butch, please
Jan. 21st, 2019 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sciatrixI was sitting down to compile a signal boost post for the week, which will probably be pretty big since I missed last week's. And I pulled out a link that I had a bit more to say about than I thought I did, so I figured it could have a post of its own.
staranise had some discussion a few days ago about the history of "butch" and "femme" as terms, and whether or not they're lesbian-only words. Spoiler: her conclusion, which I'm 100% down with, is 'no'. I often bring up an anecdote, actually, about a slightly awkward joke my (gay, male, about twenty years older than me) boss once made off-the-cuff to an audience of mostly straight colleagues, back when I was new to the lab: "If you use the word butch... you're probably not." I, who am pretty butch, was a little confused and startled before I realized that the joke actually makes sense if you're habitually assuming that the people who use 'butch' are mostly gay men (which is, I think, his context; he coughed and backtracked a little bit when I stared at him in confusion).
We actually had a lot of those little "huh wha?" moments the year I was new to the lab. I think I was still adjusting to bringing up queer culture where there were straight people, which at the time I would have never bothered to do and which he (I think deliberately) makes a point of doing sometimes. And I think he was probably still adjusting some to me being there with my own context, which was (and is) very different from my boss' while still being recognizable. In retrospect, I'm a little sorry about having come into the lab with the trauma I did from Tumblr exclusionists; I think he was very excited to have a queer mentee, and I don't think he had any context for why I would sidestep conversations and tuck away my own perspective in (not-outwardly-visible) fright when he would toss topics of conversation out at me.
It turns out that when you're largely accessing queer community through the scars of gatekeeping and trauma, and you have been really seriously immersing yourself in the attacks mounted by exclusionists--at the time I was coming off of two years of doing that very heavily--you start developing a fear reaction to people who are "unassailably" part of the community and who don't do a lot of obvious and visible stepping to make sure you know you're welcome. Which, since I didn't actually tell him that I ID as ace and that colors my experiences really deeply until... oh, the summer after I joined the lab, after he spent two weeks with me in the field (so around each other 24/7) trying to figure out what the hell I was and why I wasn't responding like either a straight person or a queer person to the conversational gambits he'd toss out, obviously he didn't know to do. (And just as obviously my experience was totally outside his context, which makes total sense, and just--augh.)
I'm more open about it right now, but it's been gone on six and a half years, and I'm still trying to work out how to talk about my own experiences both to other folks in my field--will they criticize me for openly holding an identity that is so often ridiculed?--and within my department. It's easier with folks about my age, but it's not like older people are all in total agreement with exclusionists, either. And it's hard unlearning the signifiers I initially learned on the internet.
I hate how the context of exclusionists drives certain community experiences to hide and fear connection to other groups, while at the same time being totally unseen by wide swathes of the groups exclusionists are ostensibly protecting. I hate that my fear drove me to hide because I had associated the presence of "real" LGBTQ+ people with potential judgement and threat, especially when I think at the time I was probably the only other openly queer person in our department. (I think I may be that now--we had another cis male gay grad student who had been in the same undergraduate lab as I was join, but he has since left to pursue a career in data science. And I don't think either of us know anyone else.)
Anyway. That little story was such a perfect encapsulation of two people whose queer contexts and communities are different meeting with a little bit of a bump, and such a perfect "yeah, no: suck it" story for those exclusionists trying to insist that "butch" and "femme" are terms only for cis lesbians.
staranise had some discussion a few days ago about the history of "butch" and "femme" as terms, and whether or not they're lesbian-only words. Spoiler: her conclusion, which I'm 100% down with, is 'no'. I often bring up an anecdote, actually, about a slightly awkward joke my (gay, male, about twenty years older than me) boss once made off-the-cuff to an audience of mostly straight colleagues, back when I was new to the lab: "If you use the word butch... you're probably not." I, who am pretty butch, was a little confused and startled before I realized that the joke actually makes sense if you're habitually assuming that the people who use 'butch' are mostly gay men (which is, I think, his context; he coughed and backtracked a little bit when I stared at him in confusion).We actually had a lot of those little "huh wha?" moments the year I was new to the lab. I think I was still adjusting to bringing up queer culture where there were straight people, which at the time I would have never bothered to do and which he (I think deliberately) makes a point of doing sometimes. And I think he was probably still adjusting some to me being there with my own context, which was (and is) very different from my boss' while still being recognizable. In retrospect, I'm a little sorry about having come into the lab with the trauma I did from Tumblr exclusionists; I think he was very excited to have a queer mentee, and I don't think he had any context for why I would sidestep conversations and tuck away my own perspective in (not-outwardly-visible) fright when he would toss topics of conversation out at me.
It turns out that when you're largely accessing queer community through the scars of gatekeeping and trauma, and you have been really seriously immersing yourself in the attacks mounted by exclusionists--at the time I was coming off of two years of doing that very heavily--you start developing a fear reaction to people who are "unassailably" part of the community and who don't do a lot of obvious and visible stepping to make sure you know you're welcome. Which, since I didn't actually tell him that I ID as ace and that colors my experiences really deeply until... oh, the summer after I joined the lab, after he spent two weeks with me in the field (so around each other 24/7) trying to figure out what the hell I was and why I wasn't responding like either a straight person or a queer person to the conversational gambits he'd toss out, obviously he didn't know to do. (And just as obviously my experience was totally outside his context, which makes total sense, and just--augh.)
I'm more open about it right now, but it's been gone on six and a half years, and I'm still trying to work out how to talk about my own experiences both to other folks in my field--will they criticize me for openly holding an identity that is so often ridiculed?--and within my department. It's easier with folks about my age, but it's not like older people are all in total agreement with exclusionists, either. And it's hard unlearning the signifiers I initially learned on the internet.
I hate how the context of exclusionists drives certain community experiences to hide and fear connection to other groups, while at the same time being totally unseen by wide swathes of the groups exclusionists are ostensibly protecting. I hate that my fear drove me to hide because I had associated the presence of "real" LGBTQ+ people with potential judgement and threat, especially when I think at the time I was probably the only other openly queer person in our department. (I think I may be that now--we had another cis male gay grad student who had been in the same undergraduate lab as I was join, but he has since left to pursue a career in data science. And I don't think either of us know anyone else.)
Anyway. That little story was such a perfect encapsulation of two people whose queer contexts and communities are different meeting with a little bit of a bump, and such a perfect "yeah, no: suck it" story for those exclusionists trying to insist that "butch" and "femme" are terms only for cis lesbians.
Yes! I agree.
Date: 2019-01-22 03:47 am (UTC)So it's a real disconnect for me between tumblr and doing city or regional LGBTQ+ work, where you'll run into all sorts of LGBTQ+ people who flunk tumblr purity tests.
Re: Yes! I agree.
Date: 2019-01-22 09:17 pm (UTC)The exclusionist gatekeeping just... it doesn't square with the lived realities of any of the people I've sat down and gotten to know, and it always speaks to a really incredibly narrow idea of what this broader community is and has been and will be again. It's so weird. Especially in the incredibly narrow sense it has of what people are like! People are so messy and complicated and unsure!
I tell you what, I think the earliest sense I had of that kind of "people are more complicated than this" was watching folks on the old AVEN forums handle people who are questioning, and seeing the kinds of questions people came in with. And watching how more experienced people handled those questions, but also just... being so amazed by what you can find out about people if they trust you enough to tell you.
Re: Yes! I agree.
Date: 2019-01-23 12:43 am (UTC)(Also while I'm ranting, "allies" means allies and yes the center I volunteer for cultivates those relationships.)
Re: Yes! I agree.
Date: 2019-01-24 11:32 pm (UTC)