Malinda Lo
Blog
Mar 17, 2009
New Notes & Queeries: Bring on the butches
Yesterday my latest Notes & Queeries column was published on AfterEllen.com. Titled “Rachel Maddow, Butch Fatale,” it’s a response to the mainstream coverage of Maddow that almost always references her lesbianism and then focuses on her appearance. Here’s a teaser:
It was easy to be irritated, if not offended, by Daphne Merkin’s flashy article about Rachel Maddow in the New York Times Style Magazine last month. … But beneath Merkin’s ill-informed opinions, there lies a greater truth: America is still mighty terrified of anyone who might be “butch.”
I went on to discuss the ways that butchness has been treated by the mainstream, as well as some of the misunderstandings about female masculinity.
I spent a lot of time on this column (more time than I probably should have!) and it pleased me to no end that it got such a positive reaction. Anyone who is familiar with my articles on AfterEllen.com or has watched my video blog knows that butch identity is a favorite topic of mine. I’ve always been fascinated by butchness and, yes, attracted to it (duh!).
So it was a little disheartening when I realized that some readers had misunderstood part of what I wrote. Toward the end of the column, I used the word “choose,” which is always a tricky word when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity. Here’s what I wrote:
In my opinion, any woman who chooses to live her life outside the well-worn groove of femininity should be given a medal. It is a difficult path to take, with people at every turn attempting to push you back into the mainstream.
A few readers responded by telling me that being butch is not a choice. Tmboy said:
I dont know any “butch/tomboy” that chose to be butch or tomboy. Believe me i would love to choose to be femme cus at least i’d stop hearing my mother’s mouth about it. Saying someone chose to be butch is like saying someone chose to be gay. I feel like an alien in a dress or skirt or make up. I feel unbelievably horrible when dressed like a femme so not being a femme is not a choice but me holding on to my sanity. Thats one thing femmes in general need to understand BUTCH is not a choice
I totally get what Tmboy is saying — that she had no choice in the matter at all. For some people, butchness is experienced this way, and I didn’t mean for them to think I was dismissing their identities as an option. For others, though, the degree to which they express their butchness can be a choice they make. Not everyone is butch in the same way — that was the unstated subtext of my statement.
I hope the rest of the article was clear, though. I have nothing but admiration for butch women. I don’t think we say that enough — clearly, we don’t say that enough, judging by the comments on my column. That is a little sad, but as long as I’m around with a blog or a voice of any sort, you’ll find me on Team Butch.
If you want more lovely butches, you can read my silly “Top 15 Hottest Butches” article I put together with the help of a little panel of friends a couple of years ago. Or go and read Joan Nestle’s The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader; it’s a classic.
As a young butch woman (who looks like a “boy” and takes a lot of hell for it living in the deep south) I did not take offense at your word choice. I inferred from your statement that living openly as a butch women (particularly to a highly visible degree) is difficult in a society with very narrow (and binary) conceptions of gender/femininity and you were commending women who live outside that rigid structure. I hope other butch women infer that as well because the column was really enjoyable to read and quite insightful (in my humble opinion
) regarding butch identity.
Your column was a pleasure to read, like always.
Word choice aside, whenever an article receives that many comments (and it’s not about the L word), you are doing something right.
I thought the article was terrific. Meant to say so. And I totally understood/agreed with your point about some amount of expressing butchness being a choice. Coming from one who has been labeled as being butch many times when I didn’t agree with the label… I suspect that label tho, had to do with some inner-butchness being expressed against my conscious will.
Hey… Actually liked the column. I love when body, gender, and sexual preference collide, cut through, mix, get together, untangle…
And I get the whole part about “choice”. I once read that homosexuality is not a choice, it is something you feel. But assuming it, being gay (in the whole Judith Butler resubjectivization way), is a choice. I find Octavio Paz’s treatment of love similar: he defines love as the intersection, the meeting of two opposites: fatality and freedom. Love gets to you, you feel it, you’re “hit” by it: Cupid’s arrow is precisely the metaphor for the feeling. But yet, you choose to pursue that love. You embrace it. You live it. It’s weird. Because in the end, what this means is that we can choose to be miserable (i.e., run away from love, i.e., run away from being gay, butch, transgendered, whatever). But, the operative word is miserable: freedom is funny. In my sarcastic days I define it as the right to be stupid. Others, as the right to be miserable. Others, just as the right to be, or feel, whatever it is.
The other funny thing is that being butch, or gay (or both) has to be a choice. Sometimes I question what it is that we (or at least I) fight for. And it’s for something quite simple: to stop having to make choices. If the personal is political (or the private is public), it’s because they won’t let it be (the statu quo, whatever that is). The personal won’t be political, when it’s no longer relevant. The private shall be private, when it is just a matter of privacy. I find the coverage of LGTB treatment in the media fascinating and noble: the construction of identity(ies) is key to the transformation. Hmm… Right, I’m rambling now…
Anyway, loved the article too.
I respect your pov, but I don’t agree. I find it irritating when I hear lesbians express disdain for the feminine–as though femininity equates to the diminishment of woman, and should be overcome as something less powerful, less meaningful and less substantial than the masculine, which is so valued as superior in our society. It’s so often been claimed that women don’t own or define their own femininity–that it’s something imposed upon us by the male sex, or that it’s mere artifice designed for the pleasure of men. Until we learn to overcome this thinking, we’ll continue to operate within a value system of masculine hegemony
samsonian — I have not, in my article, expressed any disdain for the feminine. I am, in fact, a femme. Nor did I state that masculinity is more meaningful, and I do not believe it is so. I hope you’ll read the article more closely.
okay. i loved this column and post. thanks for sharing. if i played on the other team, i’d totally be hot for butch. just sayin’.
Melinda, I was “speaking” in general terms. I’ve been out for over 20 years. When I first immersed myself in the lesbian community, I felt I had somehow entered the land of the lost boys–”boys” who viewed femininity with disdain–especially their own (as similarly expressed by homophobic hetero males regarding any characteristic within themselves that may be perceived as soft or feminine). I heard all the butch rationale about “masculine privilege and power,” and I’ve heard many butch lesbians express sexist, misogynistic notions–which they were somehow able to justify due to having vaginas between their legs. Most of those women who once defined “butch identity” in our communities (as it turns out) were not lesbians at all, as they’ve since transitioned (but that leads us onto a whole new tangent).
As for myself, I searched for women who exemplified how to feel good about being both a lesbian and an adult woman, and discovered that such individuals were rare. When I came out, “visibility” had less to do with an overt declaration than heuristic visual and behavioral cues. Therefore, lesbian presentation was largely “standardized” (thus, the “lesbian uniform,” which was purposefully void of feminine beauty or anything that might pander aesthetically to hetero male desires). One had to be reactionary to avoid being “male-defined.” But, is reactionary how we really want to be when defining who we are? That’s quite limiting, and still a means of relinquishing power.
I think we’ve finally reached a point in society when lesbians can feel free to own and express our femininity in various forms without having to prove or justify ourselves to one another.
So, I did read your article thoroughly, and I find you to be an exceptionally bright and insightful writer–not to mention very attractive ;D–however, I tread very cautiously when it comes to valorizing butch or masculine identity.
Thanks for your clarification, samsonian, and the compliment at the end. I totally agree that masculinity is not something to be praised without thought. But I do ask you to consider what I was saying in the column — that butchness is (I believe) a different way of expressing femininity. We don’t all have to express our femininity in one particular way. And I also believe that if it’s important to distinguish between masculinity expressed by a woman, and masculinity that is macho and misogynistic.
That’s not to say that there aren’t butch women or lesbians who act the way you’ve experienced. But I’ve seen enough discrimination against butches in this community — lesbians who clearly identify as women, who love women, who support women, and who merely express their gender less femininely than the mainstream. I support these butches. That’s who I’m talking about.