Butch Identity

Thanks for the shout out.. my gender identity is evolving and so is my ability to express my gender, my butchness and my sexuality.

My gender is communicated in part by my appearance and actions, but it resides internally. I'm constantly evaluating what gender means to me, what it means to be butch, how that effects my relationships with others.

I am definitely butch, I know it in my bones, even on days I have trouble communicating what it means.

I'm one of those people who never did anything intentional in my
daily life to be identifiable as either butch or femme, though no one
I've ever known has tried to put me in the "femme" box - except my
mother, who tried desperately for years to force me in there...but
that's a whole other story.

But yes, if you asked me to check a box on an HR style form involving gender expression, I'd have to check "butch" or "other," simply because "femme" doesn't fit.  Sensitive does.  Affectionate does.  Emotional does, too...but "femme...?" 

Nope. 

I've also discovered that how
butch or not so butch I'm perceived to be is entirely determined by
what town/city I'm living in at a given time. 

At
39, however, I've also learned that hormones seriously affect my
personal expression of gender.  In my 30's - very clearly my sexual
prime in terms of biology  - masculine aspects of myself
came out with a fire I had not previously known, particularly in areas
of sexuality and socialization.  Now, fast approaching 40 (breathe,
Kate, breathe...), I've become much..."softer."  This is a word I used to loathe
when people attempted to attach it to me - particularly by way of
haircut, because that's  one of the few moments in life when I am completely at the mercy of the perceiver.

Yet as early as 2 years old, I was able to clearly identify that I wished I was a boy.  Even told my mother that when I grew up, I would be one.  

And I also have clear memory of discovering sexuality as being very fluid in my teens - not yet knowing that was what I was actually experiencing - even though at the time it was all imagined. 

Once it became real, however, that fluidity found some very real boundaries - which, of course, is how I knew I was gay and not bi as I had tried so hard to be before I finally kissed a girl.  Definitely no questions left on that front once the first girl had been first-kissed for the first time.  

I think
you've inspired me to write more on this - thank you.  And thank you so
much for approaching it with such chivalrous sensitivity.  Perfect.

--Kate

I think this is a thoughtful post, especially since you say you don't know much about gender identity. I think you described it best - it's a spectrum, and women fit in every part of that spectrum. I actually view it as a circle, because I don't believe there is a linear beginning or ending to gender.

I definitely identify as butch; my energy is heavy on the masculine side. But that's not to say I don't have any feminine qualities. I don't think gender is an either/or situation. So while you may do some things that could be considered masculine, that doesn't make you butch; that's just what your instinct tells you to do, and I think it's that instinctual level that tells us how to respond and behave, regardless of labels.

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I find explanations do help to get an insight about what is going on, as long as they are not given as rules and are only there to be useful.
David Deida's book gave me a great inside in the male/female side and how some people have more and some have less and some have a real balance of both the male and female side.
Certain work also does require more male or female energy and now I know why I like certain work better than others.
The example of doing male energetic things like protecting when walking on the side walk is a good one, it is just fun to know what is going on.
It helped me to understand why I don't like to do certain things and that that is okay.
Every information is helpful when it makes me feel okay about how I feel.
As if I still need conformation about how I feel and obviously I do, drat. 

Wilma Ham

www.wilmasblog.com ( http://www.wilmasblog.com/ )

I know no more about gender identity than you do. 

Most of my life I ran like the wind from it, and heck, it was only 11 years ago I first heard the word 'transgendered. The day before that, had someone asked me what it was, I would have stood there like a child in a spelling bee not knowing how the next word is spelled.

I played on trannie boards for maybe a year thereafter, but grew quite dissatisfied with things on those boards, and in March, 2000, I ran into someone by the name of Denise... my education began in earnest then. ;-) 

When I started playing on technodyke in 2003, the world of gender exploded into colour. There were terms tossed around, it seems an infinite number of terms, and it made my head spin. That experience is what leads me to say that it is a unique one to us, we see ourselves a certain way, as some assemblage of traits intangible and tangible, and confident we've self-sussed out ourselves, proudly proclaim it to the universe. I rather like seeing people reach that point.

I guess the only thing one need know about gender identity is that the possibilities are near endless, and to expect the unexpected.

If you've read The Well of Loneliness, there is a fascinating character (Stephen) who walks somewhere between butch and transman, yet formed into published story the year of my mom's birth - 1928.

llhaesa ( http://llhaesa.org/ )

I agree that labels are for each of us to decide, and that we define ourselves.  Or we choose to not label ourselves.  I just know so little aobut gender identitiy, and so many people seem to subclassify and make their own labels that I'm a little confused about terminology.  It's symantics mostly.

That said, it' been very interesting going through all of these femme and butch blogs.  

and of course I am supposed to be editing, but I am reading - there is yet another post I see that lurks as soon as I finish in this one, oh no!

Labelling is, as with choice, for us to decide. I say that for no particular reason on than to make it clear that we define ourselves, and too often I run into cases where someone else wishes to define me or someone else.

Get thirty of us in the same room, and there will be thirty answers to things related to butch/femme, and how it all fits in our lives. I love that element.

I go with the flow... I'm me, whatever/whoever that is, and know from a lifetime of wrestling with identity - mistaken identity - that our view of self, our comfort with self, is a most important element of life.

How would I define butch? As with most things, it is not a static thing, it is fluid, and it evolves with time, as does any definition in language. It can mean very different things to two people who both strongly identify as butch, just as with femme.

What pushes our buttons is variable. For me, serious body issue at work, everything else, well... I am many things, well stirred.

llhaesa ( http://llhaesa.org/ )