Butch Voices 09 and the woman identified butch

August 29, 2009 at 9:58am · I had been wanting to write about the butch voices conferences but I couldn’t figure out what to say.. In the beginning, when I heard about it I wanted to be a part of it to volunteer, to push the event forward. Then the website came along and I read everything I could about it and I worried that the actual conference may not reflect me at all…Maybe this was just for trans and genderqueer butches. At 36 yrs old, I despaired that I was a dying breed and no one would even be talking about women identified butches. As the event came closer, I made a decision to go and see for myself. I needed to know if there was anyone out there like me left in the world. So with a knot in my throat and a racing heart, I entered the Bulldagger workshop led by Sasha T. Goldberg. I got there early so there were only about 5 of us and my heart sank..maybe it was true, these were the end days for my subset of butch. Then an amazing thing happened, women kept coming in! white women, black women, asian and southeast asian…old women, and young. I wasn’t alone and every introduction brought me to the brink of tears, every time someone said they felt alone I felt it in my heart too. Being in that room with those women changed my life. No longer will I ever feel the bitterness of becoming extinct and irrelevant. I’m still alive and they are alive and we are all a tribe moving together on our journey. Now I can be a bigger person and be more expansive toward my trans and genderqueer brothers, because I don’t have to disappear from this community. I want to thank everyone who helped to make this conference happen from the bottom of my heart.

Butch Like Me

Growing up into my butch ness, I have always felt that being butch was one of the most subversive things one could be. Think about, a masculine looking woman-that is a woman loving other women. The world flips out when faced with that quiet statement. Here is a woman that will not transition, will not be male, and will not be misread, so you (world) can soothe yourself. Deal with it.


This is my testimony and I need someone to hear it. I am not trying to slam anyone else. I am merely a lost soul looking for my tribe, my people, my clan. I don’t know where to find them because the butch seems to be in decline.

I am not genderqueer, trans, or ftm, but I have friends that identify in all those ways and I love them but my pool of people that experience the world as I do is growing small.

I am often alone and confused. This is a brave new world. It’s very brave and very new. The simple description of Butch is now a large umbrella that may not actually include me…I feel adrift, lost because it seems I am merely a throwback in comparison to all there is out there today, for I am just a woman identified butch, and there may not be as many of me as there once was.

From the moment I wake up in the morning to the second I fall asleep and all the minutes in between, I walk on this planet, in this world, and in every space as a woman that is masculine in appearance. Every day finds me having to fight for the right to be a woman in this masculine looking body. My womanhood is disrespected and slowly encroached upon in small ways like being called sir or addressed with male pronouns, being challenged in the women’s bathrooms, and being asked if I’m going to take “T”, and the list goes on. How can I survive these changes and this new environment? Are there others of you out there like me? Am I the last feminist butch woman standing? If so, I’ll turn the lights out when I leave.