For those who know me, they are aware of the personal challenges I have had with feminism. As a female, and I believe to some degree someone who is politically aware, I am very mindful of injustices and inequities that have resulted for those who carry XX chromosomes. I’m also of the mind that these injustices have been allowed to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the male sex. These injustices cover all facets of living including education, work value, resource allocation, healthcare, freedoms, power, and influence, and personal autonomy. And I believe that change is a must, it is to be fought for on all fronts. So, with such beliefs perhaps I need to make clear where my disconnect with some feminist ideology comes from.
The source of the disagreement for me comes with the politic around the use and interpretation that is given to the word “gender”. Sex is our biology, whereas gender is used to describe characteristics of behavior and self-identity. The disagreement for me comes when a gender expression of masculinity is assigned by society, and in this context, feminists, to the male sex. As a Butch, this creates some extremely difficult and uncomfortable issues, particularly when this extension of a male masculinity is ascribed with misogynistic traits. This also implies some sort of betrayal of the cause by the femmes who participate in the butch-femme dynamic. A dominant feminist perspective finds any alignment to gender to be a participation in patriarchal stereotyping, and so celebrates the androgynous woman.
Many feminists have been vocal about the use of the term queer, arguing that its use subjugates the term lesbian, burying women inside a category that is owned by a male voice. This all goes towards a position that dismisses the possibility that the ‘other’ exists, that unless I use female pronouns, wear a lesbian or heterosexual badge, and present in a non-masculine manner, I am a man, if not biologically then at the very least by desire. I had fought against the societal pressures that required I conform to a defined set of feminine behaviors, a fight which brought with it a sleuth of pain involving abuse, isolation, and ostracization; and so when in my early twenties I was again targeted, but this time by radical feminist activists, with accusations of misogyny because of how I presented, and the types of relationships I had (even down to what happened in the bedroom), my romance with feminism ended.
Puberty for tomboys means the loss of freedoms, it’s the time when the body has to become restrained, restrained with skirts that keep them from climbing trees, restrained by a body language that stops large gesturing and big strides, it becomes a time when the space that the girl is allowed to occupy becomes smaller so that the boy can take ownership of the larger share. But what of the girl who refuses to move over, what of the girl who stands their ground and as they grow they create their own forms of masculinity, a masculinity not borrowed, but one that affords them the right to be who they wish, independent from any modeling that society had designed for them, shouldn’t this girl who refused to become smaller so that the boy might have more, be given a voice in the feminist fight? With age I have come to ask the question, is there room for the Butch feminist?
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