"So now I am writing myself down, sketching directions so that I can be found, or followed. The word for you is butch. Remember this word. It will be used against you."
-Ivan Coyote

For those who know me it's no secret that one of my favorite storytellers of all time is Ivan Coyote. Thus, I'm sure it's no surprise that this week when Ivan's "A Butch Roadmap' began circulating the internet I was enthralled. As a femme who loves butches I was thrilled to see a new piece of writing that gave voice to the complexities of butch identity, and challenges the way that butches get the shit kicked out of their hearts by a community they built and now resents their visibility and strength.

The piece has so many good lines. I tried to start pulling just a few of my favorites but realized that was becoming silly, and that really, if you are a butch loving femme you've got to read this. It's just such a well done discussion of butchness, chivalry, the cultural implications of butch masculinity and giving butches the freedom to do things like crochet. I especially love that it doesn't admonish those butches like my partner who pass as men but rather knows that they are part of the diversity of butchness. On of the things I adore about Ivan's storytelling style in general that comes through so well in this piece is the smoothness with which words are used. It's almost as though they are being led around a dance floor instead of a page.

It was really nice to read a piece like this, because I was actually right in the middle of starting the planning process to write a blog about a really horrific video that I found up on the Velvet Park magazine website. The video is called "Femme Coffee" and features some femme buddies talking about why they love "masculine woman".

I was trying to directly embed the video but it appears that there is a problem with Velvet Park's code that is preventing it from working so to see the video you have to go to the Velvet Park website and on the right side of the videos you will see different titles and can select "femme coffee."

The video is frightening to me for a number of reasons, firstly as a femme with disabilities I'm honestly shocked and appalled that any of the women on the film would say the word "retarded" and feel that was an appropriate word to use to express their discontentment with the ways in which butch/femme dynamics are understood by mainstream culture to be modeled after heterosexuality. Furthermore, I was utterly horrified by the complete lack of understanding they appeared to have about which butches are. This short little video podcast claims to be making a case for gender being constructed, and performed but really does nothing but box in butches and femmes into small boxes that I'm honestly shocked anyone is supporting in 2009.

At one point in the film the women talk about how they believe there are "almost no butch women because the culture of butchness is to be trans," and how they think that in 2009 butch is looked at "as a stopping point on the way to trans." Now clearly this is their experience and perspective, which they are allowed to have, but at the same time it's no wonder that this is there experience when they are so unwilling to understand butchness as a transgressive identity that means different things to different people. Instead they seem content to box butches in with some pretty hefty stereotypes, including completely silencing any possibility of trans butches. I think this notion of a butch and FTM "border war" is absolutely absurd. The boundaries have never been clear-cut as people like the women in this film would like everyone to believe.

Essentially the crux of all their arguments are that so many of the butches they see lack non misogynistic role models, and thus their masculinity is based on that oppressive paradigm.

All that says to me is that clearly these femmes know the wrong butches!

Latest posts by Sassafras

• Farewell - May 1st, 2011
• Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme - April 16th, 2011
• Little Red Writing Dress - March 27th, 2011
• Unexpected Butch/Femme Poetry - March 22nd, 2011
• Tell-tale Signs a Queer Femme is Queer - March 4th, 2011