I'd like to write someday

[grayestofghosts]

I feel like at some point I am going to need to write about a particular transmasculine identity, which isn't quite "man" but is definitely masc-attracted, that is a stable identity but it coalesces on a sort of polarity that is not allowed to exist in reality because it is politically inconvenient. These people often seem maligned in the queer community much in the same way as bisexual women, being accused of "just being straight women who want to feel special". This accusation becomes increasingly bizarre as this group comes out and gain confidence in themselves, not only physically transition but also tend to date each other or trans men. Around this group, The gender/sexuality matrix breaks down here in peculiar ways, especially given the traditional taboo of butch/butch relationships. It looks like fluidity from the outside of gender and sexuality because there's a conscious avoidance of being able to name it, but it's really stable. "If anything that's not a man is a spicy woman, why are these spicy women dating other spicy women when they like men?" the gender and sexuality zeitgeist around us ties itself into knots to understand. This group is forced to twist into concepts it doesn't fit into because that is the "way it actually is" according to the ones who built the fences.

It's such a weird space, and the seemingly rigid, artificial boundary at the outer edge of "lesbianism" is part of why it's seen this way, I think. I'm not sure if I can blame it all on political lesbianism either, people have always been uncomfortable with butch/butch relationships, like this weird microcosm of homophobia that gays themselves can indulge in.

I don't know, this isn't really a complete thought. But it seems important.

Comments

[zavodilaterrarium]

The way that gender and sexuality are treated is oh so exhausting. Apparently butch women aren't allowed to like each other because they're not as real of women and that defeats the point of lesbianism, but the womanhood of fems is never put into question so they're kinda allowed to like each other but not always. So on and so forth. From non-genderqueer folk, one of the least terrible reactions I've gotten to my identity as a "non-binary person (whose relation to labels is essentially a ballroom dance with ever-changing partners)" was to conflate gender non-conformity with all-encompassing androgyny, essentially saying that it "makes sense" that my interests and capabilities are varied precisely because of my gender, rather than me existing as a complex human being who was not forced into aggressively gendered boxes as a child.

Even with how I am, it actually took an embarrassing number of tries for me to understand the identity you refer to because the labels did indeed tie me in knots, crazy how I don't even understand my initial confusion now XD