Because the only people who seem to be able to tell, by and large, that I am not Butch, are Butches, I do have some of the negative stereotypes that Butches have to put up with directed at me too. Mostly by hets.
I recently acquired a black eye. The story behind the black eye isn’t a particularly interesting one; it didn’t do the black eye justice, so I won’t bother you with it. What I did notice though, is that a lot of the hets I see at work and such on a daily basis, assumed I got into a fight. I didn’t get into a fight, but loads of people thought so, and even wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t.
I can see that being a security guard might help this bias along. But I also see that het and more feminine female security guards occasionally have injuries and no one accuses them of fighting. But they see me and think ‘Oh yeah – she’s a scrapper.’ And they all think I’m Butch, which to them means practically-a-man.
Well I am not a scrapper, for one thing. I will stand up for myself if attacked or to protect the more vulnerable, but I don’t go around looking for fisticuffs. I would never hit a woman unless I had no choice, and I am not even sure what that circumstance would entail, because I have been physically attacked by het women on more than one occasion and I have just restrained them until they got tired/bored. I have hit a couple of guys but trust me, they deserved it, and then some.
And I’m not Butch! I have a history of femininity that I will never be able to erase completely. Let’s let Butches speak for themselves and stop further marginalizing them by appropriating their identity this way, okay? It’s oppressive.
Finally, the idea that Butches are practically men, so therefore violent, literally couldn’t be further from the truth. These are Lesbians, so women who are for women, that have rejected the male view of womanhood all their lives. What could be more female than that?
Funny how it’s not cool to say that men are violent, but it’s perfectly normal to assume that Butch Lesbians are, because they are supposedly so like men. Huh.
