Butch girls

"I love butch girls. Girls with slick, shiny, barbershop haircuts, trimmed so short your fingertips can barely grip it. Girls with shirts that button the other way. Girls that swagger... Girls who get stared at in the ladies' room, girls who shop in the boys department, girls who live every moment looking like they weren't supposed to. Girls with hands that touch me like they have been exploring my body their entire lives... It is the girls that get called sir every day who make me catch my breath, the girls with strong jaws who buckle my knees, the girls who are a different gender who make me want to lay down for them." - Tristan Taormino -

Why I Don't Like Going to Parties

Do heterosexual women care about discussing sexual inequality between men and women? Do they care about analyzing the oppression that one woman in their midst undergoes and sees well? Why must I go with men-identified women when I can have better company. By all means I prefer going and partying with women-only groups. That includes lesbians and trans, no bisexuals. Why?

Because in this company the conditions that ruin me and the party are not there. The things that I have to put up with when with heterosexuals do not exist! I know it's crazy, but you see, without guys around I don't have to be constantly on my guard, twist this way and that and betray myself just to keep away from trouble.

In heterosexual settings there will always be a guy who will speak to me as though to a giant mold, like I'm not a human being but a cat on its paw. There will always be a guy who will insult me directly or indirectly, even when I mean to be pleasant to him and speak to him but not in sexual terms. To refuse to flirt with a man doesn't mean I am being unpleasant or overbearing. For me it's just the better way to make a better time of it.

In heterosexual parties, there will always be guys who devour our space that we can't even talk among ourselves. Of course we can speak up to them and ask them not to interrupt us, and sure they will shut up, then we can go on talking. And then this man arrives, and he is cool. He doesn't address us, he just sits right next to us and starts to sing or drum his fingers on the table or drag the chair against the floor, and moves up and down the aisle and yells or stretches himself up or calls a girlfriend or gets himself called by a girlfriend and so on. In other words, there will always be this guy who cannot take it if we do not pay any attention to him.

In these weird heterosexual settings, there will always be people who would look at me like I am some animal from the zoo; who will stare at me as I kiss another woman, to see how I do it, or how I eye the woman, as though I would salivate, like I were some porn spectacle. Worse, there will be guys who would want to participate, guys who would carry on like they could brush bodies with me and be thanked for it!

In these mixed parties, being as I am, lesbian and feminist, there will always be men, and women too, who would go to me and tell me kindly to watch my manners; that as a lesbian I take myself too seriously or make myself too visible, too masculine, too offensively stereotypical; or that for a lesbian I look or act too feminine, or show too much skin, and that I make the heterosexuals uncomfortable.

There will always be people who would tell me that for a feminist I am too aggressive, that I am so quiet, so without humor, too rude, too victimhood, too violent, all the stupid accusations. In short, in these mixed groups, there will always be people “in the norm” who say to me very nicely and very sincerely how necessary it is for lesbian not-in-the-norm Me to always include them in my universe: to always think of them in my words and actions that they may not feel offended, harassed, excluded, alienated, and threatened; that they will be pleased, too!

These “normal” good heterosexual people will always tell me to please hush up hold my tongue; that it is better to leave what I want said unsaid, to leave my questions and demands unasked, because they already know them, and understand them, understand them better than I do, because they know me and understand me. In other words, because I'm a lesbian I'm supposed to have a limited understanding of the universe, even of the lesbian universe that I know, that I live, which they did not live! They know better and they understand better even if they have only reflected about my questions and complaints since two hours ago, because being myself, I do not really go to every party and gathering asking questions and making demands, knowing that I have been invited to their parties and gatherings to be entertained, not to be offended or displeased and have reasons to complain!

But how can I. In these mixed-group parties, there will always be a stuffed guy who will not leave me alone, some rotten brat that I too will have to look after, the poor dear, or I will be in trouble. Some guy who will threaten and harass me if I take no notice of him.

And in these same mixed parties, there will be nice guys, too. Cool guys who do not yell and maybe do not drink, but who will be the ones to reprimand me ever so kindly. Nice guys who do not turn violent but who will violate my being me just the same, with their gentlest words and priestly demeanor. Under these conditions even my close pals do not come to my side to defend me but withdraw because they themselves are not far from thinking that I really am impossible: I belong to another planet, another race, because, for God's sake, when am I ever going to start thinking about other people's rights to exist, too? When am I ever to start thinking that they have feelings, too, that they are legitimate, too???

And in these mixed parties there would be friends who are themselves not just lesbophobes but also sexists and racists and bigots who froth in the mouth and that ruins my day just by arriving and seeing them, more so when they come near me and start broadcasting. Braggarts and bigots who just at the sight of me with my women or lesbian friends will turn in the head and provoke me with their jokes and their sniggers, that i may turn on them so that they may have reason to insult me and drag me out of the territory. Guys who will go mad if I don't reply to them or if I reply to them unkindly if they talk to me as though to a hole. Guys who will freak out if I ignore them or if I don't look at them when I am having an interesting discussion with my friends. Guys who can't stand the look of lesbian Me, guys who can't tolerate it if I don't lower my eyes, or if I don't smile, when I speak to them; guys who can't abide it if I don't leave the party at the moment they want me to leave.

So I can only go to non-hetero parties, where I can quietly entertain myself, and lower my guard, knowing that with women and lesbians and trans like me, I don't have to worry about how I will survive the night with my spirit in tact, just be myself and enjoy myself, because I know that those around me will not speak to me as "to a woman" or "to a homo" or "to a lesbo". In this company, no one will speak to me so as to put me in "my proper place" because I am not behaving myself. I can dance for as long as I like without a guy saying I jumped at him, and I can dress myself up anyway I like, or disappear behind a door.

Then I can be as I am and be touched by those I allow to touch me, or touch someone I like, or kiss and be kissed or go to bed with anyone I like or who likes me.

(lifted and translated from a french text, with thanks to aude of gendertrouble.com)

Does She Like You?

I had been decorating her clotheslines with my briefs and Good Morning towels and she always took them off for folding and ironing, but you can’t just assume that one aunt understood that as a sex change.

My Aunt Lydia suddenly got into dolling me up. I don’t know why. Maybe she just wanted to clear her lockers of unworn clothes hanging like unsold brides or she just found me a little too poorly dressed that she kept on handing me things to fit into. Yesterday morning she took a red sequined blouse shining like a street car which I promptly waved away saying, “Not that, that’s for a girl,” and she yelped and stared down at me her eyes big as her gaped mouth, “And why, what are you a boy?!?” I scratched my head and went back to my book mumbling something about crossing universes a long time ago and where are you which I hoped she didn’t hear and she didn’t and she turned her head around to whoever was there and broke into a loud laugh that called everyone within earshot to her side. “Listen! Listen to this fool! She thinks herself a boy!!!” She kept on repeating the tale to every neighbor and member of the family that came to the house later that day that My Goddess, at 45 I felt like a tyke running fussed over by adoring adults.

My Aunt Lydia is sixty-seven and very provincial. In another time you would not find her making a big laugh about a thing like who you like to sleep with, which is, as I explained to her long ago, what being a lesbian is all about. But we aren’t that theoretical, Aunt Lydia and I. You can’t get around long with old folks explaining your sexual preferences elaborately. You just tell them Oh I don’t like the smell of them sticking in my bed sheets, the smell of their urine in my latrine, like it’s all about hygiene and you have them agreeing and imagining that lesbian sex is indeed far cleaner than heterosexual sex. From there, if you like, you may proceed to talking about limp dicks and big egos beside the many ways that two women can understand the world they both live in on top of sexually pleasing each other, and I promise you, the worst you could get is some cussing and swearing, the best hugs and wild sniggers.

It’s not that my cross-dressing never registered. But if you are the family’s most trusted laundry machine, after some time nothing surprises you anymore, be it a nose ring, a dollar bill, a packet of female condoms in one of the pockets turned inside out, or strings and funny strings with tiny flaps of wings. Reality often doesn’t flop down your lap that way, no. Like I had been decorating her clotheslines with my briefs and Good Morning towels and she always took them off for folding and ironing, but you can’t just assume that one aunt understood that as a sex change.

But really, I have had no trouble with telling as far as my old provincials are concerned. And sometimes I get carried away with the telling that I make up more than what is actually there to tell. Like today my Aunt Lydia had me telling her about girlfriends that I skidded away improvising along the way about why two women who perfectly understand each other often do break up.

“Oh Auntie, I don’t really like girls, they’re all traitors, double-crossers.”

“What?!?”

“You should see them. How they think of themselves priceless gifts to lesbians.”

“What you talking about you nut?”

“It’s true! They’re rotten at the core! They’d trade you for some idiot of a guy with a car and come back crying like you’re some ortho clinic for the convalescent. Oh Auntie, most days I just want to break their teeth and knee their pits. A thankless sorry world if you get so unlucky as to get stuck with one…”

                                  

I was growing uncomfortable, also sad, because it looked like I disappointed her about a truth neither of us could help. One arm akimbo, she put her weight on one side and looked me in the eye.

“Now what are you talking about, you, rascal!?!” her voice was so low, so soft, it broke my heart.

I turned away, lifted a comb from on top of the refrigerator and pretended to be brushing my hair.

“I don’t really take to girls, Auntie.” I put it back and turned around to face her. She really looked so distressed that I could not stop myself from smiling.

“I swear! They’re a lot of baggage!”

“So you take to boys???” She was picking up and was beginning to smile herself.

“Why, sure, Auntie. I’m a homo, didn’t I tell you? So I take to boys. And I go boy-to-boy only. And you know, Auntie, this girlfriend I have? Geeh! She’s the real one! You could spot her without your glasses on. She looks a mighty testicle crusher from five miles up.”

Guffaws. “You crazy fool!”

“Yes, Auntie. And she’s a bit like you, too. A little jagged and a little aged.”

Silence. Long silence.

And then, “That’s nice, dear.  And does she like you?”