lovingbeingbutch

[lovingbeingbutch]

diesel dyke i doodled to cheer myself up

#art

[lovingbeingbutch]

sometimes instead of a horrid little monk, divine visions of lesbians dance in my head dispensing wisdom

#you are butch enough #art

[lovingbeingbutch]

i know butch lesbians get compared to twinks all the time but shoutout to butches who don’t look like twinks. shoutout to butches more on the bear end of the spectrum. shoutout to transmasc butches who go on testosterone and get top surgery. shoutout to transfem butches who keep their hair short and don’t shave and don’t go on estrogen. shoutout to butches who are fat. shoutout to butches who are disabled. shoutout to butches that aren’t white. shoutout to butches that look indistinguishable from cisgender men and wouldn’t want it any other way. shoutout to butches that are nonbinary and shoutout to butches that use neopronouns and have xenogenders. shoutout to butches that want to transition but can’t at the moment. shoutout to butches that dress and look however they want and don’t conform to the expectations of what butches “should” look like. y’all are cool as fuck

#butch positivity #you are butch enough

[lovingbeingbutch]

the butch agenda is threatening a guys masculinity so he goes out to help how wife in the pouring rain

#butch positivity

[lovingbeingbutch]

a t-shirt that says “I ❤️ MY LESBIAN GENDER”

#butch positivity #lesbian positivity

[lovingbeingbutch]

wow babe your posts are so butch today

#butch positivity #silly posts

[lovingbeingbutch]

just butches

#art #butch positivity

[lovingbeingbutch]

“If the word for you is butch, remember, your history is one of strength and survival, and it is largely silent. Do not hide this word under your tongue. Do not whisper it or sweep it under the basement stairs. Let it fill up your chest and widen your shoulders. Wear it like a sleeve tattoo, like a medal of valour.

Learn to recognize other butches for what they really are: your people. Your brothers or your sisters. Both are just words that mean family. Other butches are not your competition, they are your comrades. Be there when they need you. Go fishing together. Help each other move. Polish your rims or your chrome or your boots together. See these acts for what they really are: solidarity.”

-Ivan Coyote, A Butch Roadmap

#butch positivity #lesbian history & culture

[lovingbeingbutch]

fun discovery from today's internet rabbit hole:

the first lesbian magazine published in the US, Vice Versa (1947-48), was entirely hand-typed by one Edythe Eyde (better known by her pen name Lisa Ben - yes, that IS an anagram for lesbian). she worked as a secretary with a ton of spare time on her hands, and her boss would tell her he didn't care what she was doing so long as she "looked busy"... so she decided to use her free time to type out copies of a home-made periodical for lesbians, writing most of the content - editorials, book/film reviews, poetry, short stories, and more - herself!

overall, the magazine ran for 9 issues, 16 hand-typed copies of which lisa would mail to friends (well, until one of them advised her she could be arrested for sending "obscene" materials) and distribute at lesbian bars :)

#lesbian history & culture

[lovingbeingbutch]

#butch4butch

[lovingbeingbutch]

Tranny. Many people don’t know the history of the word, they assume it was an assigned hate term or slur along the lines of the “n” word. That’s not how it happened. Tranny was invented by us in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s where drag was a big deal, and still the best drag shows ever are in Sydney, Australia – they’re amazing. So a lot of trans-identified women who were assigned male at birth did drag, that’s how you made your living. And so they were transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, and they were all doing drag to make money. They all bickered amongst each other who is better than who, “Well the drag queens are better,” “No, the transsexuals are better.” “You are all freaks, we’re better.” And on and on and on. But they worked together and they were family together, so they came up with a word that would say family and that was tranny. In Australia they do the diminutive, that’s how they come up with words. So tranny. I learned the word in the mid-1980s, late 1980s from my drag mom in San Francisco, Doris Fish, who was the city’s preeminent drag queen and she’d come from Sydney. And she schooled me in this word tranny, she said, “This way it means we’re family, darling.” “Thank you mama.” [...] So we used it and we were trannies together. And F to M was just beginning to start, the trans men were just beginning to become visible, Lou Sullivan was a neighbor of mine around the corner, and he was the first big out trans man, wrote his book. So trans men and cross dressers . . . cross dressers were also family. Transsexuals, we were all trannies and that felt good. That got into the sex industry and became a genre – there was tranny porn, there were tranny sex workers – chicks with dicks, she-males. [...] And, my only guess is that people who . . . because the only way they would have found out about the word is if they were watching tranny porn or having been with a tranny sex worker and then hated themselves so much that they turned it into a curse word. So it’s not really technically correct to say we’re reclaiming a word – it was always ours. So, many people mistake the word for the hatred behind the word and, in my generation, and I’m sure in future generations of trans people, tranny is going to be a radicalized, sexualized identity of trans in the same way that faggot is a prideful identity in the gay male community – not all gay men are faggots, but those who are are proudly fags and those who are dykes are proudly dykes within the lesbian community, trannies are proudly tranny within the transgender community. Does that mean we can’t call ourselves that because some trans woman does not want to be called a tranny? No. I’m going to keep calling myself a tranny. To the trans woman who gets called tranny, I’m sorry – as soon as . . . you’ve got to look at why you’re getting called tranny and if you don’t pass, you’re going to be read as a transgender person and then you fall back on the cultural view of trans folk which is freak, disgusting, not worth living, we can hurt you. It has nothing to do with the word, it has everything to do with the cultural attitude. So the word has stirred up a shit storm, but it’s not the word.

— Kate Bornstein on the word "tranny" in this oral history from the Digital Transgender Archive

#queer history

[lovingbeingbutch]

a collection of self portraits done by the revolutionary leslie feinberg. via flickr

#leslie feinberg #butches irl #lesbian history & culture

[lovingbeingbutch]

Sapphic Sphinxes for PRIDE month 🦁

#art

[lovingbeingbutch]

In before I start seeing people bitching about rainbow capitalism MY favorite rainbow capitalism story is about Subaru. Yes the Japanese car company.

In the nineties, they were struggling. They were competing with a dozen other companies targeting the main demographic at the time: white men ages 18-35, especially after a failed luxury car launch with a new ad agency. “What we need is to focus on niche demographics,” they decided, and then focused on people who enjoyed the outdoors. The Subaru was excellent at driving on dirt roads that many other vehicles couldn’t at the time, so it was perfect for all those off-road campers; they started making all-wheel drive standard in all their cars to help with that. And the people who wanted cars to go do outdoor stuff? Lesbians.

Okay. Of course it wasn’t only lesbians buying Subarus. They’re on the list with educators, health-care professionals, and IT people. But the point is, this Japanese car company interviewed this strange demographic (single, female head of household) and realized one important factor: They were lesbians. They liked to be able to use the cars to go do outdoorsy stuff, and they liked that they could use the cars to haul stuff rather than a big truck or van. Subaru had a choice to make then. They had four other demographics they could market to, after all–the educators, the health-care professionals, IT professionals, and straight outdoorsy couples. Their company didn’t hinge on this one “problematic” demographic.

And they decided “fuck it,” and marketed to lesbians anyway. This included offering benefits to American gay and lesbian employees for their domestic partners, so it didn’t look like a cash grab. (This was not a problem. They already offered those in Canada.)

Yes, there was some backlash. They got letters from a grassroots group accusing them of promoting homosexuality, and every letter said they’d no longer be buying from Subaru. “You didn’t buy from us before, either,” Subaru realized, and ignored them. It helped that the team really cared about the plan, and that they had many straight allies to back them up. There was also some initial backlash when Subaru hired women to play a lesbian couple in the commercial, but they quickly found that lesbians preferred more subtlety; “XENA LVR” on a license plate, or bumper stickers with the names of popular LGBTQ+ destinations, or taglines of “Get out. Stay out.” that could be used for the outdoors–or the closet.

Subaru said “We see you. We support you.” They sponsored Pride parades and partnered with Rainbow Card and hired Martina Navratilova as spokeswoman. They put their money where their mouth is and went into it whole hog. In a time where companies did not want to take our money, Subaru said, “Why not? They’re people who drive.” And that was groundbreaking.

#lesbian history & culture

[lovingbeingbutch]

butch lesbians. you agree. reblog.

#butch positivity

[lovingbeingbutch]

only smth small cause college work is killing me but! happy lesbian week!

#lesbian positivity #art

[lovingbeingbutch]

#butch4butch