I appreciate this article.

I am a femme, and my partner is a trans man, which is a new experience for me from dating butches. Now I feel like I am experiencing a level of queer invisibility. We come across as a "normal" (het) couple. I feel overlooked or shunned by my lesbian community, but not belonging (for sure) in the het community. It really sucks. I miss my community.

i'm sorry, but excluding trans women because of the gender assigned to them at birth is WILDLY fucked up, as is the entire notion of "women born women" spaces. if trans men are excluded (and i think that's completely understandable, as they are not women), trans women should be included, as they ARE women. you're just enforcing these shitty patriachical ideals of birth assignment being some kind of magic spell. trans people are not fakers, and trans women have just as much right to women's spaces as cis women.

I can almost empathize with your point of view. Women-only spaces and the butch community have been safe places for you and watching them change may feel threatening. Perhaps you can also try to see it from the other side. "[T]here was no such thing as Trans men just Butch and Femme and it was pretty clear which party you belonged [to]" sounds a bit like "there used to be men and women, they got married and had babies, it was pretty clear how you're supposed to act." Trans people exist. Please respect us.

This is by far the most thoughtful and daring post that you have written here!

I really liked:
"If I'm right, then we're not "losing" butches; we never "had" as many as we thought to begin with.  We just got to borrow thousands of trans guys until society caught up."


Mmm. Bravo!

I identified as butch because I didn't know about transppl. I am now a Transman. I still wanted to be part of the gay and lesbian community but here in tx I was basically told I didn't belong because I wasn't gay. All my lesbian (butch and femme alike) had treated me terribly and shunned me as a traitor. I was about to give up on the gay community here until I met some younger lesbians who accept me as I am. I'm still not welcome at the pride festivals here by other lesbians. I even got pushed and shoved.
And as for Mi(I'm originally from Mi) I would never asked to be a part of a woman only space. I mean why would I? I'm a guy. So I respect womens only spaces,its their right t have their own safe space. But I was upset with the Mi womens festivals excluding the transwomen.. but that a whole other can of worms I guess. I am greatful now that I am not having as much trouble being a part of the butch community. Everyone has the right to be who they are comfortably. I just wish Tx was more open to the fact that everyone has their own identity,butch,femme,trans,genderqueer, or however they want to live.

Thank you for such a well-written and thoughtful approach to a very delicate subject. As a young "old-school" butch, I have to admit that I sometimes fret over what seems to be a decline in butch-ID'ed people of my generation. I also bristle when people suggest that my butchness is just some pit stop on the road to FTM. This past Pride, a trans woman for some reason felt compelled to give me unsolicited life advice "in case I ever decide to actually become a man instead of just dressing like one." Her tone was so condescending and disappointing to me; it's bad enough when the hetero world doesn't get me, but that sort of attitude from my own community is incredibly hurtful.

I think you make an excellent point when you say that increases in MOC people who are transitioning is probably more the result of greater visibility and accessibility of trans resources, rather than there being some sort of trend of butches becoming trans. It's probably true that many people who ID'ed as butch decades ago would have actually ID'ed as trans had that been an option.

I love the care and respect you showed when writing this! I, like Campbell, present quite masculine, like being addressed with male pronouns, have 'male' hobbies and love being complimented with 'handsome'. But I love my body, feel at home in it and have no desire to transition.

I see nothing easy about those that do transition, I have a huge amount of respect for them because that road is also a tough one to travel.

Thank you for this post. I imagine that it was a difficult one to write and, perhaps, even more difficult to actually post.

After reading it, well while reading it to be more precise, I had so many thoughts and feelings on the subject that I had to start writing myself. At first I wanted to write a comment for this page but it turned into a blog post of my own. Feel free to click over and read it when you have a chance.

Again, thank you.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and compelling article. I especially appreciate what you say about FTMs taking "the easy way out". Changing your sex is the farthest thing from easy imaginable. You basically risk losing everything you ever had to be seen as who you really are. You risk losing your family, your friends, your job. There's going to be months and even years before you will pass completely as male. The most minimally invasive chest surgery runs between 6k and 10k, with a minimum 6 weeks before you can raise your arms above your shoulder level again, and lower surgery starts at 20k and goes up to 200k. You have to inject yourself with T at least once every two weeks and in many cases weekly.

Luckily for me, my butch friends truly are my friends and we carry on the same supportive relationship we've always had. I would do anything for them and them for me. In fact I stayed with my butch buddies while recovering from chest surgery.

I hope you write more about this- this is some of the most intelligent writing I've ever read on this subject.

I have never read your blog before. A friend of mine sent me this article. It is the perfect information sheet to hand out to anyone who says "I just don't get it" when referring to FTMs. I am presently with a FTM and I've heard all the arguments; from all sides, and it is most disappointing when the community you have been a part of for so long, no longer embraces you. We have faced discrimination together and separately from our respective communities. He once identified as butch and I am/was? a lesbian. I have no problem handing in my lesbian card for a bisexual one if that is what it means I have to do, to be with my trans guy. I mean, what difference does it make? Everyone wants to be accepted but no one can really take away your identity. I'm hoping one day we will all be one big happy family under the big Queer umbrella, but until then, articles like yours will help pave the way to better understanding all around. I know I will be forwarding it on to my friends, who all eventually came around and accepted us for what and more importantly WHO we are.

Samantha, I totally get where you are coming from and the only thing I can say is; never stop being proud. You can have the same feeling you had while being a visible lesbian by being invisible with your transman. Try to think of it as infiltrating the straight world and take joy in knowing you have a secret, and in the blowing of people's minds if/when you out yourselves to people who don't know. People complain that becoming trans is "trendy" which is just as silly as "taking the easy way out" but that doesn't have to stop you from "feeling" trendy when you are the only one at a gay party with a transman. As for your community, with time and education they will come around eventually. You just have to hang in there and never regret being yourself!

I think the conflict is new and wonder if it might be partly because of the Butch Voices conference itself, where many lesbian-woman identified butches found themselves sharing space with trans men and thinking "hey wait a minute." With regards to space and soapbox sharing it might not be the most ideal mix because the conversations of most interest to both groups are so very different. When any one person waxes on too long and others don't get a chance to speak then there is irritation and resentment. Also a lot of resentment is brought to the table automatically by the trans folks who feel they've been excluded or dismissed (and yes, they sure have). We need to learn to share this space and everybody take turns talking, because the future of our movements even where they differ, depends on our getting together in this GLBTQ community and collectively deciding on love, tolerance, acceptance--eschewing the infighting.

Firstly, great article. You managed to hit pretty much everything, with one exception ... I've heard that transguys poach femme women who would otherwise date stone butches and butches alike.

To partners of transguys: check out my wife's blog at thissideofchanged.WordPress.com or her trans specific writings at cardcarryinglesbian.com . She posts under her nom de plume Jolie.

Anyone curious to dig into the mind of a transguy, check my blog out... I wrote a very specific piece of satire about this topic a ways back - when I was told I couldn't call myself butch anymore.

Very good dissertation, thanks!

I wasn't clueless as to my sexual preference; I've known since I was 3 yrs old I'm attracted to women. I just didn't know there were others, or that there was a word for people like me.

I was victimized by my Catholic upbringing to the point where I felt well, I must be a man in a woman's body. Loving women when I'm a woman is wrong, and God doesn't make mistakes, right? Ha!

So as not to offend my family (or the rest of humanity) I thought of transitioning & researched it extensively. This was before we even used the word "transitioning", when we had no words in our peculiar vocabulary like "transman" or "boi".

My conclusion was that it was tantamount to giving someone permission to mutilate my body. Surgery would remove my breasts. Okay, so now I'm flat-chested. But what surgery couldn't do was give me a working penis. I could never get my partner pregnant, or pee standing up, much less give her pleasure with it. Unless I'm woefully uninformed, things haven't changed much since the late 1970s in this respect. Or have they? I don't know.

At this point, I must admit to a bit of female-superiority. Why would I want to become that which I basically dislike -meaning, a man? Don't get me wrong, some of my best friendships have been with men. But they're not who I am sexually attracted to; I was a horrible failure at heterosexuality. Why would I become a man -just to enjoy male privilege? I didn't see any upside to transitioning.

I love women. I advocate for our gender. I don't want to be a man; I just want to love women as a woman.

This left me with the alternative -accepting myself as-is because I wasn't willing to change my body to suit someone else's vision of who I am or what I should look like because of my sexual preference. The process of self-realization & expressing who I really am within the confines of a strictly male/female (and predominately straight)world was slow, and not without self-doubt & loathing.

Like many, I became depressed & suicidal. But I finally reconciled with it all & today am happy being who I am -a fellagirlie, to quote Elvira Kurt.

My younger lesbian friends call me a "throw-back" as if I'm some sort of neanderthal version of the modern lesbian! I don't wear make-up, keep my hair short, and tend towards very practical, functional clothing, LOL! Think "Oakland dyke", circa 1979/1980. Funny how those tables have turned because back in MY day, we treated "lipstick lesbians" with suspicion, as if they had just hopped over to our side of the tracks to check us out, and would soon hop back from whence they came. I envied them because they could "pass" when I was so obviously lesbian.

I'm no longer dysphoric. I concluded that defining our world as strictly male/female is at best uninformed, at worst torturous because it leads to all kinds of misery. Imperatives like the younger generations telling butch lesbians YOU MUST TRANSITION.

If people truly understood the complexities of human biology, anatomy, physiology & procreation, how gender is determined when we're still just fertilized eggs, they may see what I've come to accept as one of my truths.

I remember bristling at a comment my roommate made years ago: "You're just a mistake of nature..." I've harbored animosity towards her for saying this because her intent was not to inform. It was to hurt and make herself feel hetero-superior.

After stewing over it for the last ten years, I recently took what was meant as a personal slight, spiritual violence meted out against me, if you will, and put it in perspective.

Some of us, through no fault of our own and really more attributable to a quirk of nature, are born female when we should have been born male, and vice versa. Who can say why this happens; it just does. There is nothing wrong with being homosexual. What's wrong are those hetero-centrics who look at the world through black 'n white lenses.

There is evidence of nature's quirks all around us, yet being the jar-headed humans we are, we stay stuck on black 'n white absolutes, when our world is so much more than that.

As for our lesbian community, all I can say is, don't do to others what's been done to us. Don't shun people (or worse) just because they don't fit into your neat little version of what humans should be. Step outside your comfort-zone and see the beauty in diversity, even within our own ranks.

I know we have a tendency towards separatism, and who can blame us? But we shouldn't use our shield to batter those who don't deserve it. We didn't deserve what may have been done to us by narrow-minded hetero-centrists, or closeted homophobes.

Do what you wanna do, don't bend to anyone else's notion of what you should look like based on who you are. Be who you are (thanks, Stephanie)!

wow, great article. I think you laid it all right out. Maybe I'm nuts but, I don't think of women's spaces that include trans folk as being or becoming non-womens spaces. Bear with me a second here, basically, transwomen are women, and women are women and transmen were at some point (presumably for most of thier lives) understood to be women, and treated as women. Male privelidge notwithstanding, these are men who know what its like to be 'read' as a woman. That's not to say that each and every transman is a totally rightous feminist, but I doubt that many are as unthinkingly entitled as cismen can be.

AND trans is still Queer, still community. Personally, I find that gay cismen offend me far far far more often than transmen do...

I think its also pretty important to point out as well the intense vulnerability of the trans community. Assuming that transmen experience male priviledge in the same manner as cismen do is, I think, inaccurate.

The very notion of 'passing' indicates the very real danger, that of not passing. And speaking of passing, I think that needs to be addressed a little bit too. I'm a queer femme, and most people assume that I'm a straight woman. Now I've considered long and hard the very real dangers that accompany NOT passing. But sometimes I want to just put someone who 'reads' queer into my shoes for a minute and see how they like the strange borderland that is passing. Each state has its own advantages and disadvantages, is what I'm saying.

OH! AND! the pressure to transition, kindof a pain in the ass. My butch GF HATES being called by male pronouns, and she HATES when people assume that she identifies male, just because they don't comprehend just how very very very womanly my masculine woman is... I get we're trying to be inclusive and appropriate, but perhaps the best way to do that is to ask people, instead of assuming.

And essentially, that's what we need more of, open communication. I don't think allowing transphobia to pass unchecked helps any of us, nor does destabalizing or denigrating butch identity.

And I don't think that we can or should critique who people are attracted to as far as gendered permutations and presentations is concerned. I'm attracted to butches and not to transmen. Some butches like other butches. Some femmes like other femmes. Whatever floats your boat, right?

I prescribe more communication! More listening and sharing. And sometimes, folks do need to have separate spaces. I think we can make spaces for all of us without excluding folks. Maybe its just gonna take a minute to figure out how.

Hello Fellow butches-transmen-non-forming masculine women, I have enjoyed reading the dialogue that has taken place on this blog. I have a desire to bring the gap between butches and transmen because we share so many similarities and we need to embrace everyone's transition. Some of us always acknowledge the women that we are while embracing men that we are called to be. OThers only see the man and love that person they see and it is okay. How do find the agree to disagree connection so we can work together to build this community? As a pastor, same sex gender loving, butch-transmale, I am also looking for the God in all of this. Loving one another means just that. I have quite a few very good friends that are transmen and we don't see each other any different. The love of God will not let us. So, if we bring spirituality and sexuality together then we will find the commonality between our fellow brothers and sister, butches and studs, transmen and non-forming mascline women. Let's talk about it.

Hey Pwog, that must have been a shock. Maybe talking to her, a support group for the significant others of trans-people, or a gender-specialized therapist would help clear some things up for you? Definitely talking to her. Communication during an transition or coming out is really critical, and usually extremely helpful to everyone involved.

I enjoyed this article, though the part about transmen reinforcing the gender dichotomy is a little ridiculous to me. Some transmen do fit in the dichotomy and are happy to, but many, like myself, also identify along the genderqueer spectrum. I have always felt genderqueer and transgender, because while I identify basely as male I do not identify with the binary definition of "man" as a cultural term. I've never once in my life identified as butch (because I'm so very not, though I <3 butch women and men), and in my experience there's no "normal" path transmen go to from butch to trans identified. The notion that somebody has to transition from female-identified to butch to trans-identified is as overblown as the idea that most people who are gay identified went through a bisexual experience. It happens, sure, but from everything I've seen in the community it happens a lot less than people seem to think or assume.

I think everyone should accept eachother as they identify. I am so sad that there is this ridiculous dichotomy in the female queer community, and it's a major reason I choose not to participate in any butch related groups. I refuse to go back to high school, and I despise any form of discrimination. If community means having to pass some sort of test put forth by others, then I would rather not be included. to be clear, everyone should be accepted as they identify.

I'm a femme (kind of witchy earth-mama kind) and my butch woman and I have been together nearly 25 years. I really appreciated the comment of rachel and PB and Levi and A. (And lots of others, too.) It's a very complex topic and a real issue in our LGBTQ subculture.

I find that butch is an identity today that is not as "fashionable" as "trans." As a student of anthropology and history, I know that changes in culture are deeply tied into self-concept. Medical conditions that once were relatively common simply don't exist today (e.g. catatonia was once a common expression of mental illness) and new conditions appear and become much more common (like anorexia). Conditions in the west (like pain with menstruation) don't exist in other cultures. Our reality, even physically and medically, is grounded in culture and now the concept of trans is gaining cultural traction.

So while I agree that many transmen of the past probably lived as butches in the absence of other options, I also think that fashion and pressure enter into it. We are all part and parcel of our culture.

I feel sad that younger people don't embrace the identity of butch as readily and, at the moment, butch is losing cultural cred. I treasure the complexity of my masculine appearing woman. She is highly emotional, she has made (some) peace with her female body, and her strength is a universal innate strength -- neither "male" nor "female." Her very being expands the notions of what being female means. I love that and its very precious.

She is constantly called by masculine pronouns (weekly) and I feel part of that is a willful ignorance insisted on and enforced by our society. Despite being very large-breasted, she is seen as male because of her suits and body language. Our culture will not see diversity of dress -- or powerful female gestures -- thus she MUST BE a man. Long ago, I realized that, often, if we fit the stereotype, then we reinforce it. If we don't fit, we are invisible -- thus the stereotype is stronger than reality in front of one's face. But no one can ignore my love -- what a personality! She expands the possibilities of everyone she encounters.

We are both learning a lot about what it means to be trans, since someone we had already grown to love recently transitioned. It's a process of transformation that includes some pain and some joy. It's a journey that I think we are both committed to.

The pressure to identify as trans is (or can be) overwhelming to many butch women. When I was in college a few years back, I got asked almost daily if I was trans, despite my identification as gay. Other queers made it clear that I would be more accepted if I transitioned, especially since I was not exclusively female (I am genderqueer). Being butch, presenting as masculine and having partial success at passing as cismale on a regular basis is not accepted and barely tolerated. It would be entirely less difficult if I could identify as a transguy and work towards appearing more cismale. Society is beginning to understand transgenderism, but it does not understand what it means to straddle the gender divide in a way that does not insinuate a desire to change.

My mother asks me regularly if I want to be a boy. At least once a month I have to go through an emotionally tiring process of explaining my masculinity and its implications to my mother. She doesn't understand how I could not want to be male or female. She does not understand why I can't be feminine. She doesn't understand why, if I feel masculine and sometimes male, I don't just transition and make that my identity.

Gay/Queer media is getting in on it too. Every main blog or website is boasting its trans acceptance, and increasingly blurring the lines between butch women and transguys, often using these terms interchangeably when they are mutually exclusive concepts.

I think that my main goal here is just to disspell the notion that butch women, especially butch teenagers, don't experience intense pressure to fit into another (newer) box.

6. THE NOTION THAT THERE'S TOO MUCH PRESSURE TO TRANSITION
I've heard many butches and FTMs say that pressure is put on gender-nonconforming teens to identify as trans. If you're a masculine female, this story goes, your friends will tell you that you must be trans; after all, shouldn't your biology line up with your internal feelings of masculinity? I have no idea whether this "pressure" story is true. I'm not a teenager, and the very few FTM teenagers I do know are going through hell to make their parents understand that they're trans boys, not "just" lesbians. At the same time, it's true that butches are sometimes asked if they're going to become men. Still, this falls short of "pressure," doesn't it?

Nice post. Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful! I've been looking for books of this nature for a way too long. I'm just glad that I found yours. Looking forward for your next post. Thanks :)

I really recommend a fabulous documentary we screened recently, called "SWITCH, Community in Transition" by Portland Queer Filmmaker, Brooks Nelson, a FTM transman. It's about the adjustments that the transperson's community has to go through when someone changes gender. It addresses some of the issues you talk about like gaining male privilege and invisibility. I expect that Brooks will be making more films on both these topics. He came and discussed the film and his life with us after the screening. He's very open and candid about his experience.