Hail Butch Mary
As a teenager I was sexually assaulted by the quarterback of my high school football team. He took advantage of his sexual capital, as a machismo-oozing male, forcing his way into my room, forcing his dick into my hands. He had it all, this omnipresent sense of entitlement because of his gender assigned at birth. A lifetime of people telling him, showing him, that it was his right to have women whenever and wherever he wanted. This was a pivotal time for me, as it is for most adolescents, discovering my own sexuality through the rubble of self -doubt and raging hormones. At the time, I never came to terms with what had actually happened, all I knew was that it felt wrong and that I had been taken advantage of. Fast forward to now, here I sit, a 27-year old proud queer femme who is desperately in love with a butch woman.
As I reflect on what butch-ness means to me, I can’t help but think of this quarterback, exercising his total and complete disgusting privilege and entitlement on me. To me, butches embody the exact opposite of that mind frame. To be a person, assigned female at birth, but to more strongly identify with male presenting affectations. BUTCH. To live your truth as a beautiful boy, that is a girl. To take on the bullshit that comes along with presenting male, while taking on the world as a female with less opportunity and forever skewed equity. To pour your love and respect on the queer goddesses of our community, knowing what it means to be a woman, but owning what it means to be a man. To me, these people are incredible fighters, and the sexiest of the bunch.
“The quarterback took my femininity from me, while butches, they honor it”
This tender bravado, this thoughtful intelligence, this predisposition to be critical about their space in the world because the world says that they should not be. This is what makes butch voices sound extra sweet. A butch body is a different body, with different expectations on themselves and others. Butch-ness comes with self-education and thoughtful social and romantic engagements, with most butches respecting queerness and queer bodies and what it means to live outside the norm. Their lives are inherently subversive, they walk a constant fight, fighting for who they are and what they want to be. The result being, a human that can deeply empathise with hardship. And I love that.
This kind of person isn’t always the case, there are many butches who are just assholes, but they still walk a life of being a radical queer, whether they know it or not. Ball caps, motorcycles, button-ups, flannels, trucks. Intersectional feminism, nature, crystals, rituals, femme-worship. Gender binary also comes to mind when I think of butches. As a femme, I play into these roles quite a bit. I like cooking for my butch, doing the laundry, wearing dresses and lipstick on our dates. I feel so high in the world walking next to my butch-as-fuck girlfriend when I am dolled up, lipstick bright, highest femme, because here I am, making the choice to do so. The quarterback took my femininity from me, while butches, they honour it.
Ultimately this is the pull, the subversive nature of being with a masculine presenting person, someone who feels comfortable being themselves, even when society at large says, “nope”, makes me feel more safe to be me, whatever that may be.
As a teenager I was sexually assaulted by the quarterback of my high school football team. He took advantage of his sexual capital, as a machismo-oozing male, forcing his way into my room, forcing his dick into my hands. He had it all, this omnipresent sense of entitlement because of his gender assigned at birth. A lifetime of people telling him, showing him, that it was his right to have women whenever and wherever he wanted. This was a pivotal time for me, as it is for most adolescents, discovering my own sexuality through the rubble of self -doubt and raging hormones. At the time, I never came to terms with what had actually happened, all I knew was that it felt wrong and that I had been taken advantage of. Fast forward to now, here I sit, a 27-year old proud queer femme who is desperately in love with a butch woman.
As I reflect on what butch-ness means to me, I can’t help but think of this quarterback, exercising his total and complete disgusting privilege and entitlement on me. To me, butches embody the exact opposite of that mind frame. To be a person, assigned female at birth, but to more strongly identify with male presenting affectations. BUTCH. To live your truth as a beautiful boy, that is a girl. To take on the bullshit that comes along with presenting male, while taking on the world as a female with less opportunity and forever skewed equity. To pour your love and respect on the queer goddesses of our community, knowing what it means to be a woman, but owning what it means to be a man. To me, these people are incredible fighters, and the sexiest of the bunch.
“The quarterback took my femininity from me, while butches, they honor it”
This tender bravado, this thoughtful intelligence, this predisposition to be critical about their space in the world because the world says that they should not be. This is what makes butch voices sound extra sweet. A butch body is a different body, with different expectations on themselves and others. Butch-ness comes with self-education and thoughtful social and romantic engagements, with most butches respecting queerness and queer bodies and what it means to live outside the norm. Their lives are inherently subversive, they walk a constant fight, fighting for who they are and what they want to be. The result being, a human that can deeply empathise with hardship. And I love that.
This kind of person isn’t always the case, there are many butches who are just assholes, but they still walk a life of being a radical queer, whether they know it or not. Ball caps, motorcycles, button-ups, flannels, trucks. Intersectional feminism, nature, crystals, rituals, femme-worship. Gender binary also comes to mind when I think of butches. As a femme, I play into these roles quite a bit. I like cooking for my butch, doing the laundry, wearing dresses and lipstick on our dates. I feel so high in the world walking next to my butch-as-fuck girlfriend when I am dolled up, lipstick bright, highest femme, because here I am, making the choice to do so. The quarterback took my femininity from me, while butches, they honour it.
Ultimately this is the pull, the subversive nature of being with a masculine presenting person, someone who feels comfortable being themselves, even when society at large says, “nope”, makes me feel more safe to be me, whatever that may be.
