For the long weekend, my DGF (that's "dear girlfriend") and I decided to visit the Gold Country area of California.  Gold Country (so named because it was a Big Deal Place during the gold rush) is rural and gorgeous, with rolling hills, rivers, lakes, and oak trees sporadically dotting the landscape. 

Now, I know that, like the other two westernmost states in the continental U.S., the eastern part of California is more conservative than the western part.  More politically conservative, yes, but also more religious, more gun-owning, and less gay-friendly.  (I don't mean to suggest that these things always go hand in hand.  I consider myself religious, for example.  And I know plenty of gay-friendly political conservatives.  But there is a strong correlation between religiosity, political conservatism, social conservatism, and anti-gay attitudes.  Sorry, Mom.  There just is.)

Anyhow, in most ways, I am not a particularly exciting person.  My ideal evening involves coffee and/or friends and/or books and/or red wine.  And for this reason, I am always shocked when I am reminded in not-so-gentle ways that to a fair chunk of my country's populace, I am Really Strange and Different. 

OMG. 

My DGF and I got stared at a lot.  And many of these stares were glares.  Some people--usually men with their families--would narrow their eyes and the corners of their mouths would turn down, and make prolonged eye contact as if to say, "Your very existence threatens my children's well-being."  There were also a fair number of regular ol' stares, but I mind stares a lot less, maybe since I'm so used to them, plus I understand the impulse to spend a longer time looking at someone who doesn't look like everyone else.

I also hate it when I can't figure out whether someone is anti-gay, or just awkward.  Early on in our trip, we went to a specialty store for a nerdy hobby I'm obsessed with.  I called ahead and talked to the owner, who was super nice on the phone.  But when I showed up in person and introduced my DGF (because the place was otherwise abandoned and it would have been weird not to) as my partner, this woman ignored my DGF's outstretched hand.  Despite her friendliness on the phone, she kind of stayed away from us in person.  I tried to engage her in conversation partly to figure out whether she was awkward or just anti-gay.  She mentioned God twice (e.g., "My husband has a broken ankle, but God will heal him soon"), but not in an aggressive way, and I didn't want to assume that she was trying to give me a message.  (In fact, I Godded her right back, to show her that straight people don't have a monopoly on religion.)  In the end, I didn't quite figure her out, and didn't spend much money there.  When we left, she told us to "come back soon," which she wouldn't have if she was a gay-hater, right?  Right?  Sigh.

Which is all to say that as glad as I am to be me, I often wish I could just navigate the world without thinking about people's reactions to me.  But the reactions themselves sometimes make this difficult. 

More on this trip soon.  I hope you all had a great weekend, dear readers!

A few months ago, I put this question to readers:  What is your butch "style?"  How is it different (if it's different) from being a man?

One reader emailed me such a thorough answer that I've decided to feature it as its own post.  If you have a take on butch style that you think is blog-worthy and you want to share with the world, email me and I just might feature it here!

This answer comes from BT:

I have been trying to define my butch style or what it means to be butch for  me for awhile now. This is what I’ve come up with.
 
1.      Dapperness
Once I came out and finally felt comfortable in my own skin I really started having this desire to be dapper. Which I guess I always had it because I realize now I projected it onto my ex-husband, dressing him how I really wanted to but didn’t feel like I could. I love ties. Regular ties, bow ties, ties with intricate knots. Vests, suspenders, wingtips, cufflinks, 40’s style hats and pinstripes…love them. Some day when I can afford it, I will have a suit made by Saint Harridan. To me, being dapper is butch.

2.      Ruggedness (Country)
This could be seen as the opposite of dapper but it’s totally possible to be both. For me, ruggedness is butch.I am country at heart and to me these things are country and butch. 1) Working hard. I know you can work hard at a lot of things but I mean the being outside in 115 degree weather, digging irrigation trenches, putting up fences, plowing fields kind of working hard. 2) Trucks. That is, liking trucks, fixing trucks, and 4-wheeling in trucks. 3) Hunting, Fishing, Camping. There’s something about being out in the wilderness that really seems to bring out the butch. In addition, gutting and skinning animals, playing with fire and whittling.  Along with those things… 4) Guns, knives, weapons of any sort. 5) Flannel, thermal, and big boots. Butch lumberjack without a beard. 6) Tools. Knowing what more than your basic tools are and how to use them. 7) Coors Light.

3.      Other Stuff
Some other things that I feel are butch: 1) Smoking pipe tobacco and cigars. 2) Epic war movies. 3) Demonstrating gentlemanly behavior like opening doors and pulling out chairs. 4) Death metal. 5) Leather working. 6) Wood working. 7) My LazyBoy. 8) Being a romancer.

4.      Butch Femininity
With all the masculine butch stuff aside, butch femininity. For me (and my lady) this is the most important ingredient. Without the butch femininity I’d just be a man. 1) Feminine intuition. Because of this I better know what’s going on with my lady. I see what she wants, know how to meet her needs, and can quickly tell when something is off or wrong. 2) My lady heart. All rough and tough on the outside but inside is a tender feminine heart with a great capacity to love in a way that only a woman can.  3) Sensitivity. 4) In a lot of ways I still think and feel like a woman so really being butch is the best of both worlds combined.

So there it is as best as I can describe at this juncture.
BT
 

...Do you agree with all of this, dear readers? 
What defines your butch style?

A few years ago, I attended a professional graduate school at a good university.  Recently, an acquaintance asked me how diverse my 200-person class was.

“Hmmm…  I think I was literally the only lesbian,” I said.  

“But there were lots of LGBT people, right?” my acquaintance asked.  And then she named seven or eight gay men who had, indeed, been in my class.  

In the moment, I murmured something like, “Oh, yeah that’s right.”  But internally, I raised an eyebrow.  Not only were these all men, but they were gender-conforming men, men who went to fancy prep schools, men who use “summer” as a verb and net annual salaries I could live off for a decade.

But in my acquaintance’s mind, we were all people who slept with people of the same sex; we all checked the LGBT box.  We were all undeniably, certifiably, and irrevocably queer.  So why did I blanch being lumped in with these gentlemen?  (BTW, I know a few of them personally, and they truly are great guys.)

I think it’s because the things that made me feel alienated in graduate school did not have much to do with my attraction to women.  In the upper echelons of this particular profession, no one cares who I carouse with or wake up beside.  The things that made me feel alienated were, in order of their significance:
(1) social class
(2) gender nonconformity
(3) persistent lack of interest in making lots of money

The Nice Gay Men (NGM) of whom my acquaintance spoke shared none of these traits.  Yet these are the traits that made me different from my peers, that let me bring a distinct perspective to the classroom, and that will continue to shape my voice in the future. But to the admissions committee, we all looked similar: white homosexuals with good grades from well-regarded undergraduate institutions.  

(Obviously, lots of other kinds of diversity are important: race, disability, religion, ethnicity, and others.  I’m just focusing on one kind here, which isn’t intended to negate the importance of these other kinds, nor of the intersections of these other kinds of diversity with queerness.)

I’m not suggesting that the NGM’s experience of LGBT life is somehow less “valid” than my own, nor that I embody “diversity” in a way that the NGM do not.  But there was something ironic about being categorized with them, since they embodied precisely the traits that seemed so apparently lacking in me: wealth, gender conformity, a lucrative career path.

I bring all of this up mostly to ask the following: when we say that we are striving for diversity, what is it we’re really striving for?  People whose experiences somehow bring different “perspectives?”  Maybe.  But how do we measure that on a form?  Do we want people who were statistically unlikely to end up in the application pool?  Do we prize phenotypical diversity?  Do we simply want the folks with the highest grades and test scores?  And in achieving any of these types of diversity, what role should (and does) queerness play?

I mentioned this on my Facebook page recently, and it continues to chap my proverbial hide. 

The New York Times ran this story about how one butch went to a (male) tailor and asked him to make a men's suit for her.  Last year.  Yeah, you read that right: when Tomboy Tailors, Saint Harridan, Androgyny, and other companies were already on the scene.  (I profiled some of them back in January and April.)

Worse yet, the Times's story implies that this tailor had some amaaaazing new idea.  The story begins with, "Breakthrough ideas often come from the least expected sources."  The idea that a mainstream male tailor would make some suits for butch women is not a "breakthrough;" he was merely introduced to a market that he didn't know already existed.

I don't fault the tailor--his quotes don't make it sound like he thinks he's a pioneer--but "discovery" is the thrust of the Times's story.  Here's a quote:

In a coffee shop near his home the other day, he [the tailor] seemed still struck by the world that opened to him after that initial email.  "The whole thing is really strange, and sometimes I can't — " he said, his voice evaporating into the wonder of it all.  He was not even sure how to identify Ms. Tutera [the Handsome Butch], gender-wise. Was she transgender or just mannish?  Sometimes it was hard to know such things.

In other words, Regular Person discovers Weird Queer Market.

While the story pays lip service to the fact that queer-owned companies with this mission already existed, this bit of info comes several paragraphs into the article, after the article's framework is well in place. 

I'm happy to see any butch coverage in the media (see here and here for previous posts on the subject), but the Times article was one more reminder that butch visibility--and queer equality generally--still has a long way to go.