I'm a Butch with Boobs and I hope to stay that way all my life. Just had my breast exam and mammogram, and want to keep these mammaries, even if they're huge...the doctor even asked if I wanted breast reduction, and I'd qualify...but I went through that once before....a 3 year wait for the appointment and missed it by a day, for a consult...and it put me through all kinds of shame and gender issues myself, thinking like alot of Butches, 'well if you're gonna make 'em smaller, just take 'em off', and I'm on so many sites these days, where Butches, and boyish queer women are talking about this right and left...or binding'em which can be very harmful to breast tissue to invisibilize them, like they did in the '50's to 'pass' as men and be able to get decent jobs they could support themselves on, as well as a level of shame....but NO, as long as these babies are healthy, I'm keeping 'em. Besides I like nipple sensation, the best part of my breasts, and if you have breast reduction surgery, or even breast removal like so many FTM's are even genderqueer types who dont' consider themselves full FTM'S are having these days, you lose all that nipple sensation!
I will keep screaming from the rooftops, as one heavily involved with womyn's and Amazon mysteries particularly, my worship of the Sacred Female on all levels, sexual, emotional, intellectual, psychic and spiritual, that one of those levels is about learning to love OUR OWN FEMALE BODIES, however we choose to express it...and that means loving our handsome Butch Breasts as well, even if we feel sometimes challenged by them and their weight..and mine are QUITE WEIGHTY. When I first came out, some dudes wondered how could I be a Lesbian/Butch if my breasts were so big? Well it has NOTHING to do with breast size, and sure, as a Butch I'd prefer that I was graced with small breasts and not huge mammaries. I like'em close to my body, no missile tits here, and I don't want them exposed where men can see them. I DON'T WANT THEM SEXUALIZED BY MEN IN ANY WAY, AND ONLY IN CERTAIN WAYS BY WOMEN. It is by the sexualization of breasts by men in particular that I think many Butches, if not many womyn, feel conflicted about their breasts.
BUT in women's ritual, my shirt comes off, like on Sunday when I celebrated Solstice on the Land with a bunch of Wildwomyn. I may be the ONLY or the first woman to whip off my shirt in a womyn's ritual circle, but that is BECAUSE I AM AN AMAZON, and a DykeAmazon at that! My bare breasts show my full womonhood, and also are almost like a Warrior part of me, displaying them. Not sexually, but IN PRIDE. And IN FREEDOM, that I can be in a space and display my FULL AMAZON WILDWOMON SELF, and that means as Amazons we can go about with our breasts bare(or more for those who like to display more). I have my Lion tattoo on my chest, my Leo power, that can only be fully seen if my shirt is off...on my back I have my sacred Rainbow wings with Kundalini Fire going up my spine, and at the top the word AMAZON emblazoned in blue Olde English script across my shoulders. These tattoos cannot be seen with a shirt on. So baring my breasts is a very empowering self loving act of wildness and DykeAmazon and Amazon freedom, in a safe space amongst womyn. I will do it in the Dyke March as well(if it's not too horribly cold).
But in the world of men, I don't want them sexualized in any capacity, so they stay hidden. Not bound, just hidden.
It is amongst young Butches/boyish Dykes/young Butch DykeAmazons, and really Amazons, Dykes and Butches/boyish Dykes of all ages, I hope to share this pride: "Be PROUD of your Femaleness, your unique expression of Womonhood, connect as strong powerful Amazon sisters in total freedom and pride with what Goddess gave you, and release all that shame!"
So this Butch DykeAmazon will be wearing a t-shirt to put the knives and surgeon scapels away, and be proud to be a 'Butch with Boobs!' this Pride season!
-In Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
In response to Dirt's topic on 'Gender Identity Dismantled', and as Butches REMAINING in the Sisterhood!
June 20, 2011 3:45 PM
MasterAmazon said...
Another good post Dirt, and glad to see Double Ax joining us. I DO agree that trans is about the destruction of Butch Dykedom. I am DREADING SF Dyke March because I will be saddened to see more of my own now announce how proud they are that they are becoming FTM...yeah crashing the Dyke March party sporting their beards, flat chests, hormone induced attitudes, even though there was a Trans March(always copying us Dykes) the night before in the same space! And then they'll want to bring the parallels between the two communities together now that so many Butches consider themselves some version of male, whether 'Genderqueer' or full FTM(sans the bottom surgery most of 'em).
Most that I've known were originally handsome Butch Dykes, but as soon as they transition, with the whole narcissitic obsession with their changing bodies they begin to start fucking gay males, partly because they don't want to leave the 'queer' community, partly because they now are worshipping maleness within their own personhood/body, whereas being a true blue Butch Dyke is all about LOVING or LEARNING TO LOVE ONESELF as the handsome, strong powerful take up our space Amazon womyn we are and as lovers of womyn!
This is one reason I probably won't be going to Butch Voices in Oakland either, because they are the voices of 'butches' who really are 'genderqueer, FTM, or male worshipping' and NOT Female identified Butches...in fact SEVERAL of us Locals tried to put on specifically a Female Identified Butch workshop from diverse points of view, and ALL OF US FEMALE IDENTIFIED BUTCHES had our workshops shot down, in favor of Sasha Goldberg who is a failed FTM, had her breasts cut off, and even bragged about it at the time, and with that male appearing hormone induced voice, now deciding, she really is a 'female identified' Butch...yeah....and their little Genderqueer darling.
Unless Female Identified and Female Loving Butches begin to SERIOUSLY organize and develope alternatives, and TAKE BACK OUR RICH AND PROUD BUTCH DYKE HERSTORY, we will be neigh invisible,and indeed it will be the'genocide of the butch' as I see every time I go back to San Francisco...and am dreading on Saturday and Sunday seeing who else has jumped on the trans/genderqueer/call me by male pronouns/cut off my breasts and take male hormones and sport a beart/stache bandwagon...WHILE STILL INFILTRATING AND COOPTING DYKE COMMUNITIES!
-MasterAmazon
June 21, 2011 5:56 PM
MasterAmazon said...
Also wanted to add this:
"Not one items above cannot be explained away by narrow gender norms society seeks to enforce and reinforce on a multitude of levels everyday. That the male medical machine is utilized in this endeavor is hardly surprising, they have been utilized to maintain "normality" for centuries using similar mechanism of torture." From Dirt
I SO AGREE with the above statement. Butches throughout history when found out they were living as men and loving women, assuming male privileges were often banished, murdered or put to death. In the 50's and before up until at least the 1980's Butches have been put in mental institutions and sometimes treated horribly with attempts to feminize them before they'd be allowed to be released, aversion therapy, electroshocked, and in the 1920's having their clitorises removed for being too sexually active and independent. Talk about trying to make someone not just feminine, and 'fit into' perfect ladylike roles, but also attempting to make them an 'ex-gay', and then there IS the 'ex-gay' movement which deliberately tries to feminize Butches, shame them, as well as try to get them to have sexual feelings to men. The psychiatric has never been kind to ANYONE with homosexual inclinations, and ESPECIALLY those who didn't conform to the feminine straitjacket and were too Butchy or tomboyish in the case of females, or too effeminate in the case of males.
So now the trans movement leans upon both psychiatry, psychology and medical doctors, the very institutions that have oppressed ALL homosexuals, and especially those NOT in the 'gender straitjacket' for hundreds of years, to help them NOW CONFORM to another 'gender binary' as they are so comfortable saying....that whole 'gender binary' crap is all a load of bullshit, used to silence Butch Dykes, other Lesbians and even some gay men now who object to how the trans movement is destroying our communities and abilities to relate to one another whether as Lesbian women loving women who LOVE or are learning to LOVE our own born female bodies, no matter our expressions, whether Butch, Femme or Androgynous or anything inbetween, or infiltrating the gay community with those with hetero/bi tendencies who don't have dicks but consider themselves 'gay'.
Maybe I DON'T want to hear discussions of hormones, surgeries, whining, villification of Lesbians, or being assumed I or my partner as a default because we are Butch are assumed to LIKE being called by male pronouns in all circumstances, and our very Femaleness invisibilized, as it's always been for Butches, the self fulfilling prophecy 'you just want to be a man' that is always hurtled at us because we TAKE UP OUR SPACE AND DON'T BACK DOWN, and that we are outside of womonhood altogether..... -M.A.
June 21, 2011 6:07 PM
MasterAmazon said...
One last thing: We ARE NOT OUTSIDE OF WOMONHOOD altogether, and feminine especially straight and sold out bi women try to sell us that line, activist Femme Dykes love Butches BECAUSE WE ARE WOMYN, and share that with them: though we may be tough, we are also compassionate, sensual, sexual and loving and often put our partner's sexual pleasure above or at least equal to our own. ALMOST NO MAN EVER DOES THAT!!! And that is exactly WHY we are different from them...at least one of the reasons. There are many flavors of womonhood/femaleness, and we MUST CLAIM our part in it, and NOT allow ourselves to be shut out of womonhood OR Sisterhood especially, we have been some of the FIERCEST Sisters. Think of the ancient powerful Gorgon Amazons, the most radical ones, and there were many others, and whether they were Butch, androgynous, and I can't imagine they were high femme because they were rebelling against the straitjacketing of female power and movement and expression because of the incoming patriarchal religious systems and societies, they were 'not nice' about it, and we gotta lose our 'niceness', in favor of our freedom and of our very core identities and Selves as part of the Sisterhood...not written out of it as 'Butch bros'! I fucking hate that! I'm not a 'Butch bro', I'm a Butch DykeAmazon and fierce Sister in the Sisterhood! And I will be till the day I die!
-MasterAmazon
MasterAmazon said...
Another good post Dirt, and glad to see Double Ax joining us. I DO agree that trans is about the destruction of Butch Dykedom. I am DREADING SF Dyke March because I will be saddened to see more of my own now announce how proud they are that they are becoming FTM...yeah crashing the Dyke March party sporting their beards, flat chests, hormone induced attitudes, even though there was a Trans March(always copying us Dykes) the night before in the same space! And then they'll want to bring the parallels between the two communities together now that so many Butches consider themselves some version of male, whether 'Genderqueer' or full FTM(sans the bottom surgery most of 'em).
Most that I've known were originally handsome Butch Dykes, but as soon as they transition, with the whole narcissitic obsession with their changing bodies they begin to start fucking gay males, partly because they don't want to leave the 'queer' community, partly because they now are worshipping maleness within their own personhood/body, whereas being a true blue Butch Dyke is all about LOVING or LEARNING TO LOVE ONESELF as the handsome, strong powerful take up our space Amazon womyn we are and as lovers of womyn!
This is one reason I probably won't be going to Butch Voices in Oakland either, because they are the voices of 'butches' who really are 'genderqueer, FTM, or male worshipping' and NOT Female identified Butches...in fact SEVERAL of us Locals tried to put on specifically a Female Identified Butch workshop from diverse points of view, and ALL OF US FEMALE IDENTIFIED BUTCHES had our workshops shot down, in favor of Sasha Goldberg who is a failed FTM, had her breasts cut off, and even bragged about it at the time, and with that male appearing hormone induced voice, now deciding, she really is a 'female identified' Butch...yeah....and their little Genderqueer darling.
Unless Female Identified and Female Loving Butches begin to SERIOUSLY organize and develope alternatives, and TAKE BACK OUR RICH AND PROUD BUTCH DYKE HERSTORY, we will be neigh invisible,and indeed it will be the'genocide of the butch' as I see every time I go back to San Francisco...and am dreading on Saturday and Sunday seeing who else has jumped on the trans/genderqueer/call me by male pronouns/cut off my breasts and take male hormones and sport a beart/stache bandwagon...WHILE STILL INFILTRATING AND COOPTING DYKE COMMUNITIES!
-MasterAmazon
June 21, 2011 5:56 PM
MasterAmazon said...
Also wanted to add this:
"Not one items above cannot be explained away by narrow gender norms society seeks to enforce and reinforce on a multitude of levels everyday. That the male medical machine is utilized in this endeavor is hardly surprising, they have been utilized to maintain "normality" for centuries using similar mechanism of torture." From Dirt
I SO AGREE with the above statement. Butches throughout history when found out they were living as men and loving women, assuming male privileges were often banished, murdered or put to death. In the 50's and before up until at least the 1980's Butches have been put in mental institutions and sometimes treated horribly with attempts to feminize them before they'd be allowed to be released, aversion therapy, electroshocked, and in the 1920's having their clitorises removed for being too sexually active and independent. Talk about trying to make someone not just feminine, and 'fit into' perfect ladylike roles, but also attempting to make them an 'ex-gay', and then there IS the 'ex-gay' movement which deliberately tries to feminize Butches, shame them, as well as try to get them to have sexual feelings to men. The psychiatric has never been kind to ANYONE with homosexual inclinations, and ESPECIALLY those who didn't conform to the feminine straitjacket and were too Butchy or tomboyish in the case of females, or too effeminate in the case of males.
So now the trans movement leans upon both psychiatry, psychology and medical doctors, the very institutions that have oppressed ALL homosexuals, and especially those NOT in the 'gender straitjacket' for hundreds of years, to help them NOW CONFORM to another 'gender binary' as they are so comfortable saying....that whole 'gender binary' crap is all a load of bullshit, used to silence Butch Dykes, other Lesbians and even some gay men now who object to how the trans movement is destroying our communities and abilities to relate to one another whether as Lesbian women loving women who LOVE or are learning to LOVE our own born female bodies, no matter our expressions, whether Butch, Femme or Androgynous or anything inbetween, or infiltrating the gay community with those with hetero/bi tendencies who don't have dicks but consider themselves 'gay'.
Maybe I DON'T want to hear discussions of hormones, surgeries, whining, villification of Lesbians, or being assumed I or my partner as a default because we are Butch are assumed to LIKE being called by male pronouns in all circumstances, and our very Femaleness invisibilized, as it's always been for Butches, the self fulfilling prophecy 'you just want to be a man' that is always hurtled at us because we TAKE UP OUR SPACE AND DON'T BACK DOWN, and that we are outside of womonhood altogether..... -M.A.
June 21, 2011 6:07 PM
MasterAmazon said...
One last thing: We ARE NOT OUTSIDE OF WOMONHOOD altogether, and feminine especially straight and sold out bi women try to sell us that line, activist Femme Dykes love Butches BECAUSE WE ARE WOMYN, and share that with them: though we may be tough, we are also compassionate, sensual, sexual and loving and often put our partner's sexual pleasure above or at least equal to our own. ALMOST NO MAN EVER DOES THAT!!! And that is exactly WHY we are different from them...at least one of the reasons. There are many flavors of womonhood/femaleness, and we MUST CLAIM our part in it, and NOT allow ourselves to be shut out of womonhood OR Sisterhood especially, we have been some of the FIERCEST Sisters. Think of the ancient powerful Gorgon Amazons, the most radical ones, and there were many others, and whether they were Butch, androgynous, and I can't imagine they were high femme because they were rebelling against the straitjacketing of female power and movement and expression because of the incoming patriarchal religious systems and societies, they were 'not nice' about it, and we gotta lose our 'niceness', in favor of our freedom and of our very core identities and Selves as part of the Sisterhood...not written out of it as 'Butch bros'! I fucking hate that! I'm not a 'Butch bro', I'm a Butch DykeAmazon and fierce Sister in the Sisterhood! And I will be till the day I die!
-MasterAmazon
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Responses to those who say "I'm not a Feminist" while they claim they are into Womyn's Spirituality/Ritual
Feminism STARTED this recent matriarchal renaissance. Without it we wouldn't have had Lesbian Feminism to empower Lesbians and create our own Dyke Marches, we wouldn't have had women's health care centers to stand up to the anti-choice folks, though like most women's stuff it has all gone defunct. Essentially much of feminism has died...our women's bookstores are all but defunct. There isn't a single one in the Bay Area, and most are gone across the nation..this was a place women could get alot of information, feminist, lesbian, women's empowerment and women's spirituality books, lucky to find a new one online...but nowhere to go and just connect with other women, socialize, go to a small concert there or hear a feminist/lesbian/women's spirituality author read from her new book and sign it for you.
They were our mini women's centers and hangouts where we could really feel community and safe. We wouldn't have had feminist Take Back the Night Marches and self defense workshops and Feminist women only martial arts schools to confront violence and abuse against women and girls and raise their consciousness to STOP the violence and to empower them. Most of those are gone too. We wouldn't have had our Feminist printing presses that printed our tomes because the mainstream press wouldn't even touch our issues and therefore we were effectively silenced till we created those printing presses...sadly most of those are gone too. We have taken such a huge leap backwards.
While women can get into new trades and careers, they are no longer supported by a strong and powerful Sisterhood behind them. And like I said before, it's Feminism that started the Tradeswomen movement which is still active today, but we are still at the same numbers (2%)dealing with the same issues we dealt with 30 years ago, and yet Affirmative Action, except on federal projects has been stripped away, thanks to the rightwing.
We are almost at the point of losing abortion rights, not my struggle, though I support it, cuz I'm a Dyke and have plenty of my own, like convincing young nonfeminist butch/boyish dykes that they should hold onto their breasts and feel empowered in their femaleness instead of so willing to shed it to taste the power of men at the expense of their own bodies and psyches...it is absolutely epidemic in the younger butch lesbian generation...BECAUSE THERE IS NO RADICAL LESBIAN FEMINISM and all our institutions have largely gone away: our bookstores, printing presses, women only events, grassroots sisterly spirit, and PRIDE in ourselves for being female, instead of shame. Too easy to be ready to take hormones and surgeries to counter the sexism, lesbophobia, and straightjacketing of female roles and opportunities they see......and they are NOT Female proud, like we were in the heady days of Lesbian Feminism in the '80's with our nascent and growing women's and Lesbian institutions.
We've lost so many of our women's businesses, by and for Lesbians and Women to have a safe place to go.....the biggest success has been the Women's Spirituality movement, but there too, so many of these young women don't feel they 'fit in', because they are essentially feeling shamed for even declaring their womonhood and their Femaleness, because it's different from the mainstream/malestream. So they identify as 'queer', 'genderqueer' instead...I hardly see Butch women at women's spirituality events and circles anymore, or even Lesbian and women only events...because they sadly, no longer see themselves as BEING INCLUDED in WOMONHOOD! And this is all very, very sad to me....the death of our Feminist institutions, and our safe places and our Feminist/Women/Lesbian businesses, cafes, ect. Even Osento our women only hot tub place the last to go on Dyke row on Valencia Street in San Francisco, shut down last year!
Feminism is about the FULL AND TOTAL EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AS A WHOLE...and there are many kinds of Feminisms.......some fit some of us, others do not. But to simply say...."I'm for all people's rights, but not necessarily a Feminist" denies that women are STILL OPPRESSED fundamentally, that we struggle under a patriarchal system, and while we've gained some pieces of the pie, we still got a LONG WAY TO GO! And in some ways have gone backwards....
-In Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon
They were our mini women's centers and hangouts where we could really feel community and safe. We wouldn't have had feminist Take Back the Night Marches and self defense workshops and Feminist women only martial arts schools to confront violence and abuse against women and girls and raise their consciousness to STOP the violence and to empower them. Most of those are gone too. We wouldn't have had our Feminist printing presses that printed our tomes because the mainstream press wouldn't even touch our issues and therefore we were effectively silenced till we created those printing presses...sadly most of those are gone too. We have taken such a huge leap backwards.
While women can get into new trades and careers, they are no longer supported by a strong and powerful Sisterhood behind them. And like I said before, it's Feminism that started the Tradeswomen movement which is still active today, but we are still at the same numbers (2%)dealing with the same issues we dealt with 30 years ago, and yet Affirmative Action, except on federal projects has been stripped away, thanks to the rightwing.
We are almost at the point of losing abortion rights, not my struggle, though I support it, cuz I'm a Dyke and have plenty of my own, like convincing young nonfeminist butch/boyish dykes that they should hold onto their breasts and feel empowered in their femaleness instead of so willing to shed it to taste the power of men at the expense of their own bodies and psyches...it is absolutely epidemic in the younger butch lesbian generation...BECAUSE THERE IS NO RADICAL LESBIAN FEMINISM and all our institutions have largely gone away: our bookstores, printing presses, women only events, grassroots sisterly spirit, and PRIDE in ourselves for being female, instead of shame. Too easy to be ready to take hormones and surgeries to counter the sexism, lesbophobia, and straightjacketing of female roles and opportunities they see......and they are NOT Female proud, like we were in the heady days of Lesbian Feminism in the '80's with our nascent and growing women's and Lesbian institutions.
We've lost so many of our women's businesses, by and for Lesbians and Women to have a safe place to go.....the biggest success has been the Women's Spirituality movement, but there too, so many of these young women don't feel they 'fit in', because they are essentially feeling shamed for even declaring their womonhood and their Femaleness, because it's different from the mainstream/malestream. So they identify as 'queer', 'genderqueer' instead...I hardly see Butch women at women's spirituality events and circles anymore, or even Lesbian and women only events...because they sadly, no longer see themselves as BEING INCLUDED in WOMONHOOD! And this is all very, very sad to me....the death of our Feminist institutions, and our safe places and our Feminist/Women/Lesbian businesses, cafes, ect. Even Osento our women only hot tub place the last to go on Dyke row on Valencia Street in San Francisco, shut down last year!
Feminism is about the FULL AND TOTAL EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AS A WHOLE...and there are many kinds of Feminisms.......some fit some of us, others do not. But to simply say...."I'm for all people's rights, but not necessarily a Feminist" denies that women are STILL OPPRESSED fundamentally, that we struggle under a patriarchal system, and while we've gained some pieces of the pie, we still got a LONG WAY TO GO! And in some ways have gone backwards....
-In Sisterhood,
-MasterAmazon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
