Gender Troubles: The Butches

As encapsulated so perfectly in Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home’:

As a butch woman who was once a wee butch girl, I can attest to the sheer power of this.

So after running this tumblr and the Lesbrary for a couple years, I’ve gathered together a couple lists of specific lesbian (etc) books about specific topics, and I’ve stumbled on some similar lists other people have made. In order to keep them a little more…

i hung onto my attraction to men with a white knuckled grip bc i was terrified of the word lesbian and what it would mean for my life and my relationships, and honestly i am so full of regret for how much time i wasted trying to split my feelings into categories like “aesthetic” or “romantic” or “sexual” attraction so that, even though i did not ever want to be in a relationship with a man or spend my life with a man, i could still avoid the dreaded term lesbian bc sometimes i found celebrities hot….. i’m so relieved and happy that i have reached a point where i can confidently say that i am a lesbian, because i love women and put my relationships with women first and i don’t feel like i owe it to men to feel the same way about them 

im so so so sick of people acting like theres no possible way to detect same-gender attraction based on superficial values. some people call this a gaydar, im not as corny. but for real im sick of people acting like im stereotyping myself, my very own sexuality, when its blatantly clear that theres a specific set of cultural values and positive visible connotations ascribed to certain forms of dress, certain ways of talking, certain mannerisms, etc. like, short hair isnt inherently a lesbian look, but goddamn if i cant put a certain short hairstyle and a hot-ass suit and sneering at boys together to get that shes a fucking lesbian! these things are internalized as positive, covert ways of expressing sexuality and identity without it being what people consider an essential part of the identity, and these coded expressions play a role in detecting people of shared experience or identity. a gaydar isnt a fun game or a harmful stereotype, its finding people that you share a deep experience with and finding safety in that familiarity.

Lmao thank you!! I love when straight people are like “you can’t tell if someone is gay just by looking at them (:” like sis..you were able to tell which of us to call dykes and faggots in high school just fine, but ok..

“I’m tired of fat hairy butch women being the image of lesbianism!” “I want this gay character to be asexual because I’m tired of seeing sex everywhere!” “Don’t hint to your sex life at Pride, think of the children!” “Ugh why are there only GAY CLUBS I don’t want to go somewhere where there’s people ALL OVER EACH OTHER Less bars more cafes!” Do you know what you sound like. Like do you know what you sound like. Take a moment to think about what you sound like

holy shit you guys, i didn’t know about this but there’s an entire lgbt zine archive where you can read a fuck ton of lgbt zines and i’m currently in heaven reading the lesbian avengers manifesto. here’s the link. enjoy and reblog so others can too. 

pride month is over but i forgot to post that i found a pdf of transgender warriors by leslie feinberg! i highly recommend it if you want to learn more about lgbt history!

i love talking about women and loving women and being a lesbian, but this existence is lonely and isolating and this “community” doesn’t even feel like a community anymore to me, that’s how far you’ve pushed the L out of the acronym. at the end of the day, when y’all talk about stuff like:

it’s absolute and utter radio silence to this so-called “community” of “accepting” people. and no i’m not providing sources because you can easily search this stuff. it’s there. you outright refuse to recognize that we actually are still out here being kicked out of our homes, abused, fetishized, raped, assaulted, and murdered for being who we are. you’ll reblog funny memes about us being “Useless Lesbians” or you’ll reblog cutesy (read: infantilizing) posts about us being “Uwu Soft Lesbiabs” who “jus kiss/lov gorls” etc. but when a lesbian is like “hey uh this thing is lesbophobic” this fucking community is the first to be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Your daily reminder you can download a FREE copy of Stone Butch Blues off of Leslie Feinberg’s website

You can also read a FREE copy of Transgender Liberation: a Movement Whose Time Has Come here

You can also get a FREE copy of Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman here

And here’s a bunch of hir articles for FREE about any number of things really

And you can get a FREE copy of Drag King Dreams here <3

for people who aren’t femme it can be hard to understand the difference between presenting femininely and being femme. i know i didn’t get it, for a long time. i didn’t get it until i really started looking into it, until i started learning about butch/femme culture, until i realized how right it felt for me to be a part of that.

being femme is so much more than the way i keep my hair or the clothes i wear. it doesn’t matter that i love dresses or that i have long hair or that i spend an hour on makeup every day. those things don’t make me femme, and you don’t have to do any of them to be femme. it’s the way that i do those things – explicitly for women. it’s taking all the things i’ve been told my whole life that i’m doing for men and saying “no, fuck you.” it’s yelling, even with my lipstick on and my heels pinching my toes, that none of this is for them, that it never has been, that it never will be.

it’s giving myself the space to be exactly who i feel comfortable being – it’s taking care of other women, other lesbians, it’s keeping my hands soft and my heart softer so i can hold them better. the way i perform my gender is writing a love letter every day to butch/femme culture and knowing that it’s writing back. that it’s keeping a place for all of us to come home to, if that’s where we decide we want to be. 

it’s finding the place where i belong. butch/femme culture is so beautiful and i’m so blessed to have found a home in it, and through it to have found a home in myself.

two things 

if youre wondering the solution to this it is:

Yuri manga by women about women (who aren't in high school)

Sadly a lot of them are one shots, but there’s a few longer ones. A lot of yuri manga is tragically too short and I’m always left wanting more. D: 

After some struggles with myself, I ended up putting stories about college aged women so long as it’s not “innocent school life” heavy. 

Yamaji Ebine

Morishima Akiko

Other Artists: 

Two that I recommend but are set apart from the others because one is written by a man and one is written with the male audience in mind respectively

This is by no means an exhaustive list and I know there’s more (one particularly that I wanted to put on here but couldn’t remember the title of) so feel free to add on your favorite adult queer lady manga to the list!

Rica Takashima - Rica ‘tte Kanji?! is a short graphic novel about Takashima’s university years in Tokyo in the local LGBTQ scene and dating her girlfriend.

Takeuchi Sachiko - Honey & Honey is a cute slice of life autobiographical novel about the author’s relationship with her girlfriend.  She throws in explanations of Japan’s LGBTQ culture as well.

unpopular opinion

lesbians who refer to fictional characters or even celebrities as their husband/loves/boyfriend/babe etc, whether joking or in seriousness, or have male idols, are still lesbians and are 100% valid and real and are never doing it for attention stop gatekeeping lesbians let us have fun

for my fellow lesbians with OCD/intrusive thoughts:

You don’t have to be 100% sure that you don’t like men in order to identify as a lesbian! Compulsory heterosexuality is so tricky and it’s okay to not know exactly where your attraction(s) lie right off the bat! You aren’t hurting other lesbians by questioning and exploring the fact that you might be a lesbian even if you still think your attraction to men is “real” in some way. It takes most lesbians a really long time to recognize their attraction to men as forced, and that often only even happens after we start identifying as a lesbian. It’s okay to be questioning! And if you realize that you actually aren’t a lesbian and are actually bi or pan or anything else instead, that’s okay too!

Lesbians have been disrupting gender norms, acting outside the gender binary, and identifying as gender non-conforming throughout history. If u have a problem with nonbinary lesbians or lesbians who use they/them pronouns u clearly have no concept of lesbian identity or history.

hey lesbians you’re not a fake lesbian if you find some men to be conventionally attractive. you were most likely raised to know what an ‘attractive’ man looks like, and you probably still recognize it. seeing a man as attractive under societies rules of ‘attractive-ness’ doesn’t make you a fake lesbian.

like seriously i’d appreciate it if people reblogged this more because a lot of young lesbians (including me) struggle with compulsive heterosexuality and being told they’re not real lesbians because “they’re attracted to a man!!!!”

you can find someone aesthetically pleasing without being sexually or romantically attracted to them

and also this applies to trans lesbians so terfs don’t reblog this ever

Admitting to yourself that you aren’t attracted to men is scary, it can be easy to feel like you’re wrong, that if you met the Right Man you could be with him and do what you know everyone expects you to be. Learning you’re a lesbian is hard, but lesbians are so brave and strong and pure and good. If you’re realizing you might be a lesbian I am so proud of you.

also the best advice i can give u is stop thinking about comp het too much. finding men hot is like… happens, we’re conditioned to find them hot it’s not like you’re breaking any rules! 

look really just… u love women & u wanna be with women? who cares about the rest. u can be a lesbian and u dont owe anyone any explanations about it

me before realising i was a lesbian: well! there is a very inoffensive and non threatening man. i must be in love with him.