Ah, Christmas. Time for eggnog, mixed emotions, brightly-colored wrapping paper, passive aggression, family, friends, and ideally some happiness, love, and hugs mixed in somewhere.

My DGF and I travelled to my brother's house, where my parents and my sister-in-law's family are also staying. I feel like I'm on the periphery of a family--like I don't *quite* fit in, like I'm not *quite* a real, functioning adult. Things that "real" people have--kids, a house--just aren't part of my life (and maybe never will be), and this drives some kind of psychic wedge between me and other people. Like I'm just on a different trajectory. During non-holiday times of year, I just quietly exist in my own separate paradigm. But somehow on Christmas eve, trying to fall asleep on the couch in my niece's playroom, I just felt so... Different. Not inadequate, exactly, more like a different (perhaps slightly defective) species. I can't explain why. It's not just the gay thing, though that's part of it. Maybe everyone feels this way at Christmas. Do you? Does anyone else recognize the feeling I'm struggling to describe?

Merry Christmas, dear readers. Sending you all hugs and wishing you all peace.

Love,
BW

I am sooo stoked!  The "Pets & Their Butches" calendar--inspired by YOU all, is finally here.  It took, oh, 20 times longer than I expected to make it, but I think it was worth it, and I hope you do, too. 

I received hundreds of submissions for the calendar--far more than I expected! I couldn't use them all, but congrats to the butches whose photos were chosen (as a monthly photo, or for the front/back cover, or for May or December, which are photo collages)!  Special thanks goes to my awesome DGF for making some of these photos much better and higher-res with her amazing Photoshop skills. 

This is such a cool example of butches coming together to create something awesome.  I hope you'll consider getting one.  They come in three different sizes.  Order two or more and get 50% off with the code 2CALDEALFREE.

Alas, Zazzle makes 75% of the profit (if I do this again, I'll look into better options!).  But 25% goes to support Butch Wonders--yay!--and after I cover my own costs, I'll be donating 100% of the profits to a local animal shelter.

So, what are you waiting for?  Go check out the calendar(!), and while you're at it, see if you like any of the other goodies I've created.

Lots of people get to Butch Wonders through searches for things like "gifts for my butch sister" or "gifts for my lesbian daughter."  People who don't align with typical gender norms can be tough for some people to shop for.

For specific ideas, I've updated the Butch Store with 25 Gift Ideas for Butches, including gifts for sporty butches, student/professional butches, and dapper butches.  (Butches, I hope you'll share other ideas with me!)

Additionally, here are some general gift-giving tips geared specifically for straight or gender-binary people who are having trouble finding gifts for lesbians, butches, or other masculine women (much of the advice applies more broadly, too). 

1. Give gifts without regard to traditional gender.  We don't care if something comes from the men's section.  We'd love to know that you thought of us, not our sex.  There's no need to hunt through the women's department to find the one thing you think we'll like there.
   
2. Be observant.  If your lesbian daughter only wears men's sweaters and you give her one from the women's department because you didn't think it was "that feminine," you're probably going to be off the mark.  There's a reason she only wears guys' sweaters; factors like cut, length, sizing, etc. are different, even if you don't notice them.  (On the other hand, if she wears stuff from both departments, cool.)
   
3. Avoid criticism of our gender presentation cloaked as a gift.  If you think we could "dress a little more feminine," giving us a purse is not an effective way to share that sentiment.  Gifts are awesome when they show that you get who a person is, not who you wish she was.
4. Butches like self-pampering, too.  Just because we don't like perfumey stuff doesn't mean we don't like body scrubs and the like.  Go for more neutral scents, like mint or eucalyptus (this may mean you look in the guys' section).  Many butches also like massages, facials, and other self-care things--just make sure you know whether we'd be comfortable with it (you can ask our girlfriend or friends, too).
   
5. Avoid buying the same thing for all the men or all the women in the family.  When I was a kid, men would get flashlights or cologne and women would get bubble bath or chocolate.  Personally, I like all of these things, but the fact that gifts were divided along gender lines--rather than tailored to the person receiving them--often made me (a gender-nonconforming little butch in the making) feel uncomfortable.  It reinforces gender norms and implicitly says that all people of type x or type y are the same.  Would you ever give all your black friends one kind of gift and your white friends another?  No!  It's incredibly insulting to imagine!  Gender is very different from race, of course, but it's useful to think about it this way as a mental exercise: are you seeing the person, or are you seeing the person's sex or gender?  

I hope these tips and the butch gifts I suggest are helpful.  Meanwhile, I'd welcome questions from anyone trying to buy butch/lesbian gifts, as well as any other tips people would like to share!  Does this resonate with you?

Last week, I had a Facebook contest in which I asked readers to send their favorite pictures of themselves with their pets.  The best photo wins a collar charm from Pooch Park Wear. 

I received photos from nearly 100 readers!  I'll put at least one photo from each person in the slide show below.  (Warning: make sure you're sitting down, because the sheer cuteness is likely to turn your knees to pudding.)

I had a lot of trouble deciding on the winner, so I thought I'd share my top five and let you guys vote on the best pic!  Here are the contestants:

Check out the rest of the awesome entries in the slideshow below.  And HUGE thanks to all the wonderful readers who shared a pic of themselves and their pets--from cats to dogs to bearded dragons!

Big news: the Supreme Court just agreed to take on two BIG gay rights cases this term:

Case #1 involves the so-called "Defense of Marriage" Act (or DOMA), which is the federal law that says that even if your state allows gays to marry, married gays don't get federal benefits like Social Security or the ability to file joint tax returns.  This case isn't about whether states have to legalize gay marriage--it's about whether if a state recognizes a gay marriage, the federal government has to play along. 

Case #2 comes out of California (see my previous post explaining gay marriage in California for background).  It deals with Prop 8, the ballot initiative whereby those lily-livered California liberals voted to amend their state constitution to take away same-sex couples' right to marry.  In this case, the Supremes could hand down many possible rulings, some of which would affect only California, some of which would affect the whole country, and some of which would kick issues back down to the lower courts.

Neither of these cases necessarily has national implications for gay marriage (though they could--#2 especially), but they are still both Very Big Deals, particularly if you share my belief that gay rights isn't "just another issue." 

I'll wrap it up here and write more later, as this all develops.  Here are some links to media coverage of the issue:

• NPR
  

• New York Times
• San Francisco Chronicle
  
• Washington Post
• ScotusBlog (non-lawyers: read at your own risk)
• FOX News
  
• Wall Street Journal

What do you think about the Court's decision, dear readers?  Are you optimistic?