Butch Whispers: Denise Jones
I’m not from anywhere. My dad was in the Air Force, so I’ve been a nomad since birth. I was born in the panhandle of Florida, on a military base with white sand beaches. –And honestly, I go on from there to live around the planet chasing military violence through places of beauty. I think the dissonance informs my worldview. We bounced from Florida to Greece before I was 1. My dad and I have rare early childhood memory recall, so by 1.5 years old I have stories to tell about my life.
And a major story from that period is about how very gay, I am. That I was indeed born this way. Was never gonna not be gay.
I remember at my second birthday party being excited for 2 things: that my Mom put rainbow decor on my cake for my rainbow-themed party and that a girl I was infatuated with was there! To this day I don’t know who she was. She was either another military brat, as we’re called, or a Greek girl that lived in our neighborhood we lived in outside of the base.We would play on the beach together. My most striking memory of her was feeling so much love for her and deciding to gather some little yellow flowers for her. And being PISSED when a little blond boy who was playing with us stole my idea and pushed past me to try to take her attention with the flowers he gathered. We’re all under 3 at this point…that entitlement starts young, lol!
I now live in Los Angeles because: sunshine. I was in NY for almost a decade and thought I would never leave. The grittiness and rough pace were invigorating for me. I was mean there, and I loved it. I was always excited to come back, no matter where I traveled in the world. But in 2015 and on, the world started getting darker and harder. And I needed light and softness. I needed nature, nurturing, and time. I wanted to move to the desert and isolate myself from people for a while. Instead, I moved to L.A. with a former partner and got marooned during the pandemic in a fixer-upper with a dirt pit for a yard and all kinds of fruit trees that no one intended to plant. So the trees grow into and over each other, fighting for sunlight, creating a beautiful canopy. I turned the whole yard green and invited all kinds of wildlife to live here. I’m a butch Snow White up in here. Talkin’ to birds and shit.
As an adult, I’ve lived in DC, NYC, and LA. I’m not a small town gal, and I’ve seen too much of the world to spend my life in places where folks are obsessed with attacking my identity. Plus I like hot queers and we congregate! L.A. is fire for that.
1. What is your favorite or funniest memory from your dating life?
Once in my early 20s, a girl came up to me excited to find out that I was roommates with our gay dude coworker. She was intrigued and shortly into the conversation asked me to dinner. We had a great conversation over the meal and were very compatible, until the moment she asked, “So, what kind of guys do you like?” My response of course was, “Oh, did you miss the part where I’m gay?” “Me and (My roommate) are both gay people.” She laughed, surprised, and then paused, “WAIT, is this a date?” To which I replied, “Not anymore!” The rest of the dinner was great. We laughed. I battled a spring-loaded door and tossed my leftovers onto a busy sidewalk. 20 years later, we’re still friends! Aside: 20 years ago, people didn’t assume I was gay at the rate they do today. It wasn’t as readily an option in people’s psyche. “You’re different…I can’t quite put my finger on it” was sometimes the vibe when you were a “tomboy” in that era.
2. Tell us about a time that being butch positively impacted your life.
I don’t know if there is one particular time I can point to wherein being butch has positively impacted me. But I will say, being recognizably gay and not having had any shame about it is awesome. People who are interested are more likely to make themselves known than if I had a more ambiguous presentation. Separately, I’m generally an oddball, so presenting in a way that bucks trends also means people don’t try to pigeonhole me into mundanity at the same rate. No one is expecting me to play by the rules, so I can move freely to some degree. I don’t have to live up to impossible beauty standards, which is great.
3. What is something about your butch identity you feel no one understands?
Masculinity belongs to women as much as it belongs to everyone else.
I think ironically in fighting the gender binary, many still adhere to stringent interpretations of that binary. And they meet us back where the right-wing leaves off.
I’ve felt the pull from both sides to fit into the binary. Conservatives: You’re a girl who does boy things. Be a girl. Liberals: You’re a girl who does boy things. Don’t be a girl. I have been asked with indigence why don’t I identify as nonbinary, since I’m masculine. Echoing the ‘So, what? You think you’re a man?” Questions that come from the other direction.
I’m in my fifth decade in this body, in this psyche, this sexuality, and gender. I have explored myself and my identity. I am a woman, I am proud to be a woman, and being masculine has no bearing on that.
I don’t think any woman cis or trans has a duty to present as what we understand to be feminine in order to be known as a woman.
4. What has been the best thing that you’ve been wrong about in your life?
One of my favorite movies as a kid was Yentl, starring Barbara Streisand. In order to live life on her terms, she had to present as a man. She wasn’t a man in her soul, she just needed access to the privileges of being a man. In the film, a beautiful woman who I believed wouldn’t love her otherwise, was in love with the boy Barbara’s character pretended to be. I was convinced for years that I would need to do the same to find love. And quite frankly, I wanted the privilege. I wanted that access. It was the 80s. I wanted to be Michael J. Fox. I wanted to be a white man.
For me, what was really going on was that I wanted to be the main character in my life. And every message I got from society was that a little black girl is not even a tertiary character. I was elated when I realized beautiful women were going to love me regardless, so I could just myself and make the world deal with it.
1. What is your favorite or funniest memory from your dating life?
Once in my early 20s, a girl came up to me excited to find out that I was roommates with our gay dude coworker. She was intrigued and shortly into the conversation asked me to dinner. We had a great conversation over the meal and were very compatible, until the moment she asked, “So, what kind of guys do you like?” My response of course was, “Oh, did you miss the part where I’m gay?” “Me and (My roommate) are both gay people.” She laughed, surprised, and then paused, “WAIT, is this a date?” To which I replied, “Not anymore!” The rest of the dinner was great. We laughed. I battled a spring-loaded door and tossed my leftovers onto a busy sidewalk. 20 years later, we’re still friends! Aside: 20 years ago, people didn’t assume I was gay at the rate they do today. It wasn’t as readily an option in people’s psyche. “You’re different…I can’t quite put my finger on it” was sometimes the vibe when you were a “tomboy” in that era.
2. Tell us about a time that being butch positively impacted your life.
I don’t know if there is one particular time I can point to wherein being butch has positively impacted me. But I will say, being recognizably gay and not having had any shame about it is awesome. People who are interested are more likely to make themselves known than if I had a more ambiguous presentation. Separately, I’m generally an oddball, so presenting in a way that bucks trends also means people don’t try to pigeonhole me into mundanity at the same rate. No one is expecting me to play by the rules, so I can move freely to some degree. I don’t have to live up to impossible beauty standards, which is great.
3. What is something about your butch identity you feel no one understands?
Masculinity belongs to women as much as it belongs to everyone else.
I think ironically in fighting the gender binary, many still adhere to stringent interpretations of that binary. And they meet us back where the right-wing leaves off.
I’ve felt the pull from both sides to fit into the binary. Conservatives: You’re a girl who does boy things. Be a girl. Liberals: You’re a girl who does boy things. Don’t be a girl. I have been asked with indigence why don’t I identify as nonbinary, since I’m masculine. Echoing the ‘So, what? You think you’re a man?” Questions that come from the other direction.
I’m in my fifth decade in this body, in this psyche, this sexuality, and gender. I have explored myself and my identity. I am a woman, I am proud to be a woman, and being masculine has no bearing on that.
I don’t think any woman cis or trans has a duty to present as what we understand to be feminine in order to be known as a woman.
4. What has been the best thing that you’ve been wrong about in your life?
One of my favorite movies as a kid was Yentl, starring Barbara Streisand. In order to live life on her terms, she had to present as a man. She wasn’t a man in her soul, she just needed access to the privileges of being a man. In the film, a beautiful woman who I believed wouldn’t love her otherwise, was in love with the boy Barbara’s character pretended to be. I was convinced for years that I would need to do the same to find love. And quite frankly, I wanted the privilege. I wanted that access. It was the 80s. I wanted to be Michael J. Fox. I wanted to be a white man.
For me, what was really going on was that I wanted to be the main character in my life. And every message I got from society was that a little black girl is not even a tertiary character. I was elated when I realized beautiful women were going to love me regardless, so I could just myself and make the world deal with it.
For me, what was really going on was that I wanted to be the main character in my life. And every message I got from society was that a little black girl is not even a tertiary character. I was elated when I realized beautiful women were going to love me regardless, so I could just myself and make the world deal with it.
5. How do you feel like you embody masculinity differently from what is expected of you?
Sometimes people slip into toxic expressions of masculinity when relating to me. Wink, wink, nod. Am I right, bro? My masculinity is not that of a cis man. My masculinity is that of a sis, man. It’s of someone who has very little relation to or protection from patriarchy and has no desire to uphold it, bow to it, re-create it, or blend into it. I would quite gladly live with Sappho on Lesbos forever and ever, a-men. Greek prefix: a.
6. What do you believe the evolutionary purpose of gender diversity in humans is?
I am not a scientist but…”Males” are kind of an accident, no? A mutation of the single-celled origin that kind of spread virally? Their mating type minus means that they could not reproduce on their own and needed to insert themselves in “females” to continue their code.
And everything after that is just energy processing DNA in order to reproduce more matter with varying degrees of success in copying that code.
Or do we mean gender…the intangible essence, not biology?
On a microcosm: I think any way we split this…if the universe is god, or nature, or a simulation: We are indeed living in a simulation. Even if it’s god, our lives are just running a code in his game. We’re all different versions of the source code. Sims with different hairstyles and tooth shapes. We’re all the same thing expressed slightly differently. Obsessing over the ways some of us are, that hurt no one is a glitch in the code. We are running trillions of mathematical probabilities every day. Everything that could exist does. Everyone that could exist, will. If not here, then somewhere out there. That’s why life is so wonderfully amazing and so incredibly horrific. To a 5th grader: stop hating on the parts of us that don’t hurt anyone.
On a macrocosm: I think we are standing on a rock that is spinning around a ball of gas that is tumbling 483,000 miles per hour through a galaxy that is itself hurtling 1.3 million miles per hour into an ever-expanding universe. We are a speck within a speck. We are the universe morphing itself into every shape and possibility just because. None of this matters. None of this is anything at all. Everything we find important…barely exists.
7. Has there been a memory, moment, or time in your life where being butch made your experience particularly difficult?
I’m sure there have been some ways in which being butch has made my life harder, but who can tell from all the ways in which my person is othered in society. I’m Black from the United States, which is awesome because Black Americans are lit and also exhausting because white patriarchy is a virus seeping its way into everything everywhere all over the world and it haaates us maybe the most? It feels inescapable. I’ve been gay since longer than it was ok to be gay. Before Ellen came out. Before, we could not come out in the workplace for fear of losing our jobs. Back when we knew we’d have to keep part of our lives closeted to keep housing, or scholarships, or employment offers. Back when we could not move freely in society.
I was an atheist in the Bible belt. I’ve been Vegan/vegetarian for decades (Which may have been the most offensive thing about me for a long stretch of time, Lol).
But also also also I’m a woman. I have lived all over and traveled the world. I think the thing about my person that puts me at most risk of harm, at most risk of discrimination, that I have felt most potently in the U.S., across cultures, and everywhere in the world is being a woman.
Being butch can in some ways be a buffer against the violence and policing that women experience. Particularly being a butch black woman means that White Patriarchy isn’t exactly looking for me. In my Southern Black or military brat cultures being a “tomboy” growing up wasn’t suffocatingly frowned upon as other varying gender expressions could be. I could escape the male gaze to some degree, but then again, I’ve experienced daily sexual harassment in places I’ve lived, so it’s not always a shield.
5. How do you feel like you embody masculinity differently from what is expected of you?
Sometimes people slip into toxic expressions of masculinity when relating to me. Wink, wink, nod. Am I right, bro? My masculinity is not that of a cis man. My masculinity is that of a sis, man. It’s of someone who has very little relation to or protection from patriarchy and has no desire to uphold it, bow to it, re-create it, or blend into it. I would quite gladly live with Sappho on Lesbos forever and ever, a-men. Greek prefix: a.
6. What do you believe the evolutionary purpose of gender diversity in humans is?
I am not a scientist but…”Males” are kind of an accident, no? A mutation of the single-celled origin that kind of spread virally? Their mating type minus means that they could not reproduce on their own and needed to insert themselves in “females” to continue their code.
And everything after that is just energy processing DNA in order to reproduce more matter with varying degrees of success in copying that code.
Or do we mean gender…the intangible essence, not biology?
On a microcosm: I think any way we split this…if the universe is god, or nature, or a simulation: We are indeed living in a simulation. Even if it’s god, our lives are just running a code in his game. We’re all different versions of the source code. Sims with different hairstyles and tooth shapes. We’re all the same thing expressed slightly differently. Obsessing over the ways some of us are, that hurt no one is a glitch in the code. We are running trillions of mathematical probabilities every day. Everything that could exist does. Everyone that could exist, will. If not here, then somewhere out there. That’s why life is so wonderfully amazing and so incredibly horrific. To a 5th grader: stop hating on the parts of us that don’t hurt anyone.
On a macrocosm: I think we are standing on a rock that is spinning around a ball of gas that is tumbling 483,000 miles per hour through a galaxy that is itself hurtling 1.3 million miles per hour into an ever-expanding universe. We are a speck within a speck. We are the universe morphing itself into every shape and possibility just because. None of this matters. None of this is anything at all. Everything we find important…barely exists.
7. Has there been a memory, moment, or time in your life where being butch made your experience particularly difficult?
I’m sure there have been some ways in which being butch has made my life harder, but who can tell from all the ways in which my person is othered in society. I’m Black from the United States, which is awesome because Black Americans are lit and also exhausting because white patriarchy is a virus seeping its way into everything everywhere all over the world and it haaates us maybe the most? It feels inescapable. I’ve been gay since longer than it was ok to be gay. Before Ellen came out. Before, we could not come out in the workplace for fear of losing our jobs. Back when we knew we’d have to keep part of our lives closeted to keep housing, or scholarships, or employment offers. Back when we could not move freely in society.
I was an atheist in the Bible belt. I’ve been Vegan/vegetarian for decades (Which may have been the most offensive thing about me for a long stretch of time, Lol).
But also also also I’m a woman. I have lived all over and traveled the world. I think the thing about my person that puts me at most risk of harm, at most risk of discrimination, that I have felt most potently in the U.S., across cultures, and everywhere in the world is being a woman.
Being butch can in some ways be a buffer against the violence and policing that women experience. Particularly being a butch black woman means that White Patriarchy isn’t exactly looking for me. In my Southern Black or military brat cultures being a “tomboy” growing up wasn’t suffocatingly frowned upon as other varying gender expressions could be. I could escape the male gaze to some degree, but then again, I’ve experienced daily sexual harassment in places I’ve lived, so it’s not always a shield.
