Ruminations of a trans butch
(Once again, a post I intended for r/actuallesbians that will be put here and elsewhere as I will not be returning to reddit)
"You're only a 'butch' because you're afraid of the fact that you're still a man and can't admit it"
I mean, maybe some of that is true. Maybe the fact that I spend twenty years as a man means that some of it simply stuck, some element of wanting to be strong all the time, or even just a liking of men's cargo pants.
This goes way deeper than I think people would want to think, though. So let's peel things back a bit. Where did butch lesbian culture originate, really?
Well, most of it goes back some real dark times for lgbt communities, during the McCarthy era in the 50s. This was a conflicting time when both gay bar culture was at its height and also a time when anti-gay politics had hit a fever pitch, meaning there was all kinds of flashpoints of violence, battles against cops, riots, etc.
In this era we saw that these masculine lesbians found a role as protectors, as a sort of metaphorical warrior caste among the lesbian communities. Just so we're clear, femmes and every other denomination of lesbian unequivocally fought back as well, but there formed a unique group of lesbians who were both masculine and took pride in their fight to keep their community safe.
I suppose that's where I slot in. I am someone who attended farm school, someone who was very interested in motorcycles and wore armored leathers all the time, someone who spent a lot of time in defense classes, and someone who suffered chronic physical and sexual abuse for years.
It didn't matter to me what I had to suffer, what brought me here, what it meant. The girls in my polycule will not suffer as I did. My sister and her bisexual wife and their children will not suffer as I did. That I would do what I had to.
Because the world is no more safe than it was during McCarthy's reign, and we need to pull the world back together. And I found a home in the concept of masculine lesbians holding down the fort.
