Butch Is: Symposium #1

Sinclair Sexsmith issued a call for her new project here, and I’ve read some amazing responses already as they’ve swirled through the blogosphere.

The November Symposium prompt:

What is butch? How do you define butch? What do you love about it? What does it mean to you?

Of course, I’m late to the party. I’m also utterly envious, because Roxy nailed it beautifully, poetically, and had me nodding along for her entire post in response to this prompt.

I’ve also written about this before, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. Every time I write about Rhett, I feel like I’m writing about butch, because he embodies everything I love about butch. As a femme, and now as a femme transwife, my perceptions of butch have grown, evolved, and refined themselves over time. Sometimes, I feel like I see butch so much more clearly now, and sometimes it feels like even bigger a mystery to me than it did when I first discovered that there was a name for what I craved in a lover, partner, and spouse.

Butch is an adjective. Butch is a noun. Butch is a compliment, an acknowledgement, a performance, an attitude. Butch is an insult, an attack, an assault. It’s flattering and pejorative and honest and undeniable. Butch is a body born female and worn male. Butch is a title. One that must be first accepted, then adopted, and finally fulfilled.

Butch is the strength to grow up female and then choose for yourself – it is the strength to walk out the door every single day looking like everything you shouldn’t and making it work. Butch is the courage to be other, more than, beyond what is supposed to be. Butch is a heart big enough, and open enough, and true enough, to accept visibility on behalf of us all. Butch is a warrior spirit wrapped around a lover’s heart.

Butch is wallets and barbershops and cologne not perfume and the sweet spice of shaving soap not cream. Butch is denim and leather and fine wool and silk. Butch is feminist chivalry whether or not those two things should go together.

Butch is that gloss of masculinity so prided and coveted, executed with dignity and swagger.

I love that butch is my opposite – I love the contradictions and compliments between me and you. I love that I am soft where you aren’t, I am sweet where you aren’t, I am fragile where you aren’t. I love that just beneath that firm handshake and devil-may-care grin is a soul that cherishes me, treats me as gently as spun glass, and smiles at babies and puppies. I love that butch means never opening my own door unless I want to. I love that butch means standing together in the face of the world and making them acknowledge that we exist as a unit, an unstoppable force. I love that butch means understanding me in a way no man born to his body ever could.

Butch means visibility, honesty, truth, and courage. Butch means happiness, pride, hope, and love.

Butch means, to me, that I do not stand alone, unseen, in a world that would rather we didn’t exist.

Looking for more? Check out the joint blog, filled with gushy marital ad nauseum, at This Side of the High Speed Rodeo. You can also find me sounding off as a Guest Lesbian, at Card Carrying Lesbian, on my adventures as a transwife in an oh-so-straight world.

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