Quote from: Padma on September 18, 2011, 02:00:12 AM
As I've mentioned before on Susan's, I'm just relieved to have stopped trying to "pass" as a man 🙂 and now I'm just enjoying looking like me. And like Amaranth, "me" wears trousers (but they're girl trousers now - loving the boot cut 
). If I were 20 years younger, I'd probably be trying to look like Shane from The L Word, but those days are over for me :sob:. 🙂
I must confess a slight reaction to the whole "you're either femme or you're butch" metaphor - my psychiatrist pulled that one on me when he wrote to my GP, saying I'd described myself as "butch" simply because I told him my goal wasn't to appear heterofemme :🙂. I've never used the term "butch" to describe myself (and find it a bit pejorative). In terms of anatomy, I'm supposed to be female, but in terms of look, I seem to be into something kind of androgynous. I think there's still a cultural assumption that one's choices are to appear either masculine or feminine, and if you choose the one of those that's counter to your apparent gender, then you get labelled as "butch" or "sissy" or whatever. A very inflexible pigeonholing system we're working with 🙂.
The role I've found for myself, which lies, as you said, somewhere between the "butch" and "femme" paradigm, is that of the "tomboy femme": for me, this generally means that I have an androgynous hairstyle and wear jeans and leggings with more traditionally feminine tops, and adding atop that androgynous military-cut jackets.
I'm definitely not "femme" - I don't have a particularly feminine hairstyle, I detest makeup from a societal standpoint, I rarely shave my legs, and have generally "butch" mannerisms. But I'm also not abiding by many of the defining characteristics of butchness, either. The solution is somewhere in the middle.
That said, I definitely think that passing privilege grants me the option of presenting as butch if I want. I do crossdress for fun on occasion, and I think most of the time people just end up assuming I'm a butch lesbian.
