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The Difficulty of Defining "Butch"

2/12/2012

15 Comments

 
_A reader wrote to me recently about my series on butch/butch relationships, complaining that the couples I featured were "androgynous" and "not really butch."  This perplexed me.  As far as I'm concerned, anyone who wants to identify as "butch" is butch.  I'm not in the business of policing identity--God knows there's enough identity-policing out there without adding my own picayune, self-serving biases to the mix.

And yet, sometimes my "free-to-be-you-and-me" approach feels too facile.  As I said in a radio interview a few months ago, theoretically anyone can identify as anything.  I mean, my grandmother could "identify" as a young black man, right?  So at some point, can't self-identification strain reality?  Should everyone be obligated to support and acknowledge a self-identification that we think is patently absurd?  Or maybe there is there no such thing as absurd self-identification, if we believe identity is about defining one's self, not about subscribing to the labels other people mete out.

When it comes to identity, "butch" is tough to pinpoint.  I hear people talk about butch in at least three different main ways: being "butch on the inside," "acting butch," and "looking butch."  I'll take each in turn.

What does it mean to be butch "on the inside?"  To be masculine?  To have a "tough" attitude?  To have the desire to act like a gentleman?  If this is the case, then aren't a lot of cis men "butch?"  But we don't usually think of typical straight guys as butch…  so does "butch" mean to identify as female and have these characteristics?  This makes an intuitive kind of sense, but excludes trans men and people who identify as genderqueer, which doesn't seem accurate, either.  Hm.

So how about "acting butch?"  Does it mean acting "like a man?"  Acting "masculine?"  This seems roughly accurate at first.  But doesn't defining butchness this way embrace cultural norms of how "men act" and "women act," implicitly accepting sexist ideas of men's and women's behavior?  And even if we choose to define butchness this way (for, say, the sake of convenience or simplicity), do negative traits associated with cis men, like expressions of misogyny, count?  It's also difficult to figure out how to balance certain behaviors against one another.  My DGF is the one who kills the spiders and changes the lightbulbs.  But she's also the one who vacuums.  Do I average out all her behaviors, assigning positive and negative point values and summing them up: -2 for vacuuming; +3 for spiders?  This seems absurd (and talk about reinforcing gender normative ideas--yuck). 

Appearance, perhaps, is the easiest of the three dimensions I introduced above, and is also the one that comes to mind most readily, probably because it is the one that differentiates us most from the other people in our surroundings on a day-to-day basis.  If someone who identifies as a woman (or at least, not as a man) wears clothes, a haircut, etc., that most people associate with men, we might say that she "looks butch."  Of course, this is separate from whether she identifies as butch.  Not to mention, this still excludes trans men.  Then again, if a trans man desires to be seen as a man, is he "butch?"  And if he is, then why don't we think about cis men as being butches?  Isn't categorizing the trans man differently from cis men disrespectful of his identity?  And if he does identify, and is counted, as butch, are butch women "less butch" than the trans man, because they (may) appear less masculine?  This is not a particularly comfortable idea, and may contribute to tension between trans men and butch women.

Is appearance a necessary component of butchness?  If someone identifies as female, has long hair, wears dresses and makeup every day, and feels comfortable with this self-presentation, can she call herself "butch" because she "feels butch?"  Of course, she can...  But as a woman who deals with flak for looking and dressing "like a guy," the idea of a gender-normative-looking woman calling herself "butch" makes me bristle.  Arguably, it shouldn't.  Arguably, it's none of my business to judge the accuracy of her identity.  And yet, hypocritically, I would find it difficult to consider her butch.

Despite these complications, I continue to not only to identify as butch, but to think of it as a useful term.  It puts a name to some of the ways I deviate from mainstream gender norms in behavior, attitude, and appearance.  Calling myself "butch" helps me own who I am.  It offers a way to navigate my everyday life as a woman that other people perceive as masculine.  It is a way of trying to understand, and trying to be understood.  It says, "I am not flawed.  I am just another, valid species of woman or gender or person of which you might not know.  But I exist.  And what's more, I am not alone.  There are others like me."  I experience an intangible flash of recognition and affinity when I encounter someone else I perceive to be butch.  I look up to older butches, and I feel a maternal (paternal?) desire to help out the younger ones.

I know that "butch" is hotly contested territory.  And I know that there are good, smart, sociopolitical reasons for this contestation.  But I guess that--occasional bouts of hypocrisy notwithstanding--the further I venture into butchhood, the less interested I become in defining it for anyone but myself.


15 Comments
Joslyn C link
2/12/2012 06:44:35 am

I honestly think that, if people don't want to apply labels to themselves, they shouldn't. Great! Good for you, end of story. But if you DO decide to apply a label to yourself...it shouldn't be all about "breaking out of labels." If you don't like chocolate cake, don't eat it. If you don't like label definitions, don't label yourself. But don't get on other people who do.

Obviously, voicing your opinions about others' gender- or label-presentations isn't the best idea. But I don't think it's right that a woman who wears dresses, makeup, long hair and high heels should be all huffy about other people assuming she feels like a feminine woman. If she presents herself as such and feels differently, great. But I honestly feel like the queer community is taking things a bit too far when they think everyone should ask first about personal gender labels. I don't get on straight guys' cases when they hit on me, because I understand that I present and act the way they assume het women do. But that doesn't mean I have to date them.

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Sue
2/12/2012 10:32:11 am

Let me begin by saying that I came out on August 10, 2007 to my now xh of 30 years, Lots of stuff in between. The women at work have been great with me and I have kept all my young female friends. A couple of weeks ago I am at a "girls" weekend getaway (where my dw is not quite welcome) and I mention that if I could get away with it at my job, I would present as more "butch" than what I do. They did not grasp this concept, even though they had been to my wedding and had seen everything from very femme to very butch women. They called my butch pal "rough." They were shocked by what I was telling them as they couldn't even comprehend the concept of looking more butch. I just can't do what I want to do right now, because I like my job a lot and don't want to cause a problem for me. When I'm with my girl (butch, but she says no), and I'm with my lesbian peeps, it's butch all the way and getting butchier(is this a word?) by the week.
Lookout world....come November or the following March, it'll be a new Sue or maybe I'll just change my name to Ryan, Mike, Drew, Andy, Carter, McKenna, or just make one up!

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Mayonnaise
6/17/2013 10:20:31 am

This is ridiculous. I don't see wearing dresses, etc. as feminine, so obviously it bothers me that people tell me whether or not I am feminine. Plus, on little detail break these conceptions, for example if a woman who according to you "present" as feminine is muscular, people will still see her as masculine if they see her muscles. This is so ridiculous. Plus, it totally ignore the reasons why the person might present how they do.

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Deb Doe
2/12/2012 11:12:13 am

Mmmmm, what is butch? It is one of those things to me that I know it when I see or experience it....it isn't necessarily related to hair length or wearing men's clothes (or ties for that matter). I am fine with the idea of folks labeling themselves....Just that your perception of what you wanna be, doesn't necessarily make other's perceive you that way...But I am not sure that I want to be that concerned about other's perceptions either...mmmm.

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rebecca
2/12/2012 12:10:35 pm

Bravo! I applaud you for bringing these questions to light. As a woman who has dated ciswomen and transwomen, butch and femme women - and many others inbetween, I loved them for who they are. I'm all about letting people identifying as who they choose to be. A pet peeve of mine is how the communities that I identify attack their own- all of us who are outside of society's "norm" need to stand together in love and go beyond divisiveness. We're all beautiful, yes?

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Ungeheuer
2/12/2012 02:32:40 pm

For years, I didn't identify as butch because the type of butch I am does not match up with the regularly accepted idea of what that word means. I don't bind, I like bright colors, I femme up sometimes (though lately, this is only as drag). I'm not a lesbian and don't really have a sexual orientation. I don't ID as masculine (or as feminine); the terms "masculine", "masculine-of-center", "masculine-feminine spectrum", etc., make me cringe when they are applied to me. Unless it's because people made a mistake and don't know any better, I consider this non-consensual labeling and react as such. But the thing is this: I AM butch. I don't know what it means and can't define it except in the vaguest of terms, but I know that ID'ing as such has made me radically more confident and happier with myself, with my body and sexuality. And as someone who gets told all the time that I couldn't possibly be this thing I tell them I am? Yeah, I think respecting people's self-identification is important, even if their version of butch is different from yours. Universal definitions be damned.

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Trix
9/17/2012 07:20:25 pm

Yeah, I'm queer and I'm butch, and I am so with you on people labelling behaviours/presentation as "masculine". To me that means "like a man", and I really am not. I'm butch. I haven't tracked down anyone yet who has managed to enunciate a butch identity beyond "female masculinity" (how I loathe that term), and I so wish someone would.

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Wendi link
2/13/2012 01:58:05 am

"...the further I venture into butchhood, the less interested I become in defining it for anyone but myself."

Which is exactly how it should be.

Reply
Sue
2/13/2012 05:41:04 am

So agree, however, I tell my what "appears to be butch" friends about this blog. Gives us a nice quiet place to talk about the dilemma's of life.

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Max link
2/13/2012 05:23:55 am

Hear, hear. (or " her, her" or "him, him" or "hir, hir or "ze ze"... mostly just "hee hee", I think - ok, now I'm just being silly...)
Sometimes I get really down about the fact that folks seek comfort and safety in the rigid labels they appropriate for themselves and paste onto others. In the lgbt community, we're all living in a gray area, right? So what's one more layer of gray? I struggle with this all the time - hence the "pretty" part of "pretty butch" - but @Joslyn inadvertently hits the nail on the head: there's something to be said for having the presence, patience, maturity, and kindness to both allow others their perceptions, and to own what you yourself present to the world. I would like to advocate for perfectly knotted bow-ties and the two-martini lunch. But that's just me. (grin)

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Late Bloomer link
2/13/2012 11:09:15 am

I loved this post. These sorts of things are still fairly new to me and self identification is something that eludes me. I hope that when I can find my place in the vast spectrum that is the LBGTetc world that I will feel that boost of confidence and security in myself.

Thanks for the the opportunity to think these things through. Great post.

LB

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victoria link
2/16/2012 05:58:31 am

The problem with trying to pinpoint is perception--different people perceive the definitions of words differently. My partner gets it all the time: "you're too pretty to be butch." WTF? Because she's attractive she's not butch? So many problems with that...

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not_blonde
2/17/2012 10:13:30 pm

I mean, my grandmother could "identify" as a young black man, right?

LOL

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D
5/28/2012 12:18:57 pm

Whats your take on "soft butch" I don't really hear that, that much.
Also to get away from labels I just tell my friends I'm D. take it or leave.

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Butch Wonders link
6/11/2012 04:39:55 pm

You know, I hear it a fair amount... I think it's basically interchangeable with "chapstick lesbian." I think the term emerged in part to distinguish stone or super hard butches from the butches who were merely, well, dykey and a little guyish. Does that make sense?

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