of them, I was too young to remember.
Some of them didn’t ask.
Some of them overpowered me, pinned me down, choked me.
All of them called it desire,
When it was actually entitlement
They’d become women just to fuck me,
Like transness is a costume,
Like my body is the prize at the end of a joke.
My butchness was a rehearsal for manhood,
As if masculinity has one source,
As if violence is the blueprint.
This is the masculinity they swear I emulate,
As if my butchness is a mimicry of a man’s.
I wore dresses as apologies,
Womanhood as my own personal drag show.
By what you refuse to become.
I do not confuse wanting with owning,
Nor turn bodies into a battleground.
A butch does not need fear
Men view my masculinity as predatory,
But my masculinity was born in refusal.
What I will never become.
I am a good pair of boots,
A tenderness for my femme,
Strength for my fellow butches.
A solid punch to the face,
A subversive sociopolitical identity.
Intertwined in the community,
Tangled in the beautiful mess
My masculinity is not theirs.
It is built against them.
It comes from the butches before me,
Who protected without owning.
romaincrisis
kaledo-art
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
