#u cannot get better than diametrically opposed siblings | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

laundryandtaxes · 7 years

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hey, i hope this isnt too invasive but im struggling w my identity and id like ur persepctive. how did you know u were a butch lesbian and not a transman? im attached to my lesbian identity and my relationship to womanhood but i also often feel dysphoric and want top surgery. how do i reconcile these things that i feel are diametrically opposed? how do i know i am a butch lesbian vs a transmasc nb lesbian person?

Thank you for sending this message and reaching out- I know it can be hard to talk about, I’ve been there myself as someone who disidentified for several years, and I’m glad you reached out to talk about it rather than hold it in. Just to get this out of the way, I don’t think these things are diametrically opposed at all.

The first thing I think you should consider is whether you really consider womanhood an option. I know that sounds a bit silly but so many of us absolutely did not realize it was actually, really, physically possible to grow old as women, to have sex as women, to have friends as women, because so many of us either had no friends like us or, in many cases, had friends like us only to see absolutely all of them stop identifying as women. I think there are a number of forces pushing in the direction of disidentification- it is hard to be a gnc girl and this leads to many of us not having solid senses of self as adults, it is hard to not see anyone who looks like you want to claim community with you specifically as women and this can make you feel like you literally are not real, it is just materially more appealing to be perceived as a non gnc man than a gnc woman and if you can pass 100% of the time it’s an appealing option because it means a better paycheck and safety when you walk down the street and so on, it hurts when your friends literally don’t treat you like they treat other women, and in many queer circles right now it is popular for people to straight up either ask when you’re transitioning or tell you that being a boring cis woman is regressive and not even possible if you see yourself as masculine, and the proper thing to do is to at least change your pronouns and pick up a gender identity that’s not regressive. This is a really confusing mixture of social impulses and material impulses, but I don’t think that we should always see the drive to disidentify as an individual decision with no social input having happened- there are lots of forces that make a lot of us, butch women especially, give up on a womanhood which people keep telling us we are doing wrong. So I would ask yourself what you think there is about women that means you can’t be one- there’s nothing wrong with being a woman who isn’t feminine, or even a woman like myself who primarily sees herself as a masculine person, and I think perhaps more now than ever we all need to at least be told that this in an option.

The second thing I think you should consider is what those terms mean to you and I think you should understand that none of them have one agreed upon definition. The way that I see myself is absolutely the same as how some people who identify as transmasc see themselves, down to my experiences with dysphoria, and honestly I have had conversations with more than one trans man who’ve told me our experiences and senses of self are more similar than different . I think the idea that you’re obligated to pick a term and then, if you should happen to pick the wrong one, you’re suddenly cut off from any community with women and lesbians is stupid and cruel. I think it is cruel to call straight trans men lesbians en masse but it is undeniable that there have always been and will always be trans men who still see themselves as very connected to women, who see themselves as living a certain kind of lesbian experience, etc- and the drive among those people to retain communities that have brought them up is not nasty male predatory behavior, it’s a desire to keep community with people they see as similar and important to them, and that’s fine. So this whole issue of picking the wrong term and then being shunned by lesbian communities of course has some basis- if you plan to date other lesbians then transition will shorten your options because there will likely be physical changes and social changes that most lesbians are just not going to be comfortable with, whether that is calling you her boyfriend or you growing facial hair, whether you see yourself as living a kind of lesbian experience or not- but when it comes to just retaining friendships and friend circles and not pretending you don’t relate to butch writing anymore, I don’t think that is a predicament you should be facing at all. Culturally, you probably will right now and that’s sad and unfortunate and I think encourages people to draw lines along identity politics rather than who you feel to be your people. But as far as I’m concerned, if lesbians are your people then we’re just you’re people and that’s that, and that space is generally there in some capacity if you want to claim it. But really the primary differences between myself and a “transmasc nb lesbian person” are literally just the terms we pick to describe ourselves (which is minimally important to me personally) and, in some cases, transition itself. To be perfectly clear though, I don’t believe there are hard lines between terms that refer to gender identity anyway- they’re terms that make us comfortable or uncomfortable, but one experience can go by a million names and you never know except by talking to individual people. If you want to call yourself an nb lesbian that’s totally fine, just know that your experiences are shared by lots of women who just call themseves butches and that you can have community there if you want it.

And then, lastly, I don’t think transition (social or physical) is a worst case scenario at all, or something you should see as a last ditch effort. It will come with its own set of challenges but honestly you’ve already faced many of those challenges as a gnc woman, and the others you should hopefully find communities of other people to help you out. In some communities, you will certainly be pushed away if you start seeing yourself as trans in some way due to concerns about you suddenly becoming a totally different person who wants to infiltrate women’s spaces. I think that’s stupid and, ironically, transphobic in its implication than transition will somehow make you a worse person than before. But in many communities, you will absolutely not be pushed away and I don’t think you should be. This is a matter of your comfort and your health, and I hope the women around you respect that.

This got long, sorry, but I wanted to give you a full answer because I’ve been there myself and didn’t call myself a woman for several years (I know almost no butches who didn’t disidentify at some point, including some who either transitioned and then stopped or are just living stealth as men still while reidentifying because that’s the cleanest option for them) and I think this sentiment is really common among us for right now, but really all I needed to read and respond to is “im attached to my lesbian identity and my relationship to womanhood” because that’s it, then! No matter what you call yourself I’ll consider you a sister or sibling of mine in some capacity, but I want to stress that there is nothing about you that is not true or cannot be true of at least some women, and if you want space here, which you just told me, it is here for you whether you’re dysphoric or end up choosing top surgery or whatever. If you know that your people are here then I’m quite happy to have you as one of us, whatever that means to you and whatever makes that easier for you. I honestly get the feeling that, like many of us, you are asking for permission to hold space with other women and other lesbians, and you absolutely have it. Much love your way, and keep in touch somehow!

#Anonymous

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