I lied. or: my many genders

[pantryslut]

I was looking over my recent post on gender (this one) and I realized that I told a little fib.

"There's just no category that describes me. Not even "close enough" for more than half a day at a time."

Um. Actually, I do call myself butch fairly often. I consider myself a sort of butch person. I get offended when people make presumptions about butchness, what it is and isn't and how that might apply to me. (For example, I am not an "ersatz man," thanks.)

But I am not *just* butch. That label has always felt "close enough," rather than "yeah! That's it! What a wonderful cozy fit!"

Butch saved my life. Well, maybe I exaggerate -- I was never suicidal or anything -- but that's what it feels like. Discovering butch as an available identity made my head stop clanging. This is why I am occasionally defensive about it being a valid identity choice. It made sense. It felt right.

For a while. Paradoxically, as I learned about butchness and gender as performance, I became a lot more comfortable with girliness and performing femininity. (Aside: Most of the time, I don't feel like I perform "femme," exactly. I usually perform the role of someone who thinks that femininity comes naturally, if that makes sense; femmes perform the role of someone who knows femininity is an act. I've done both, and they feel different. When I go to a party "in drag," where lots of my queer friends are, I am performing femme. When I go to a photo shoot, I am performing femininity. I may wear the same clothes, but the role is different. Clear as mud?) I have at least one butch-identified friend who laughs knowingly at this notion, because she, too, could only put on a dress once she realized she was butch.

I think this is why I do not consider myself kiki -- a butch/femme switch, to simplify a bit. I know which state I default to.

I do sometimes identify as a cross-dresser, or a drag queen. Usually when someone is in the midst of boggling at the fact that I'm in a skirt. I love playing dress-up; when I was a kid, I always wanted to dress up as a boy. Now that my default gender is recognized as masculine-ish, I want to dress up as a girl.

But the fact is, butch as a gender doesn't always fit me either, and not just because I own a closet full of femmy playclothes. (And butchy playclothes. G. had fun trying on my uniform hats the other day.)

Some of it has to do with oddly restrictive ideas about butchness (which usually parallel boringly restrictive ideas about masculinity). But it's not just that. It's hard to put my finger on, to be honest. I'll keep thinking about it.

I've telescoped a lot of personal history into this discussion, and I understand if the steps are hard to follow. Thanks for bearing with me.

Speaking of "bear," I notice that misia identified that as another gender available to us. (look here.) I've been aware of bearish women and of bear as a role for, oh, over a decade now. It's another one that's close but doesn't quite fit. I dunno why it never clicked for me. I wouldn't be offended if someone identified me as a bear, but I don't think of myself or self-describe as one. Hm.

It's OK that none of these quite fit, by the way. I'm not looking for a closer match.

Have I shed any light on recent discussions with this, or just added to the noise?

Comments

[thette.livejournal.com]

That was very interesting, and I understood the lot of it.

I discovered a long time ago that my then anti-men attitude really was a cover up, because I despised my own sex. It took a while before I realised that in turn was a cover up of being attracted to women as well...

Lori, the Quantum Butch...

[imnotandrei.livejournal.com]

But I am not *just* butch. That label has always felt "close enough," rather than "yeah! That's it! What a wonderful cozy fit!"

Some of the time, some of your behaviours are "butch". It's a partial description of who you are. There are awkward bits sticking out from under the overarching label, which is why it doesn't quite work, I suspect. It's an adequate partial description, a good first approximation, but no more.

It made me think of the difference between gender as a "predictive" system and gender as an explanatory system.

For some people, you can predict how they'll react under certain circumstances because of their gender. It isn't always true, obviously, but it's a good first approximation.

Trying to predict the way you act, Lori, based on any of your genders (geek, butch, lion, drag queen, cook1) is a pretty futile endeavour. You can sometimes explain why you did what you did in terms of them, later, but they serve a purely explanatory role, in that case. "I did this because I was engaging in butch emotional management" coming from you is an explanation that this time you engaged in B.E.M., not that you always (or indeed often) do. You were being butch then, but that doesn't tell us what you are when you're explaining, or what you will be ten minutes from now.

Calling you butch may help us understand you, sometimes, in certain circumstances. Won't help us predict you.


1.Cook! Cook as a gender!
Warm (from the oven),
nurturing (eat, eat, you look so thin!),
matter-of-fact (call 'em what you will, they're still beans),
sometimes fierce (get out of my kitchen or I will beat you with wooden spoons),
playful (I wonder what'll happen if I add a pinch of *this*)

Yeah. That fits.