critique on passing -- what's yr opinion?

[furtherisnow]

I am submitting a piece of writing on "rejecting the need to pass" for Mattilda a.k.a Matt Bernstein Sycamore for her new book which she asks

Comments

[themoonmadness]

hmm tricky...very interesting though. i'll attempt to organize some reactions to this

[queer_as_tre]

fran, i think that the word "butch" as it has been known to signify a masculine lesbian, has mostly become obsolete with our generation and the following generations. it's been replaced with the more recently popular term "boi" which, if you recall from our riot grrrl days of yore, used to mean a yucky sexist punkrock young male. but now it's been "reclaimed" if you will (i won't) by an uninformed generation of masculine female-born people who are confronted with political pressure to conform to standards of male masculinity. and since it's p.c. to be accepting of anyone who chooses this identity, i think it's more likely that you'd pass as a "boi" than you would as passing for "butch." cuz to me, the word "butch" seems to be associated with physical characteristics and mannerisms that are socially perceived as male, i.e. "is that person a man or a woman?" and the word "boi" seems to be more associated with internally perceived characteristics based on pretending that there is no universal social perception of the concepts of man and

[bff4e]

fran,

first of all, hope you are recovered from your bike injury and doing well in california.

this is a really interesting topic to think about, especially since i am dating a woman who is 36 and considers herself butch and comes from a totally different generation of queer identity than us. i am also spending a lot of time with older lesbians, and had a totally rad and fascinating experience at this working class leabian bar in the west village--where the crowd was predominantly women in their 40's and the butch/femme dichotomy was in full force like i'd never seen it.

my girlfriend defines "butch" as being a masculine woman, who still embraces her identity as a woman. her "physical characteristics" are fairly masculine, but there is no mistaking that she is a woman. and i think that is how she wants it.

i think yr gender is pretty awesome. not butch, but not sure that i'd label it boi. ambiguous in an assertive way, if that makes sense. proud. admirable.

xxoo
erica

[hisswarthiness]

I never really thought of you as one particular gender or another, unless gangly and hot is a gender.

...Which it may be; I'm a bear of very little brain where gender theory is concerned.

[swankantihero]

i concur with patrick!!

[bec01]

Within queer spaces I am often labeled as femme, which is not how I identify myself. I tend to express my femininity more overtly and in ways that are more identifiable to others than as to how I express my masculinity. Some of that is purposefully performative, since I enjoy performing femme, and some of it comes from a combination of what feels “natural” and the way I outwardly present, which continues to be deeply affected by being raised with fairly rigid expectations on what it meant for me to female. So, while I am not in any way attempting to pass as femme within queer spaces, I apparently do so pretty successfully, and I’m still trying to figure out what that means