Butch Whispers: Eli Langfere
I came out of the closet when I was like twelve or thirteen. I was lucky enough to have some queer people around me at the time, but in terms of actually seeing butch people it was a very lonely time. The first time I encountered the word butch in a positive context was Butch Is Not A Dirty Word. I had seen the occasional butch person around and, like a lot of people in my generation, I had accessed porn while I was way to young, and seen butch people there…
Can you recall the first time you heard the word ‘butch’ ?
At school, I had the words butch and dyke thrown at me a lot in a really nasty way, but it wasn’t until I encountered BINADW that I could see my own butch identity in a context that was tender and loving, and not perceived as disturbed, unnatural, or sexually wrong. I’m really grateful that porn, the occasional stranger, and harassment at school wasn’t my only encounter with how other people perceived my butch identity. This is because although butch identity is so entwined with my sexuality, I have felt so sexualised for it over the years in a way that has made me deeply uncomfortable.
Even when I was so young and fresh out of the closet, I was immediately aware of how sexualised the butch identity is in heterosexual and homophobic discourse. It was a massive source of comfort to me to be able to hold in my hands printed images of butch people that was just exactly for me. Pictures and words belonging to butch people, that could be sexual if I desired it to be, that presented their own sexual identity to the extent that they wanted it to be. I think as well, a lot of stuff happened in that period that made me really afraid of my own queerness and really cautious about butch lesbian identity, and if I hadn’t been able to access lesbian and specifically butch media like BINADW, I wonder if I would have felt strong enough to remain out of the closet in the way that I have. Around the time I came out, I did also have a very close friendship with another transmasculine person, and although he doesn’t identify as butch, knowing him growing up was really important to me. I was so lucky to have met him. He lit this little fire in my head that burnt down all the pre-existing ideas that culture had taught me about what a young girl should be. He opened the door to butch identity for me, and I think BINADW shoved me through it, if that makes sense.
How would you define butchphobia in your own words?
the following contains brief mention of sexual abuse fyi! Soon after I came out, I experienced a lot of butchphobia, and for a long time it did split me in half. I don’t want to say that internalised homophobia and internalised transphobia still impacts me these days, but it does. The confidence I feel in my own masculinity is something I always try to hold onto, and access to queer media did really help me, but it’s still true that for the longest time, the only tangible association I had with butchness, transmasculinity, and lesbianism, was pain. As a young teenager, I experience corrective/homophobic sexual abuse. This happened really soon after I came out, and it just changed me completely growing up. That, on top of a bit of phobic harassment at school and patriarchal culture in general, really worked to accumulate the self hatred over the years, until I woke up one day and realised what a massive structure of self detest I had built for myself.
Without much butch community around me, I think my growing brain really just associated butch and butch lesbian identity with vulnerability and fear. There was like ten years where being around groups of lesbians or even trans people at say a pride event, or bar, filled me with this feeling of dread. I held onto this false belief that being visible in my queerness is what caused me harm as a young person, and my fear of butch spaces developed I think to keep me safe from further harm. Obviously, that belief wasn’t useful long term at all. If anything, we are obviously so much more vulnerable alone than we are together.
I love butch lesbians so much, and it’s really painful to love and desire a type of person that you associate with a deep, sickening fear. That’s why I say butchphobia really split me in half, because there was that part me that is butch and loves butches, and the other half of me that found being butch and loving butches totally unbearable. Now I understand that abuse from boys and men is what hurt me, but it has taken years of developing my own source of self love and emotional resilience to truly believe it’s not my fault that I got hurt as a baby butch dyke.
Is there something about your butch identity that you feel is often misunderstood or overlooked by others?
The parts of butch identity that I fear are misunderstood or overlooked is this newer wave of social and cultural visibility for masculine fashion for those assigned female at birth. I do truly think it’s amazing that girls and women and queers are safer and more celebrated for dressing in ways that align with masculinity these days. At the same time, I hope that butch as a political identity is still valued and respected almost as a separate entity to contemporary, masc ways of dressing. I feel this way because I have had to fight really fucking hard to live as a butch person. Although no one should ever have to earn the right to express their sexual/gender identity, I hope that people who enjoy masculinity as an aesthetic nowadays can appreciate the struggle and the precious work of queers past and present.
Do you feel like you’ve found self-esteem and pride in your butch identity?
I’m happy to say that I have developed a really good source of self love in the past year or so. I think I just got to a point where I had to understand that this self hatred I had developed couldn’t take me anywhere but the grave, so it was time to very seriously change how I was thinking about myself and my queerness. Nowadays, butch pride doesn’t feel like a choice to me anymore, in the same way that I couldn’t choose my sexuality or my gender identity. I’ve realised that I have to love and respect myself specifically because I’m butch, or all the pain I’ve experienced is just meaningless suffering, which I think is just such a waste of life.
The alternative to self love is this mode of sadness and loneliness that has previously been such a parasitic force in my own identity. I still obviously have bad moments, but being able to collect all the parts of butch identity that I find beautiful is integral to my wellbeing these days. The beautiful parts of butch identity that I’ve been collecting are the obvious parts, the clothes I like to wear, tattoos, the way I like my hair cut. However, it’s being in community with other butches that has helped me locate butch pride in myself. Butch community helps me locate dykehood in the realm of celebration, and not just in the realm trauma. I’ve lived in the UK my whole life up until very recently, and the incredible lesbian community in London has really helped me find self love in my butch identity. The butch community there is so precious to me. They are so fun and warm and welcoming and intergenerational, and my relatively new sense of pride can be partly credited to the beautiful butch dykes in London.
Can you recall the first time you heard the word ‘butch’ ?
At school, I had the words butch and dyke thrown at me a lot in a really nasty way, but it wasn’t until I encountered BINADW that I could see my own butch identity in a context that was tender and loving, and not perceived as disturbed, unnatural, or sexually wrong. I’m really grateful that porn, the occasional stranger, and harassment at school wasn’t my only encounter with how other people perceived my butch identity. This is because although butch identity is so entwined with my sexuality, I have felt so sexualised for it over the years in a way that has made me deeply uncomfortable.
Even when I was so young and fresh out of the closet, I was immediately aware of how sexualised the butch identity is in heterosexual and homophobic discourse. It was a massive source of comfort to me to be able to hold in my hands printed images of butch people that was just exactly for me. Pictures and words belonging to butch people, that could be sexual if I desired it to be, that presented their own sexual identity to the extent that they wanted it to be. I think as well, a lot of stuff happened in that period that made me really afraid of my own queerness and really cautious about butch lesbian identity, and if I hadn’t been able to access lesbian and specifically butch media like BINADW, I wonder if I would have felt strong enough to remain out of the closet in the way that I have. Around the time I came out, I did also have a very close friendship with another transmasculine person, and although he doesn’t identify as butch, knowing him growing up was really important to me. I was so lucky to have met him. He lit this little fire in my head that burnt down all the pre-existing ideas that culture had taught me about what a young girl should be. He opened the door to butch identity for me, and I think BINADW shoved me through it, if that makes sense.
How would you define butchphobia in your own words?
the following contains brief mention of sexual abuse fyi! Soon after I came out, I experienced a lot of butchphobia, and for a long time it did split me in half. I don’t want to say that internalised homophobia and internalised transphobia still impacts me these days, but it does. The confidence I feel in my own masculinity is something I always try to hold onto, and access to queer media did really help me, but it’s still true that for the longest time, the only tangible association I had with butchness, transmasculinity, and lesbianism, was pain. As a young teenager, I experience corrective/homophobic sexual abuse. This happened really soon after I came out, and it just changed me completely growing up. That, on top of a bit of phobic harassment at school and patriarchal culture in general, really worked to accumulate the self hatred over the years, until I woke up one day and realised what a massive structure of self detest I had built for myself.
Without much butch community around me, I think my growing brain really just associated butch and butch lesbian identity with vulnerability and fear. There was like ten years where being around groups of lesbians or even trans people at say a pride event, or bar, filled me with this feeling of dread. I held onto this false belief that being visible in my queerness is what caused me harm as a young person, and my fear of butch spaces developed I think to keep me safe from further harm. Obviously, that belief wasn’t useful long term at all. If anything, we are obviously so much more vulnerable alone than we are together.
I love butch lesbians so much, and it’s really painful to love and desire a type of person that you associate with a deep, sickening fear. That’s why I say butchphobia really split me in half, because there was that part me that is butch and loves butches, and the other half of me that found being butch and loving butches totally unbearable. Now I understand that abuse from boys and men is what hurt me, but it has taken years of developing my own source of self love and emotional resilience to truly believe it’s not my fault that I got hurt as a baby butch dyke.
Is there something about your butch identity that you feel is often misunderstood or overlooked by others?
The parts of butch identity that I fear are misunderstood or overlooked is this newer wave of social and cultural visibility for masculine fashion for those assigned female at birth. I do truly think it’s amazing that girls and women and queers are safer and more celebrated for dressing in ways that align with masculinity these days. At the same time, I hope that butch as a political identity is still valued and respected almost as a separate entity to contemporary, masc ways of dressing. I feel this way because I have had to fight really fucking hard to live as a butch person. Although no one should ever have to earn the right to express their sexual/gender identity, I hope that people who enjoy masculinity as an aesthetic nowadays can appreciate the struggle and the precious work of queers past and present.
Do you feel like you’ve found self-esteem and pride in your butch identity?
I’m happy to say that I have developed a really good source of self love in the past year or so. I think I just got to a point where I had to understand that this self hatred I had developed couldn’t take me anywhere but the grave, so it was time to very seriously change how I was thinking about myself and my queerness. Nowadays, butch pride doesn’t feel like a choice to me anymore, in the same way that I couldn’t choose my sexuality or my gender identity. I’ve realised that I have to love and respect myself specifically because I’m butch, or all the pain I’ve experienced is just meaningless suffering, which I think is just such a waste of life.
The alternative to self love is this mode of sadness and loneliness that has previously been such a parasitic force in my own identity. I still obviously have bad moments, but being able to collect all the parts of butch identity that I find beautiful is integral to my wellbeing these days. The beautiful parts of butch identity that I’ve been collecting are the obvious parts, the clothes I like to wear, tattoos, the way I like my hair cut. However, it’s being in community with other butches that has helped me locate butch pride in myself. Butch community helps me locate dykehood in the realm of celebration, and not just in the realm trauma. I’ve lived in the UK my whole life up until very recently, and the incredible lesbian community in London has really helped me find self love in my butch identity. The butch community there is so precious to me. They are so fun and warm and welcoming and intergenerational, and my relatively new sense of pride can be partly credited to the beautiful butch dykes in London.
