Lesbian Dad, Butch Body

"Butch" isn’t just a masculine aesthetic. It's an energy. It's a temperament. It's a demeanor. It's a thing you just know, and the best feeling in the whole world is when you can finally own it.

A couple of years ago, a childhood friend invited me to her wedding and then called to make sure I was planning to wear a dress to it. I laughed when she said it because of course I wasn't planning to wear a dress. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd worn a dress. And anyway, was this a formal event or some kind of costume party because I would look like an absolute clown to anyone who knew me if I showed up in anything other than a suit and tie. She was baffled and angry and annoyed. Her family would be mortified if I wore a suit, she said. It would be a spectacle if I showed up in anything other than a dress. And, in fact, it would take so much attention away from her on the most important day of her life that probably I shouldn't even come at all if I couldn't "wear women’s clothes for one night." 

She wanted to know if I was "transgender now," if that's what the problem was, because she'd heard about trans people swooping down at the witching hour and gobbling up tomboys in the night or something on some podcast. I told her nope, that not a single one of my trans friends had even tried to vamp my cis-ness. 

I said, "I'm just the same butch woman you've always known." 

She said, "WHAT DOES BUTCH WOMAN MEAN?" 

She was, in no way, prepared for the answer to a question that big. What was I going to do? Explain that, like basically everything else that matters to the queer community today, "butch" was forged in the glory of the queer subculture of the Harlem Renaissance? She'd probably never even heard of Gladys Bentley. Was I going to spend seven hours talking about how some of the women who flocked to the factories during World War II refused to leave when the men came home, and that's how "butch" became a working-class word, because those women preferred driving taxis and welding ships to giving up the literal pants they'd fought so hard to be allowed to wear? And where were we gonna go from there? To New York City's ball culture and the Black and Latine communities that gave us "butch queens" and "butch realness” in the 1980s and 1990s? Even Alison Bechdel and "Ring of Keys" seemed too extreme for her, to be honest, so I agreed it was probably best if I skipped her big day. 

Because, yes, “butch” is all of those things. But also it's: 

One of the biggest meltdowns I ever had came from my dad demanding that I wear a dress on Christmas Eve. It was a beautiful dress. My grandma bought it, and a matching one for my little sister. A pink skirt with white roses, a long-sleeve lace top with pink ribbons around the waist and a matching bow at the neck. It looked like a real life princess ball gown and any regular girl would have been thrilled to twirl around the Christmas tree wearing it. Only, I was not a regular girl and it felt like he was asking me to put on someone else's skin. But it was the 1980s in the rural South and my pediatrician was convinced I just liked the way it felt to pitch fits. He told my parents to throw water in my face when I got worked up about staying up until 8:30 pm to watch my idol Jo Polniaczek on The Facts of Life. He told them that “sparing the rod is spoiling the child,” especially when I got belligerent about what I wanted to wear. So they took his advice. My dad loved me, and at some point he let go and let god about my clothes, but that night he used his belt to get me into that dress. 

Oh but I loved the way it felt to button up a shirt with a collar. To button the cuffs at the end of my sleeves. I could tie a Windsor knot without looking in the mirror faster than I could tie my own shoes. I learned it from Alex P. Keaton. Wide end over the slim end, up the neck loop, then back down, around and up, back through the loop, across and up and down, and you're done. When I caught a glimpse of myself in a storefront window wearing high top sneakers and a backwards baseball cap, I looked six inches taller than usual. Sliding into sports jerseys, hoodies, jean jackets, vests, and suspenders felt like easing into a warm bubble bath. 

But then, "butch" isn’t just a masculine aesthetic. It's an energy. It's a temperament. It's a demeanor. It's a thing you just know, and the best feeling in the whole world is when you can finally own it. It's: 

One of the greatest joys of my life was working at Autostraddle's queer summer camp. Teaching the feminist history of beer, putting on field day events, hosting gay TV trivia, and being in charge of a cabin full of LGBTQ grown-ups who got to embrace their often under-loved inner children for a whole week. Some of them called me "mom" and some of them called me "dad" and both of those things felt so very right, like each one of those affectionate descriptors, spoken from their hearts, was the thing I was meant to be called since the birth of the universe. Because what I was radiating toward them was the love of a grown-up butch. If they needed to feel the affection and pride of a dad, I was their dad. If they needed to feel the nurturing and support of a mom, I was their mom. I was "dad" when I was tying their bowties, and I was "mom" when I was rubbing their backs after they'd had a good cry. They took what they needed, and I was happy to give it, because I fully contained both of those identities.

It's: 

Every living being in my life relaxes into my touch. My friends melt into my hugs. My cats seek me out for comfort during storms and for a soft, warm place to sleep. Dogs I've never even met lean right into me and wag, wag, wag their butts and tails. And my wife, most of all, softens into a marshmallow every time I reach for her. My hand on her cheek, her neck, her waist, her thigh. My arms wrapped all the way around her. A simple brush of my fingertips and everything else is forgotten. Butch masculinity has nothing to do with cis male masculinity. It's not guns and threats and an aggressive, entitled gaze. It's not possessive and insecure and posturing dominance. It's comfort and security and tenderness, the ability to love fully, the power of knowing exactly who you are. My wife believes that I have the strength and knowledge and fortitude to do literally anything I want to do, but more than that she believes in the kindness of my touch and the wholeness of my love. 

My mom often worked herself into hysterics demanding to know if I wanted to be a boy. But no! I did not want to be a boy! There was nothing in the entire world that I wanted more than to be a woman! A whole entire fully-grown woman with a job and a car and the ability to swallow coffee and also my very own boobs!

And still, I don't want to be a man. I want to take what has traditionally belonged to men — suits and ties and oxfords and polo shirts and boots and big chunky watches; loving women — and transmute it into something that exists outside of the dominion of men entirely. Cisgender men only notice me when they notice what I've taken from them, when they see something they thought they owned and are forced to acknowledge that I've made it mine. And I’m better at it because I don’t live inside a cage of hate and resentment and fear.

“Bleach blonde bad-built butch body” has become the insult of the summer, and I can’t really blame Representative Jasmine Crockett for it. It’s the kind of alliterative clapback to racist monster Marjorie Taylor-Greene that I’d spend ten years and hundreds of hot showers trying to come up with, and I’d never get close. Crockett has even trademarked it. It is kinda funny to me, though, because there’s no one less butch than MTG. Her brain would literally melt if anyone described her the way Stone Butch Blues author Leslie Feinberg self-identified: "an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist." Fuck yes.

A longtime friend recently reached out to say she thinks of me as her lesbian dad, and I told her, sincerely, that there's no better compliment I could receive. That’s “butch” to me: being a lesbian dad and the kind of person who inspires someone wonderful to call you that. I like to think I’m the ultimate girl dad, in the sense that I'm both a girl and a dad — and I'm not going to wear a dress to a wedding.