How To Be Butch

Hint: There’s More Than One Way

Note: Please understand that I don’t know the person who writes http://howtobebutch.wordpress.com/ (“How To Be Butch”) any more than I can from their blog posts. I’m merely reacting to something I’ve read that seems to be a common but generally unspoken sentiment.

“How To Be Butch” is the name of a blog that I found recently (after all, how many times have I plugged that phrase into Google when I have a spare moment? When I’m feeling lost, or desperate? Which, come to think of it, makes me wish I had chosen that blog name—think of all the traffic!) and what keeps me coming back is their discussion of the dichotomous way that they separate their life; at work as a “reasonable queer” (their phrase) and at leisure as the eponymous butch, where no one on their rugby team has seen their effeminate work dress.

My first instinct, when she stated that they dressed differently for work was that, well then, they weren’t really a butch. Because butches are doggedly consistent on their dress. Like me. Because I’ve always presented exactly like I do now. It’s never been less or more masculine than right now, and it never will be. Because butches never hide, never change who they are to get somewhere, or to make life just a little less difficult.

The conundrum that this blog is regularly concerned with ties in with something a femme friend of mine said not too long ago. She was talking with some cute butch she met online and described them as “one of those dyed-in-the-wool, true old-school butches”, apparently the first female hired by a major Canadian rail company as a head engineer. I wish I could remember how exactly she described them, and that you could have seen the wistfulness in her eyes. 

I’m impressed by Harrison, responsible for “How To Be Butch”, that they have confidence in themself as a butch, regardless of their clothes. And that’s a confidence that can be hard, for me at least, to maintain. I think, as butches, we’re more aware than many that gender identity is part costume and masculinity can be hard for females to manifest outwardly without the crutch of clothes. This funny screen surrounding our bodies can help fend off those “but you’re really a woman” assertions that come in so many guises.

From “How to be a Business Butch”:

I want to start showing my bosses right away that my appearance is non-challenging enough that my focus could truly be on my work, not on my identity.

By non-challenging, I mean that I accept that for many people, butch women are threatening.  And I’ve already got butch happening in the basic fabric of who I am.  I think butch runs through my personality and the way I speak, not just the clothes I put on.  And in addition to that, my body is butch.

But this person isn’t immune to that desire that is kin to what I felt when my friend wistfully described her old-school butch, that “truest” of the dying butch breed. That desire to dress as what you feel your ‘true’ self to be. They work an office job, they dress in a manner that she feels has been deemed “reasonable”, i.e. Relatable for the straight people for and with whom she works. And now my cry, upon hearing her dissatisfaction is “no!” to take pride (that resounding word) in who she is, in her multiplicity, in her chameleon abilities. I see it as something subversive in a way many butches are not; to be butch in a manner akin to many femmes, or in the manner not unlike male-passing butches. I’m jealous in a way, because I simply find women’s clothes ill-fitting and revealing in ways beyond the physical. I don’t think I’m capable, anymore, of passing off as “reasonable”, and that brings with it its own kind of longing.

From “Inertia”:

I don’t want to keep juggling this double life that I’ve got right now.  I’m butch in my personal life, but at work, where I spend most of my time, I’m someone else.  Someone who is recognized as butch, but who can’t fully be.  In short, I’m not realizing my potential, and I think it’s due to inertia.  Why change my wardrobe if my pants still fit?  Why risk the impression that people have of me as a “reasonable queer”?  Why do anything differently?

I mean, I know the answers to these questions: to be happy, to be yourself, to be butch, which you love.  To love yourself.  But I’m not exactly unhappy with the way things are.  Just indifferent and resigned.

Though, I guess that that isn’t exactly a fulfillment of my potential either.  Is it?

It takes something to declare that there’s more than one way to be butch when you don’t follow at least generally in the vein of the multitude of butch bloggers, I count myself among their numbers, who portray a pretty consistent gender expression and often ascribe or aspire to a large number of “stereotypical” butch traits. But Harrison claims butch without pretense or apology, and without needing to explain herself. Because there’s more than one way.

She claims it in a manner, I feel, like men do, as something that does not have to be constantly proven or acted out or upon, but something that is also innate to her being.

~ by yondergen on January 16, 2010.