Help, My Partner's Turning into a Butch!

4/12/2012

A little over a week ago, I received the following question from a reader. It's a hard one, and one I've heard before, so I thought I'd better tackle it:

Dear BW: I am only attracted to femmes, but my girlfriend has become more and more butch. At this point she's almost as butch as me. I love her but I don't find her attractive when she looks so butch. What do I do? - MM.

Dear MM: this is a tough one. When we start dating someone, they're one way. Two years later, they're another. Of course, this is natural: people grow, change, evolve, etc. (As my mom says, "We are all in a state of becoming.") But what do you do when you don't like the changes?

In a way, your question is a version of the question, "What should I do if my girlfriend tells me she's trans?" I posted an answer to that back in January, and you might want to check it out.

Obviously, I can't give you a definitive answer. But here are some important factors to consider:

Have you talked with her about this? Does she have the sense that she's changing? Is it because she wants to be more comfortable in her own skin? Because she sees herself differently? Or because her gender expression is fluid and right now she's in a butchier phase? Or just because high heels give her blisters and skirts are too chilly?
What is it about her "butchness" that you find unattractive? How she acts? How she dresses? Her compulsive need to fix things? Once you figure this out, you'll be able to better identify what it is that isn't working for you (and in turn, what to do about it).
Relatedly: Maybe it's about you. Maybe you feel threatened when your girl opens a door for you. Or maybe you have preconceived notions about butches and are afraid she's going to act a certain way. Or maybe you're just not aesthetically attracted to women who dress in men's clothing. None of these things are inherently wrong or bad, but understanding them will help you see whether your relationship dynamic can change for the better.
I strongly urge you not to pressure her into becoming more feminine. While I think it's important to be honest about how you're feeling, I also think it's important that you don't say things like, "If you keep dressing butch, I'm going to leave you." For one, it's mean and can stunt her growth as a person. For another, if she "fakes" being more feminine than she feels, the change won't last.
You can love someone but not want to be in a relationship with her. I'm all for "accepting people as they are," but your partner should be someone with whom you'd like to have sex occasionally. If you don't find her attractive, this is a problem. You are not obligated to stay with someone just because you're already in a relationship with her. I feel like lesbians tend to err on the side of staying in problematic relationships too long, maybe because we're too worried about the other person's feelings. (Yeah, I know--gross generalization.) And keep in mind, too, that she deserves to be in a relationship with someone who finds her attractive and loves her as-is. If you can't be that person, it's not just you that you're hurting by staying.
Try not to jump to conclusions about what "butch" means for her. Instead, talk to her and find out. She may or may not identify as butch, and even if she does, her idea of butchness may differ from yours. This happens a lot (as I know from personal experience.). Does "butchness" signify fashion choices? "Masculine" or "gentlemanly" behavior? Sexual dominance? All of these? None? Make sure you're on the same page.
If you want to stay in your relationship, consider going to an LGBT-friendly counselor. (Note: in my opinion, it's neither necessary nor sufficient that the counselor be LGBT-identified herself.) This is something I should have mentioned in the "My Girlfriend Says She's Trans" post. Talking to someone who's actually trained to help you think these things through can be tremendously helpful in getting to the root of a problem and figuring out whether the relationship will work.

As I see it, your choices are: (1) to break up or (2) to stay together and accept her as she is, and yourself as you are. But staying together and trying to change her (or staying together and trying to convince yourself that you're still attracted to her) won't work for the long haul.

Has anyone else faced something like this? Or been at the other end of it? What did you do?

22 Comments

Bev Jo link

4/12/2012 06:11:39 am

It might help to see my article that I just finished and posted at my blog, which is a commentary on how things are for Butches, 22 years after our chapter about Butch oppression in our book, "Dykes-Loving-Dykes."

The article is "2012 Update – 22 Years Later
SUPPORTING BUTCHES SUPPORTS ALL LESBIANS" -- and is at my blog, along with our chapter.

http://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com/

Ideally, it is wonderful for Butches to be lovers together, but I think being Butch or Fem is a decision made in girlhood. I'm Butch and I love lovers to be Butch or look as Butch as possible!

Holly

4/12/2012 06:30:24 am

I found myself in a similar situation when I was younger, but it's taken years to sort it all out in my own headspace. At 33, I've settled comfortably into a more femme presentation. When I was in my early twenties I drifted from gender expression to gender expression, casting about for whatever felt right. My former girlfriend was butch at the time we met, which thrilled me to no end. Over the course of six years, she became more femme (and even was somewhat competitive towards me about our suddenly mutual femme-ness).

Relationship being the complex things there are, there were many reasons why things ended. I do believe, however, that one aspect that influenced my dissatisfaction with the relationship was that I was simply less physically attracted to my partner when she was femme than when she was butch. I did feel a bit threatened, but mostly it lacked the dynamic that I enjoy and treasure with my partner now. For years I felt ashamed that I couldn't accept her femme self, but I've come to realize that attraction is not entirely under our control. I am attracted, strongly, to butches. I can find all sorts of people attractive but that light-headed, engine roaring, stomach fluttery feeling arises completely unbidden around a hot butch. It's just how I'm built, and I've decided to embrace it.

Inkslinger

4/12/2012 06:31:38 am

I'll share my two cents as I feel it might help. I am coming from the point of view of the one "turning Butch". I was in a relationship with a butch partner and performed my gender role more masculinely as our relationship progressed. She continued to be butch in appearance but I took on Butch as a role, as a gender.
(I use lower and upper cases as I recognise not all butches define as Butch)
By the end of our 8 years I had changed completely, and she was no longer attracted to me. Likewise, I found my attraction to her butch-ness was waning, and in fact I had surpassed her in my own personal appearance and performances, all together.
We eventually split up, and I completed my transition. I discovered through some personal work that my attraction to butch women was actually admiration, I idolized them as I longed to be who they were, but not be *with* who they were.
I found that Butch-ness is not just appearance, it is a pivot point, an anchor. I thought it was just about appearance until I began learning what it meant to be Butch. For me "becoming Butch" was a settling-in to an identity, a role in society, a privilege and an obligatory burden. An infallible identity that existed below the surface, itching to be uncloaked, and demanding to be realized.
Perhaps, this is what is happening for MM's partner. It might be time to reveal some hard truths, which could likely give her partner the freedom to step into a pair of pants she's had hanging in her closet for a long, long time. It will be up to both to either grow past it, or grow with it. But overall, growth is paramount. I wish them a lot of luck!!

ButchonButch link

4/12/2012 10:42:15 am

This comment encapsulates so many of the things I have always felt about being Butch but have never been able to word properly. Thank you.

I love the distinction you make between butch and Butch.

"I found that Butch-ness is not just appearance, it is a pivot point, an anchor. I thought it was just about appearance until I began learning what it meant to be Butch. For me "becoming Butch" was a settling-in to an identity, a role in society, a privilege and an obligatory burden. An infallible identity that existed below the surface, itching to be uncloaked, and demanding to be realized."

That paragraph struck such a chord with me that I am finding myself speechless. Just, wow.

shelley

4/12/2012 08:06:18 am

Hi, love the comments on here all the time, even if i dont understand. I am a femme and getting more each decade. But at one stage in my long journey of coming out, my soft butch partner accused me of being a closet butch. It took me a lot of soul searching to figure this out and I decided that what I was doing was trying to empower myself. At the time I needed to dress as far from het as possible and learning to stride and meet mens eyes on the street and find that invisible shield that said dont mess with me, gave me strength. I feel closer to my butch partners current and ex, so some times when a partner gets butchier it can be a reaction to events around her. I am now as femmy as hell and men no longer even try to mess with me cos they can tell straight off Im not for them.!!

Lesbian Brooklynite link

4/13/2012 03:33:07 am

Personally, it wouldn't matter to me. I think when you are in love with someone, you are in love with THEM. I am in between the butch-femme spectrum and I am okay with either or. I actually find someone that is an "in between" kinda girl too. I think we put too much emphasis on appearance some times.

Joslyn C

4/14/2012 04:02:04 am

I think it would be fascinating to see a post about people going the other way...lesbians whose partners are becoming more classically feminine, and finding them less attractive because of it?

4/14/2012 02:32:02 pm

I've most been lovers with who I call "dykey Fems," meaning they clearly look like Dykes, with short hair, clothing, etc. And we have shared radical Lesbian feminist politics about how important it is to be out and not pass as het. So when one lover did begin to look increasingly feminine, it felt like a betrayal (I believe she did it for increased privilege), but also I did become less and less attracted to her. I just find the Dykiest-looking, and the most Butch the most attractive.

Unfortunately, it's not like we live in a world where it's just a difference like preferring oranges over apples -- there is intense pressure from all sections of patriarchy for Lesbians to look as male-defined feminine and het as possible. Women who obey the male rules are rewarded accordingly, while those who refuse, are punished severely. I like to feel like my lover is with me in being proud to be out, even if she's Fem. Many of my Fem friends, and past lovers agree.

But the Butch-hatred and Fem worship I hear in the Lesbian community is very hard. It used to be so much better in the Seventies.

4/14/2012 02:32:17 pm

4/14/2012 02:32:25 pm

4/14/2012 02:32:35 pm

4/14/2012 02:33:11 pm

4/14/2012 02:33:20 pm

Choice

4/20/2012 01:39:37 pm

I am probably of a similar age to you, and I have rarely been perceived as a lesbian by white feminist lesbians whether or not I present as an androgynous "dykey fem" or a plain old male-defined femme; this, despite the fact that I have never been attracted to men or been on a date with a man or had sex with men. I have had a lifetime of less to do with men as an always-out lesbian, than most of the "Fem-hating" lesbian feminist community that I have been a part of since the Seventies.

As I recollect, in the 1970s you seem to yearn for, the lesbian feminist community used to hate butches, we used to vilify butches as wannabe men who took on the trappings of male privilege. We hated femmes, too, but to deny that there was active butch hatred is ahistoric. The rhetoric condemned both butches and femmes as a sexist recreation of a patriarchal male/female dynamic. We defined gender expression (whether through clothing or style or appearance) as solely male/female mimicry and then created an absolute equivalency to butch/femme, and then condemned it.

There seems to be a revisionist history within the Second Wave that the vaunted "androgyny" of our time was really a celebration of "butches" in name, when it never was. It may have been "butchiness" in fact, but if you re-read the literature of the time, we were not so enlightened and embracing of "Butches" as many now claim to be. Butch-hatred is not a creation of this generation, Second Wave feminist generated our own butch-hating backlash way back then. The Seventies also produced white feminists who claimed (white) women could not be racist because sexism was the a priori oppression, and therefore as the most oppressed group, women had no power to be oppress racially. It was not our best time for all things.

I don't mean to pick on you, but I tend to react negatively to the glorification of the 1970s as the halcyon days of lesbian feminism. I was there, I was as androg as everyone else, and it wasn't the best time if you fell outside the borders as a lesbian of color, as a poor lesbian, as a working class lesbian, as butch/femme lesbian, etc. But the fact is, we were all there, all of us, in that naturally wide range of who we are, as we are still. And it remains as complicated and difficult now as then, and we have a lot of work left to do, to embrace the universe of who we are.

4/14/2012 02:37:09 pm

Sorry for the multiple post. It kept saying something was wrong and that it couldn't post, and then....it multiplied.

4/20/2012 02:09:41 pm

Nice post, loved how thoughtful and thorough you are, BW. A better human being than am I.

My response to MM would be more like this:
Have you talked to GF about what her self-presentation means to her?
Does she think her presentation has changed?
What about her current presentation makes her feel good?
Has she any thoughts about MM's presentation? Pos or Neg?
Is she attracted more or less (on a scale, not "more or less") to MM now than before?
Does she feel more or less attractive now?
Does she feel more internally consistent?
Does she feel that what she looks like externally should matter to her lover/partner/GF?
Has she run out of laundry or money to spend on clothes or haircuts?

I am not trying to be flip, but I would hope that MM would look to find conversation and answers with the one she loves, more directly, before jumping to all sorts of conclusions or fears. She might also wonder if she is simply not as in lust for GF as she was when both were intensely hot for each other, and that this is neither abnormal nor cause for great alarm, but sometimes the evolution of relationship, sometimes to the detriment of the relationship, and sometimes to the deepening of it.

4/20/2012 02:17:25 pm

I rarely see good references to the past. Instead I see Lesbians who weren't alive then say things that I just did not see happening.

In my Seventies community, there was criticism of Lesbians who identified with roles, and of course there was always some Butch-hatred, but I also saw Butches getting far more respect than now. They were acknowledged as helping to create Lesbian Feminism. I'm thinking of Pat Parker, Judy Grahn, Willyce Kim, Del Martin, and others.

I know well the problems, but the basic politics seemed much better than now. Perhaps it depends on where we were? The privileged who claimed that racism and classism didn't matter because "we are all the 'class' of women" were answered by the brilliant writings of the time by Lesbian Feminists of Color and class-oppressed Lesbian Feminists. I co-wrote and published Dykes and Gorgons in 1973, which focused on fighting racism and classism among Lesbians, as well as defending women-only space. (I'm a disabled working class Butch who's lived in poverty my adult life.) Now, I'm horrified to see the same crap returning with a lot more credibility. Of course, it's the most privileged who want communities like themselves -- which I say is having a country club mentality.

I know there were some racist, classist types back then, but they did not seem to be the majority like I'm seeing now.

And yes, I'm still in the fight to have our communities be as welcoming and diverse as possible. But part of the problem is that most Lesbians don't seem aware of even the most basic feminism. It's as if all those books and politics never existed. Anyway, at my blog, I just wrote an article about how is it now for Butches in my community, as compared to 40+ years ago. I also have an article about the current attempts to bully Lesbians into not treated racism and classism (as well as other oppressions) seriously.

4/20/2012 02:31:25 pm

4/20/2012 02:33:17 pm

This keeps saying "There was an error submitting your comment. Please try again" -- but the last time that happened, it kept posting.

I rarely see good references to the past. Instead I see Lesbians who weren't alive then say things that I just did not see happening.

In my Seventies community, there was criticism of Lesbians who identified with roles, and of course there was always some Butch-hatred, but I also saw Butches getting far more respect than now. They were acknowledged as helping to create Lesbian Feminism. I'm thinking of Pat Parker, Judy Grahn, Willyce Kim, Del Martin, and others.

I know well the problems, but the basic politics seemed much better than now. Perhaps it depends on where we were? The privileged who claimed that racism and classism didn't matter because "we are all the 'class' of women" were answered by the brilliant writings of the time by Lesbian Feminists of Color and class-oppressed Lesbian Feminists. I co-wrote and published Dykes and Gorgons in 1973, which focused on fighting racism and classism among Lesbians, as well as defending women-only space. (I'm a disabled working class Butch who's lived in poverty my adult life.) Now, I'm horrified to see the same crap returning with a lot more credibility. Of course, it's the most privileged who want communities like themselves -- which I say is having a country club mentality.

I know there were some racist, classist types back then, but they did not seem to be the majority like I'm seeing now.

And yes, I'm still in the fight to have our communities be as welcoming and diverse as possible. But part of the problem is that most Lesbians don't seem aware of even the most basic feminism. It's as if all those books and politics never existed. Anyway, at my blog, I just wrote an article about how is it now for Butches in my community, as compared to 40+ years ago. I also have an article about the current attempts to bully Lesbians into not treated racism and classism (as well as other oppressions) seriously.

4/20/2012 02:48:30 pm

Elle

4/30/2012 05:27:36 am

I used to date this really hot butch. But one day she decided she wanted to 'fit in more' and started growing her hair and wearing make up. And by make up I don't mean just eye liner which can be hot, I mean lipgloss, blush, liner, mascara. She also started wearing more dresses and skirts and when the heels came out, I was horrified .

Call me shallow, but I just couldn't do it. We ended up breaking up 3 years into the relationship because I was finding her less and less attractive. At the time I didn't understand that it was because she was no longer identifying as butch.

I am and always have been a Femme. And have always dated strictly Butches.

I do agree that when you love someone you love them as they are with their faults etc, but if we're being honest, if you're no longer physically attracted to someone, the relationship is doomed.

It's no fault of yours or theirs if their identity is changing. And that doesn't mean you don't love them anymore, but sometimes it means you can't be with them anymore.

My ex is now with someone who absolutely adores her. And they've been together for 5 years and counting now. We're still friends and I still love her as a friend.

At the end of the day, if it's not working for you, it's probably not working for her either. You're lucky though, in that you have a lot of resources that I didn't have. You can reach out and hear other peoples experiences and points of view which helps to give you a better understanding of why you're reacting or feeling the way you are.

My advice is be honest. It's not going to be an easy conversation, but talk to her. And try to keep an open mind and not be agressive or accusatory when you do talk. You may find that she's struggling as much as you are.

Astara link

6/14/2012 10:59:31 am

Am in love with a butch,nd am also a butch.

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