אני עוד חי

I’m expecting stuff like: malice, malcontent, malnourished, or even malware or Maleficent.

When I first entered into the world of feminism, it was intimidating. Coming from the middle-east meant that majority of the people around me regarded feminists as crazy, man-hating lesbians. The lesbian part was important of course, in a place where homosexual acts are illegal. The best case scenario is people shaming you and bullying you for it, and the worst case is being jailed or stoned to death. 

This isn’t an exaggeration, it was and still is reality. Talks of feminism were met with disgusted glances, from guys and girls who would roll their eyes and laugh. Delving more into this world of feminism was important to me, to understand exactly why and how the world works the way it does. Liberal feminism became mainstream to some extent in North America. Now, people declared they were feminist because they “wanted everyone to be equal.” At that time ‘radical feminists’ had a mythic quality to them. The real Angry Man Hating Lesbians who existed in some realm of North America, sitting around with their 3 cats and hairy pits. I wanted to understand why they were perceived like that (here comes the difference between being in Asia and being swept up in the mainstream feminism movement in North America). 

So I used tumblr, my only real feminist-resource, and found radfem blogs. At first, mostly posts about prostitution came up, this I could understand. My parents are from India- where sex trafficking is a well-known fear among the population. It is well known that pimps work with large organizations, form huge underground complexes and operate by kidnapping and forcing young girls into prostitution, begging, etc. It was never a question that they had no choice, and the audacity of people to believe that the girls enjoyed being there, wanted to be kept as sex slaves- was the first obvious proof of liberal feminism’s failings. I kept looking, and the more I looked, the more obviously and obnoxiously western-centric liberal feminism became. The more I read, the more obviously woman-hating liberal feminism seemed.  Radical feminism was the only source that explained how beauty practices and femininity further pressed down on women’s necks, how euro-centric all these practices were, how damaging- physically and mentally- these practices are. And yet, liberal feminism praised them, encouraged them- dance on your oppressors graves in heels and lipstick? It was a joke. 

BDSM, that further encourages power imbalances and physical abuse, physical degradation derived from horrifically sexist and racist practices, in relationships, were somehow okay because “it’s consensual”. No longer using woman-centric terms, and embracing the very tools used to suffocate us- hyper-feminity, hypersexuality that was so obviously only for the male gaze - this was now what the feminist movement was for? It was suffocating.

It has been many years, and I have spoken to, and seen so many girls going through what I did but unfortunately, they were shamed for critical thinking. They were shamed for asking questions, and shamed into silence. I have received countless messaged from teenage girls and women,, telling me how they are afraid to ask questions because the moment they express doubt- or just the desire to know more- they are threatened, doxed, sent hate. That isn’t a healthy movement, that isn’t a fair or equal movement at all. That is a combination of gas-lighting and fear-filled subservience- which is what men are best at. It’s the way they force women into submissiveness, into silence.  Do not let yourself be forced into silence, do not let yourself be forced into blindly following something without any room for discussion or critical thought. Radical feminism is labelled “white feminism” but so far, most if not all of the WOC I know laugh at liberal feminists- and ridicule them because they are so obviously delusional. Being delusional with confidence doesn’t make you right, so question things when they feel uncomfortable, when they feel wrong. Question pushing women, and our needs, our rights to the back in our own movement. 

Butch and femme are not aesthetics. They have little to do with the length of your hair, the makeup you may wear, whether you prefer skirts or pants, the amount of flannels in your closet, or anything of the like.

Butches and femmes are not rich. Butch and femme identities originate in working class bar culture, and not being able to afford expensive suits or name brand eyeshadow palettes does not make anyone any less butch or femme.

Butch and femme are not heteronormative. Butches are not, and can never be, men, and femmes are nothing like your typical straight woman, and a butch/femme couple is one of the furthest things from a heterosexual couple that you can find. Lesbianism cannot be normative in any way.

Butch and femme are not for men, in any capacity. Yes, that includes women that have the capacity to love men. Butches and femmes are exclusively women who exclusively love women, they can never be men or include men in their attraction.

Butches are not “masculine oppressors.” Again, butches are by definition women, and all women are oppressed under the patriarchy regardless of their presentation. 

Femmes are also not favored under the patriarchy. We face our own trials in the world we live in, because again, every woman is oppressed under the patriarchy, as the entire system is rigged to be against us. The only way that the patriarchy allows women to exist is in complete subservience to men, and that is no way to exist at all.

But more important that what we are not, here is what we are:

Butches and femmes are a beautiful and diverse set of women, from the most gender-rejecting butch to the most subversive femme. We have a rich history stretching back almost a century filled with women of color, trans women, religious and ethnic minorities, and are all united by our butchness/femmeness and love for each other.

Butch and femme are lesbian specific gender identities, with each helping us butches and femmes understand ourselves in this world that tells us that we need to make ourselves available for men in order to truly be women.

Butches are the rejection of the feminine gender role, which often leads to a presentation that is read as masculine. This does not mean that butches are “manly” in any way (although some may choose to describe themselves that way) but rather that we live in a binary gender system where the rejection of one gender is often read as the acceptance of the other. But make no mistake, a butches rejection of femininity does not make them a man. Along with that, one of the most integral parts of the traditional feminine gender role is sexual availability to men, which is why butches cannot be involved in relationships with men. In order to fully reject femininity, as butches by definition do, they must live only for themselves and their fellow women.

Femmes are the subversion the feminine gender role, taking the trappings traditionally used to please men and turning them around to benefit only themselves and other women. Although femmes are feminine, due to this subversion we are still very often read by society as lesbians and are treated as such. Femmes are everything straight men want a woman to be but backwards, twisted, and turned inside out in order to make ourselves completely inaccessible to them.

Butch and femme are an extremely important framework that many lesbians use to understand themselves, their gender, their love, their sexuality, and their general relationship to the world.

Most importantly, butch and femme are home. In a world where most of society would quite frankly prefer if we didn’t exist the butch/femme community is a place where we can feel loved and accepted for who we are and how we love. 

For me and the countless other lesbians who identify as butch or femme, these identities can be life saving. Learning to view my body through the eyes of other women rather than men, and learning to let those women love and appreciate me for who I am was and is an experience I will forever be grateful for, and I am blessed to be able to be part of this fantastic community of women who share similar experiences of gender and love.

Conversely, those of you who are trying to dilute and change the meanings of butch and femme are destructive. Allowing non-lesbians to identify as butch makes way for kicking butches out of women’s spaces, taking away essential resources from an extremely marginalized group of people. Allowing non-lesbians to identify as femme erases the specific struggles, dysphoria, and love that femmes share, and contributes to lesbian erasure in society as a whole. Allowing non-lesbians into the definitions of butch and femme deteriorates their meaning and community, making it harder for butch and femme lesbians to find joy in their love and their bodies. Anyone but lesbians who claim butch or femme as identifiers are committing cultural appropriation, and destroying one of the earliest ways that lesbians were able to begin to recognize and form relationships with each other publicly en masse.

EpiPen injectors, which are relied on by people with life-threatening anaphylactic allergies, are in “very limited supply” and Canadian pharmacies are to run out of adult doses in “coming days or weeks,” according to a statement from Health Canada.

Pfizer Canada has been reporting shortages for months due to manufacturing delays, and today told Health Canada it won’t have new stock of the 0.3 mg adult dose of epinephrine until the end of August.

Canada has the 2nd highest drug prices in the world:

Canada pays more for prescription drugs for common conditions than other wealthy countries: CMAJ study

Imagine if all of this content was specifically created for other adult men to consume and get off to, and it was a globalized phenomenon that men across the world spent billions of dollars towards???

Imagine if men were the overwhelming majority of perpetrators who rape or sexually abuse girls and women who are frequently much younger and more vulnerable than them????

Imagine if child porn, of both boys and girls but especially little girls, was made by adult men, for adult men, and consumed by adult men worldwide???

Imagine if sex trafficking, sex tourism, and child brides were a massive problem throughout the world… all demanded and maintained by men???

Imagine if we lived in a culture where everything associated with female childhood - hairlessness, weakness, youth, frailty, delicacy, submissiveness, schoolgirl outfits, even little girls’ toys and clothes - were all sexualized and sought after and portrayed as the most desirable by adult men???

Imagine if once women reached a point of no longer looking or being young, small, and hairless, the majority of men not only found them unattractive, but also saw them as having no worth at all whatsoever??????

OH WAIT, that’s fucking reality, and men have been sexually obsessed with female weakness and submission and have been violating young girls and have been preying on them and women for-fucking-ever.