Butches and binding

In my more recent comfort, I've also been 'interrogating' butch, and how I feel it.  When I see the Meg Allen Butch photos (http://megallenstudio.com/butch/) I notice who binds and who doesn't.  I notice who's butcher than me.   I notice who's more ripped.   I notice that SF dykes seem WAY too cool.  And that bow ties STILL look stupid, even on the handsomest of folk.

The binding gets me though.  It feels like now a flat chest is butch.  A flat chest and hormones might be butch, might be trans.  But binding comes a little more standard. I don't bind, and my chest can give me away sometimes.  I modify my body in other ways - I work out, I wear really specifically cut t shirts so they don't cling to my curves.  Maybe I'm not that far off trying to bind, and hide my chest, my most feminine 'tell'. But for me the line in the sand is discomfort.

And really, I'm not trying to pass.  I'm trying to straddle a line that is still so unclear.  I'm ok with this body, I'm not ok with what it means to others.  And I hold that tension some days better than others.

The more things change..

After a nice work out at my gym, I went to get changed and go for a swim.  Hearing the call of a small child hailing my entry with 'THERE'S A BOY IN HERE' didn't totally ruin my day, but it did make me change REALLY. FAST.

It's winter.  I wear more clothes.  I forget, the beginning of each winter there's a sharp raise 'mis-gendering' and it always takes me by surprise.  I'd spent the day shopping for shoes, and three different sales assistants referred to me as 'buddy' and 'mate' - no woman here gets called that.  However, even by the end of the day, when I was literally taking my clothes off and being called 'A BOY' I was ok.  I guess I had other things on my mind.  And by the time I have my as butch-as-possible bathers on my clearly female body, things got easier.  Well, except for the swimming when it's raining and 13C.

It still surprises me how some days it cuts more than others.  I've had a busy six months, and I've felt at home in queer community, and visible in all the right ways.  As soon as I move out of that space, I am read as more male.  I think I have more confidence, maybe more swagger.  I've been identifying more as butch, which means being seen as male.

There's more on that.  Maybe I'll even write it.

Young queers

I hung out with some young queers over the weekend, and a few things stuck me.  Firstly, I am defiantly not in my 20s.  But more importantly I looked at the way they labelled gender.  Not necessarily how they performed it, but how they labelled it.  They adopted a range of pronouns, some transitioned medically, some not.  They chose their pronouns and thier names.

And that's where I felt really old.  I don't feel particularly female, but of the binary world in which we live, I guess that holds the most accuracy for my body.  And yet in just over 10 years, the undergrad queers have moved from wearing what they wanted and looking androgynous to calling themselves 'they' and rejecting gender.

It's brave and it rejects a lot of bullshit. Here's the rub though.  When I'm not with people who will let me chose my pronoun, am I setting myself up for conflict and disappointment?  Or this how the revolution starts? A few of the women I used to know have transitioned or now ID as gender-queer.   Most recently I used an incorrect (old) name for someone, who I see every few years round the traps.  S/he (we didn't get to pronouns) was a bit annoyed.  It probably happens a lot with people you don't see a lot of.  Does s/he feel more authentic fighting for a change in pronoun round those who they see regularly? How does the day to day in the world existence feel compared to that?

It's ironic for me to comment on this, as many people could say to me: 'grow your hair, wear women's clothes and people won't keep asking your gender'.  And yet I draw the line at wearing what I want, but being more 'conservitive' in my pronoun choice.  In some ways I identify as gender-queer, but my day to day doesn't ask how I identify like it did when I was at university and establishing my identity. And then we didn't have words like gender queer and cis-gender.

So, back to the young queers. .  I have no clear answers to all this, but it was interesting to witness a version of myself in a different time.  Perhaps it's arrogant of me, but I would suggest we probably feel the same sense of self, but time has changed how that manifests and how it's integrated into our identity.  Just like there are only seven narratives that all stories centre round, gender has multiple expressions, but perhaps they are not infinite.  What is infinite is the language around it.

Books

I scored a book voucher to the local queer book store, and as per usual bought up big.  I read a lot and generally widely, but I only buy queer books because I can get most other texts from the library.  This time's selection is:

S/he by Minnie Bruce Pratt 

I'm liking it so far, it's pretty poetic and I generally prefer a more direct style.  But her voice is so clear and her experiences so vivid, and so rarely written.  It makes me want to read more of Leslie Feinberg as well.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I LOVED this.  As soon as Donna Tratt endorsed it, I had to get it.  Ancient Greek gay love story?  I'm in.

And Genedr Outlaws by Kate Bornstein.

Haven't started it yet, but am really looking forward to it.

It's a blazing summer here, 40C (109F?) so the best option really is sweating quietly and reading.

Butch boundaries

After being heckled by a 14 year old ("It's a hermaphrodite", which I surprisingly have not heard before), I thought I'd just feel lonesome and a bit disempowered.  But there has been a surge of 'butch' media in lesbian cyber space, and the feeling was a little different.  In the past week, Autostraddle ran this:

http://www.autostraddle.com/butch-please-butch-buys-a-drink-149798/

Which I quite empathised with, and then there was this too:

http://www.afterellen.com/content/2012/11/casey-legler-our-new-favorite-woman-working-male-model

As well as another one about African American butches in another online publications (ok, I lost that link).

And I know like it's not just me out there fucking with gender, so I didn't feel lonely like I usually do.  But that's a double edged sword too, because in this regional high school four hours from my cosmopolitan lifestyle, my edgy butches comrades seemed as far away from me as .  But I still had the knowledge that they might feel the things I do and, perhaps, they elicit the same reactions from people that I have.  Sure, they do it elsewhere (on another continent, actually).  But just like I was alone in the school that day, there is a butch somewhere bracing herself to go to a public bathroom.  Or considering her clothing choice for that day and what that will mean for how her friends/strangers/colleagues will read her. Or some baby butch buying clothes from the menswear section for the first time.

So as I moved past lonesomeness I found a surprising roaring fire of rage. I was really pissed at this kid (and the one day before, and the one on the weekend), and pissed for other women in my shoes.  The OUTRAGE was kind of liberating.  And even if we're separated by distance and politeness (I wasn't going to start chatting to the cop in the street), we have a common bond.  And just knowing that, not even acting on it, well, that's pretty powerful.

Hair cut

I keep my hair short, and always have.  But I just got it cut shorter still. Parts of it are clippered and it looks awesome and feels amazing.  I can't work out what it is about a fresh, sharp haircut that makes me feel like million bucks, but it does.

It's term break here, so I won't be back in school for another two weeks, but I'll still be looking sharp.  To me.  Perhaps not to others. It's weird that (apart from seeing the odd dyke in the street) I'm the only one who loves this look.  And even though my family might not love it and kids will be weird, there is something so affirming about the clean lines on my head.

No To Homophobia

I'm pretty impressed with my home town, today.  Some pretty solid community groups, with government support, launched a national TV campaign against homophobia yesterday. I really like the ads - they are ultimately targeted at non queer folk and their complicity in homophobia, which is a necessary shift, I think.  There is an argument that these ads promote the GLBT community as 'victims', but homophobia is not a victimless crime.  

I also like that it's not trying to say lesbians and gay men blend in and you might not know someone is gay.  The dykes in the ad look like dykes and they're treated badly because of it.  I, of course, love that they have a woman being singled out for bring butch.  It's actually validating to see it on TV, even though it's a 'negative' ad.

I have no doubt it will polarise some, but you can make up your own mind: