Found this interesting:
Butch Trans Women - Intros and Role Models (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xfTN-dKqO4#)
I feel like I was supposed to relate to this and didn't. :-\
They are very... gendery or something? I kept feeling like.... so many many words. So many. I like words, really. But I don't like wearing them.
And I dunno... I don't look like them. None of them. Not even a little. While I can look at practically any random sampling of queer cis women and find a few that I match with. That feels strange.
They are interesting. But very foreign.
Being accidentally gendered male as a andro dyke was the only experience I shared. Though I've never been gendered male as a trans female, so I could only relate to half of that one.
I didn't relate either. There is a difference between a "butch" and a tomboy. I'm a tomboy. I don't know where these "butches" are coming from.
Joelene
I can relate to a lot of this, especially what Tobi says about connecting with FTMs. Mainly though, I wanted them to stop fiddling with pens etc. whilst talking :)
It seems to me that a lot of people use the word Butch to mean what I mean when I say Tomboy - seems to be a matter of choice. I'm not 100% clear on why I don't want to be labelled Butch, but I don't. In my mind, Butch involves some kind of desire to present like a stereotypical cis male, and that's not me. But clearly there are people (cis and trans) who identify as Butch without going down that route.
My reactions to this panel tell me I'm very hung up on appearance (as in "Oh, you're butch? Funny, you don't *look* butch...") so I need to loosen up there.
Quote from: Padma on November 30, 2012, 03:07:46 AM
My reactions to this panel tell me I'm very hung up on appearance (as in "Oh, you're butch? Funny, you don't *look* butch...") so I need to loosen up there.
I had the same reactions but in a different way.
I guess I kind of thought of a butch transwoman as more of a tomboy, not someone actively trying to present male (or at least it seemed that way). I don't know. When you cross so far over that you're going full circle from male to trans male, it's almost like what was the point?
To each his or hir own though.
Quote from: Joelene9 on November 30, 2012, 01:26:24 AM
I didn't relate either. There is a difference between a "butch" and a tomboy. I'm a tomboy. I don't know where these "butches" are coming from.
Joelene
Yeah, a tomboy seems more like Julia Serano or even our beloved Padma. ;)
But it was the most interesting trans video I've seen in awhile. Guess I've learned more about the wide, furry world of butchness.
Quote from: Sarah7 on November 30, 2012, 01:20:17 AM
I feel like I was supposed to relate to this and didn't. :-\
They are very... gendery or something? I kept feeling like.... so many many words. So many. I like words, really. But I don't like wearing them.
And I dunno... I don't look like them. None of them. Not even a little. While I can look at practically any random sampling of queer cis women and find a few that I match with. That feels strange.
They are interesting. But very foreign.
Being accidentally gendered male as a andro dyke was the only experience I shared. Though I've never been gendered male as a trans female, so I could only relate to half of that one.
That was cryptic. Tongue-tied? :laugh:
Yes I have met butch women and tomboy women, a butch woman tends to be really manly in her look and mannerisms, where as a tomboy is only somewhat that way, i dated a girl who was a tomboy and she had short hair like a butch woman might have but she was not nearly as aggressive and manish as a butch woman usually is.
My take on all this is: if I find myself identiifying with someone else who's trans, I consider it a treat - because I no longer expect or assume I have much at all in common with other trans people. This is because we're all *so* different, and doing apparently similar things for actually different reasons.
Quote from: Forum Admin on November 30, 2012, 07:26:53 AMI don't know. When you cross so far over that you're going full circle from male to trans male, it's almost like what was the point?
I think it depends on what's the nature of your dysphoria. For me (just as one example), my dysphoria is largely just anatomical, so it isn't involving a huge change in presentation. I'm basically a genderqueer woman in a (not for much longer) male body, and I'm constantly finding myself with way more in common with most trans men than I have with most trans women. That said, I don't know how similar or different my reasons for identifying as a tomboy are from the next trans tomboy's reasons. But "the point" for me is to be genderqueer in the right body.
So I don't see it as a problem if many people here don't identify with the panellists - and I don't identify with a lot of what they were saying, but do strongly with some of what especially Tobi was saying. They're not really representing anyone but themselves - I like it that they keep steering general questions back to just talking about their own personal experiences.
Quote from: girl you look fierce on November 30, 2012, 11:20:53 AM
Quote from: Forum Admin on November 30, 2012, 07:26:53 AMWhen you cross so far over that you're going full circle from male to trans male, it's almost like what was the point?
I sort of guiltily find myself thinking like this a lot. :( I actually struggle with this sentiment because I want to be non-judgmental, both towards others and even a little towards myself. My insecurities about myself highlight all the seeming contradictions about other people's transition... like when mtfs are so masculine or ftms so feminine that it almost seems like a terrible thing and a waste of energy to have transitioned and yet if that's what people want then it SHOULD be okay. I should not judge them for that. I know. But I do judge me. Like, finding the balance between "I need this to be happy" and "could I have survived as a super-femme guy and should I have?"
I really can't relate to the people in the video either. And it's terrible but I find their presentation awkward and uncomfortable. I don't know. It's not my place to say that though. I just wish I didn't have to feel like their presentation was a comment on me just because we are under the same umbrella. And like I didn't feel so left out of the umbrella in which you'd think I would be the mainstream yet I feel like the tiniest majority.
I thought that way alot, especially early in my transition. Still working on it. I think for a lot of us, once we've realized there are others out there like us, we feel so relieved. And we immediately start identifying with some of what we hear. But then we start coming across other trans people who aren't anything at all like us.
So, as a feminine girl, looking back on a childhood of depravation and ostracization, you start seeing how this condition has always affected your life. When you come across a more masculine transwoman with a totally different experience, it kind of shakes that all up. At least initially. And you're like wait a minute - no way she's got what I got!
I had the same kind of moments. What? Hold the phone - He's transitioning wearing a skirt and carrying a Hello Kitty purse? Am I missing something here?
But then I realized that I'm not the exactly the picture of masculinity either. Or of trans ness. I'm not having bottom surgery for example. And there were probably guys wondering the same about me.
Anyway, I think it's good we can acknowledge this kind of thing. All too often it simmers under the surface and comes out in hostility, nasty debates, or just snide comments here and there. It's better to just admit we don't 'get' something. That it makes us uncomfortable and we're not quite sure why. Because then, there's an opportunity to learn. I certainly expanded my awareness of butchness and variety of trans expression with these videos.
Many years ago one of the first transmen I came across online was Johnny. He really mind screwed me because he would wear a tu tu bottom and tiara baring his nude post op chest and he was well on a year or so of T. I would think to myself "why is he doing this and what is WRONG with him". After getting to know him I realized there was nothing wrong with him. What was wrong was the way that I perceived gender and stereotypical characteristics of how I thought gender should be expressed.
Shamefully I went through a time where I was livid at the thought of a FTM "turning" (for lack of better words) gay after transition. I didn't understand it (still don't really) but then I came to the conclusion that these things aren't for me to understand. These are real people with real lives and I shouldn't try to neatly label them. I certainly don't like being labeled myself.
I still struggle at times to accept certain aspects of the GLBT spectrum. I just have to remind myself that everyone has a right to express their own individuality and if I don't like it that is fine. I don't have to like it but I do have to respect it.
I think these kinds of discussions (both the panel itself and the comments in this thread) are great at helping us, as a community, to functionally separate and define sex from gender identity from sexuality from gender expression and presentation. All interrelated but wholey separate concepts, that sometimes act in tandem with each other and other times not. In other words, I think this video helps show that one can be female (sex), transsexual (adjective of sex), woman (gender identity), queer (sexuality), and butch/andro/masculine of centre (gender expression/presentation) without one category necessarily excluding the other.
Also I'm really glad this panel happened, as well as the existence of the mtfbutches tumblr, to show that queer trans woman are just as diverse as queer cis woman in styles, presentations, etc.
*Disclaimer: it should be noted that I have a vested interest in loving this panel as Tobi and I created it together (and have presented it twice together, once at butch voices in Portland OR and once at the Philly trans health conference this year)....just thought I should be forthright about where my allegiances are haha*
Hi and welcome, transfemalebutch! :)
I very much agree - and it also shows how blurry the edges between those aspects are sometimes too (separate, but inextricably intertwined) - and just how diverse the manifestations of each can be, even under the (apparently) same label.
I had the oddest experience while watching this of being present at the debate - and wishing to actually be so at some point in my future (if such things ever happen in the UK - so perhaps my future involves trying to make something like this happen - though I'm not as photogenic as those gals).
*Disclaimer: after watching those vids, with regard to Tobi I have (as Bridget Jones so aptly expresses it) let's face it, a bit of a crush, actually ::).
Quote from: transfemalebutch on November 30, 2012, 06:18:09 PM
I think these kinds of discussions (both the panel itself and the comments in this thread) are great at helping us, as a community, to functionally separate and define sex from gender identity from sexuality from gender expression and presentation. All interrelated but wholey separate concepts, that sometimes act in tandem with each other and other times not. In other words, I think this video helps show that one can be female (sex), transsexual (adjective of sex), woman (gender identity), queer (sexuality), and butch/andro/masculine of centre (gender expression/presentation) without one category necessarily excluding the other.
Also I'm really glad this panel happened, as well as the existence of the mtfbutches tumblr, to show that queer trans woman are just as diverse as queer cis woman in styles, presentations, etc.
*Disclaimer: it should be noted that I have a vested interest in loving this panel as Tobi and I created it together (and have presented it twice together, once at butch voices in Portland OR and once at the Philly trans health conference this year)....just thought I should be forthright about where my allegiances are haha*
Oh wow welcome to Susans! I admit I did enjoy the panel. I actually just watched all six videos. Part of it was curiousity. Yeah, I think there can be some confusion even in the community at first when you're not used to seeing transwomen present this way. So, good to be exposed to different butch voices.
And yes, Padma, there was a certain vibrance to Tobi. very well-spoken.
Oh hey thanks for the welcome ;) names Kay btw
Xoxo
Ps During one of these 4xday dilation seshs I should really get around to writing a proper intro :)
I can relate to this only in that I'm one of those people that don't fit a single mold (frankly I think it's more rare for someone to fit a single mold than multiple ones). I could string together a whole bunch of words to describe myself, my sex, my identity and my presentation. Over the years I've observed quite a number of responses to this. Since I fall into a number of categories would interact and relate to a lot of groups – but those groups often couldn't relate to me (or accept me as one of their "own") because I wasn't just "______" (whatever the main qualifier of the group was). Sometimes people would call me a "faker". I really avoid talking about any sort of intersex issues because I've just run into too many intersex people who frankly had angry reactions to me ... like I wasn't a REAL intersex person because I didn't have whatever they had going on. So it seems that no matter what the group is, there's going to be a percentage of individuals who will look on others who aren't exactly like they are as "outsiders". The most accepting group I've personally found so far is the genderqueer/non-binary/androgyne types.
As for the whole butch thing, I have a kind of fuzzy definition of a lot of terms like that. Like from what I understand butch was always used to describe a masculine presenting lesbian. I would say that the folks on the panel were more dykes? I didn't watch the entire vid but I know someone mentioned something about the typical butch appearance and that wasn't them, but they still identified as butch. What's confusing to me is my fuzzy definition of butch where I think that IS the whole definition – that you present a certain way in order to be that. But again, I self admit that all these definitions, etc. confuse me ;)
It seems to me that like many other terms, Butch is still evolving. I had the impression that for the panellists, Butch is more of a state of mind than a mode of presentation - and I suppose a presentation always has a state of mind behind it anyway. This is definitely one of those situations where there's no substitute for being able to ask "What does this term mean when you use it?" because I was seeing four very different people with (I suspect) pretty diverse definitions of Butch between them, and I still didn't really feel clear by the end of it what their definitions were.
But fair play - if you stuck me in front of an audience (and camera) and asked me to explain why I'm comfortable calling myself a tomboy (but not butch) and a dyke (though I'm polysexual), I wouldn't find it that easy on the spot.
Quote from: Padma on November 30, 2012, 03:07:46 AM
I can relate to a lot of this, especially what Tobi says about connecting with FTMs. Mainly though, I wanted them to stop fiddling with pens etc. whilst talking :)
It seems to me that a lot of people use the word Butch to mean what I mean when I say Tomboy - seems to be a matter of choice. I'm not 100% clear on why I don't want to be labelled Butch, but I don't. In my mind, Butch involves some kind of desire to present like a stereotypical cis male, and that's not me. But clearly there are people (cis and trans) who identify as Butch without going down that route.
Coming from a very different generation, there are parts of this that speak to me and others that don't. Maybe it has to do with my only partly successful attempts to join lesbian communities at a time when the whole flannel and Birkenstocks dress code was a very common, almost
de rigeur [sp?] way of indicating one's lesbian identity? Embracing and re-animating Butch-Femme identities and dynamics came along quite a bit later, when I had married someone I considered soft butch.
I can sympathize with the dialogue, because it seems like an extension of others I have followed for decades now.
Quote from: transfemalebutch on November 30, 2012, 09:02:18 PM
Oh hey thanks for the welcome ;) names Kay btw
Xoxo
Ps During one of these 4xday dilation seshs I should really get around to writing a proper intro :)
Welcome Kay :)
Quote from: Sarah7 on November 30, 2012, 01:20:17 AM
I feel like I was supposed to relate to this and didn't. :-\
They are very... gendery or something? I kept feeling like.... so many many words. So many. I like words, really. But I don't like wearing them.
And I dunno... I don't look like them. None of them. Not even a little. While I can look at practically any random sampling of queer cis women and find a few that I match with. That feels strange.
They are interesting. But very foreign.
Being accidentally gendered male as a andro dyke was the only experience I shared. Though I've never been gendered male as a trans female, so I could only relate to half of that one.
there was a time and i guess sometimes there are times where i identify with butch as much as it can be identified with
i dont know "identify" is a weird word and it means complicated things that are tied up into other things that im not really ready to be on board with for myself
i guess i gotta say i feel like im closer to butch cis women than the butch trans women on this panel
but even if like sarah i can look at them and find that i match with said queer cis women i dont really feel like theyre all that similar to me either?
i went to see andrea gibson do a performance and i expected for her poems to really resonate with me as someone who moves through the world as a queer and definitely masculine-of-center female perceived as woman/girl/etc. and they didnt
like i thought they were really excellent but there was a chasm between the flannel and skinny jeans and combat boots we were both wearing
grr
i dont know
too much gender
I know most of the people in this video.
Being butch isn't about trying to get seen as male, feeling male, or like a man. It is identity, and how you feel about yourself. I feel like butch is a queer identity where as tomboy is more simply an action and isn't queer in and of itself.
Thanks for posting this video! I found it particularly fascinating to see the evolution of what butch means and how it has evolved since I found my way into the trans community (almost 20 years ago, even more adding in my first awareness as part of LGB community).
I still haven't found the right terminology that adequately expresses who I am, merely that I am continually evolving and growing.
Z
Quote from: transtrender on January 07, 2013, 12:12:33 PM
grr
i dont know
too much gender
This.
Sometimes, gender presentation, identification, and whatsuch are a little more complicated than they need to be. Life is as simple as respecting and accepting everyone's right to be themselves and to be happy, so long as they aren't hurting anyone by doing so.
I wouldn't say I'm a butch woman, personally, but I can see where they're coming from, and all the power to them for sticking up for themselves.
Quote from: Nygeel on January 07, 2013, 01:58:18 PM
I know most of the people in this video.
Being butch isn't about trying to get seen as male, feeling male, or like a man. It is identity, and how you feel about yourself. I feel like butch is a queer identity where as tomboy is more simply an action and isn't queer in and of itself.
Would you be willing to say more about what you think this difference is? I don't get what you mean by "tomboy is more simply an action". What does tomboy mean to you, then? I'm asking because I'm trying to understand why it is that butch doesn't feel like it fits me and tomboy does - but it feels like both words mean something different to me from what they mean to you.
I'm wondering whether it's a generational thing. When I think of butch, I can't help there being a flavour of "macho" in there. But from watching these videos, as a term it's clearly been redefined by some people until it means something so different from what it meant when I was their age that I don't know how to get a handle on it.
For me, tomboy is just as much a queer identity as butch is - to me, it implies being female but not feminine (but not masculine either - and to be a woman without gender stereotypicality is very queer) whereas butch does have this aura in my mind of conscious masculinity. This is clearly not the definition the panel has in mind. This is really fascinating!
Quote from: Padma on January 08, 2013, 01:21:18 AM
For me, tomboy is just as much a queer identity as butch is - to me, it implies being female but not feminine (but not masculine either - and to be a woman without gender stereotypicality is very queer) whereas butch does have this aura in my mind of conscious masculinity. This is clearly not the definition the panel has in mind. This is really fascinating!
When I started following this and related conversations, it was not as someone who identifies as butch or tomboy, but someone attracted to at least many of those who do identify as such (and some who have been identified by others as such).
Initially, I had the mis-impression that "tomboy" was a term that others tended to use to describe someone, while "butch" was an identity that someone claimed for herself (or himself, since the word also has a slightly different meaning in gay male circles).
One of my earliest close female contacts was an aunt who was often described by family members as a tomboy... she was the youngest daughter of my paternal grandmother, and someone I was very close to as a child, since I was raised in early childhood almost as a youngest child of my grandmother, for the period when both my mother and father were both working outside the home a great deal. These were the years from my birth until roughly age 4, but we lived next door to my grandparents, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, until I was 7. I've always felt that the bond with my aunt, and some of the tangled up stuff that happened between us (she was old enough to babysit me, but the relationship often had more of a playmates character to it)... anyway, I've long assumed this had a lot to do with the attraction that I developed for tomboys and butches as time went on.
Much later, after college, in fact, I became very interested in the dialogue in lesbian circle about butch-femme in general. I would have been interesting during college, but I was at college at the height of lesbian attachment to almost lockstep androgyny and so much defensiveness about confusing butch-femme with some sort of imitation of heterosexist notions of gender, that the subject was generally avoided or ignored.
It seems to me that, much as the dialogue has revealed commonalities in how we define these terms, in the end, each person has their own definition. Seems to me that panel discussion is one of the more obvious examples of that... many different individuals, each with her own definition. Personally I think that's the way it should be. It only adds depth to the conversation... people are still going to have their own definitions, and the discussions generally serve to clarify, and give others opportunities to share their own perspectives and personal histories.
Quote from: Elspeth on January 08, 2013, 07:54:37 AM
It seems to me that, much as the dialogue has revealed commonalities in how we define these terms, in the end, each person has their own definition. Seems to me that panel discussion is one of the more obvious examples of that... many different individuals, each with her own definition. Personally I think that's the way it should be. It only adds depth to the conversation... people are still going to have their own definitions, and the discussions generally serve to clarify, and give others opportunities to share their own perspectives and personal histories.
Yes indeed.
Interesting about the self-vs-other labelling, though - up until recently, my experience of people using butch has been much more of people labelling others as butch in a derogatory way, rather than people self-identifying as butch (so that's affected how positive I've felt about it).
I think I'm drawn to tomboy as a label because it's (in my mind, at least) more androgynous than butch is, and more ambiguous (genderqueer, but not necessarily sexqueer - though in my case, the whole lot). I think I said somewhere else here that it's always best to ask people what their labels mean to them (as well as what the labels they attach to others mean to them). One thing that's obvious from the panel and this discussion is that you can never assume two people mean the same thing (or mean different things). A label is just the start of a conversation. So I'm happy to call myself a provisionally-butch tomboy :).